The author complains that current refugee policy does not represent “our country”, while simultaneously complaining that it represents the lowest common denominator.

Like all collectivist thinking, this article lacks intellectual coherence because of the fallacy of conceptual reality: the fallacy of taking an abstract aggregate concept and treating it as a reality, as a decision-making entity.

The word “Australia” has three different meanings which all such discussions confuse:
1. the physical territory of Australia
2. all the people who are in Australia on any given day.
3. the State and government of Australia.

Thus there is no point in asking what “Australia” thinks, without distinguishing those meanings. Obviously the physical land itself is not a decision-making entity.

There’s no use asking what “the people” think, because you’re referring to 22 million different people. They are not some monolithic lump. Different people have different opinions. Their opinions keep changing. And different people keep coming and going every day. In this second sense, “we as a people” don’t decide anything because we don’t decide anything “as a people”.

But if the author is talking about the State, that’s a different proposition entirely.
The State is a small elite minority of the population claiming a legal monopoly of the use of force, backed up by force, as decided unilaterally by itself. It has the power to take by force and threats – “policy” – from one group of the subject population, and give to another.

The State is not “the people”, and the people are not the State. Furthermore, contrary to popular myth, there is actually no evidence that the State represents the people in any specific governmental action: http://economics.org.au/2010/08/unrepresentative-government/

So it is never intellectually coherent to discuss the actions of “Australia” in the last sense, the political sense, without making a clear distinction between actions which benefit the population as a whole, and actions which merely loot A to satisfy B. But the “we as a society” brigade never make that distinction, and that is the fatal flaw underlying the author’s reasoning.

“My question remains; what cost to us as a people, this despicable, cruel, politically motivated handling of a crisis which is of our own making?”

The answer is, it doesn’t cost us “as a people”. Some individuals who claim higher values that they are unwilling to pay for, get the privilege of forcing other individuals, who disagree with them, to sacrifice their values under compulsion, which is what the author is arguing for.

And the crisis isn’t of “our” own making (confuses all the population with the State). It is caused by a minority exercising monopoly powers on a double standard (“I can use threats to steal from you, but you can’t do the same back to me”: the basis of all policy.

“They [the Greens] alone can hold their heads up at the end of this disgraceful part of our history, and with hand on heart say "I really tried".

This sentence shows the author’s fake moral superiority based on his own confusion based on his own ambiguous use of the term “we”.

The Greens could only hold up their heads with pride if *they personally and everyone who agreed with them* had offered to bear the costs of the refugees’ transport, accommodation, processing, legal costs, re-settlement and indemnity themselves. I’d like to see that!

The moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Greens is just as bad as that of the “sink the boats” brigade.

JKJ,

A thoughtful and well written reply.
Solutions are generally coloured grey and are rarely black or white despite the fact many would want that to be the case.

SD

Thanks for your thought provoking response Jardine.

I wasn't really writing for economists, or for seasoned analysts, but more to get a simple sadness I feel now, into words. I am not, and have never claimed a position as a writer, but I have opinions, and occasionally I ask Graham and the team to humour me, as was the case here.

There was a time, when members of the population of Australia in general, accepted that occasionally this area had a need to accept refugees, because that was the situation at the time. Vietnam was a case in point, now Afghanistan and Iraq, and to a degree Sri Lanka, though I have to note Australia was not a party to that exercise. It was entirely internal.

As our Government, on our behalf, as a nation, went to war hand in glove with the USA in the "coalition of the willing", we as a country, represented by our Government/s of both sides at various times, accepted a role in those invasions, quite willingly, as part of our commitment to the USA via various treaties.

I find it hard to think in the terms you ask, simply because many of us objected to the country being involved in "oil wars".

We, as objectors, took to the streets, but the voices of 50,000 plus people, around the country, were ignored by our leaders, and in our name, commenced action in Iraq originally, and now Afghanistan.

Daemon

Thus, I am compelled to think in terms of "us" and "we", irrespective the objections voiced at the outset of both the Middle East adventures, by many of "us".

In terms of "monolithic lump", I disagree in some instances, because as a country we accept the decisions made in our names, as individual members of the population, governed by a group elected under our form of "democracy", and that decisions made by those governments are presented to the world as "our decisions" - that is to say, in representation of the common voice if you like, regardless of the fact only 52% of the population felt elation over the result of a recent poll.

I hear the points you raise, but find it difficult to find a way to make my points, such as they are, whilst holding in my mind, the collective, as represented by "our" government, which isn't really representative.

The fact that I don't think Tony Abbott will be much use outside Australia, and that Ms Bishop, will be even worse in terms of our dealing with other countries, particularly in Asia, does not change the fact that they are "our" representatives, to the rest of the world, who quite rightly, will be excused for not understanding why a Clive Palmer is one of "our" representatives.

Perhaps, Jardine, you could share a thought o this as well? In many respects it echoes my feelings.

http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2013/september/1377957600/christos-tsiolkas/why-australia-hates-asylum-seekers

Daemon,
Great article

Let's take in 20-200 million...stop "pussy footing" around.

No end to our species stupidity with fertility and selfishness in wiping-out all the other species which "share" our planet.

Naive , "do-gooding" should be accelerated , so our future is obvious to all.

Shame about the forests being cut-down for more food and native cultures wiped out , by pro-natalists who refuse to support an education of having 2 children .........to save the Planet....mathematical illiterates !

I love them.

Best,
Ralph

Thank you Daemon.

About the sadness, I agree and feel so too. I do genuinely know what you’re talking about because I help refugees to put forward their cases under the Convention (just came back from Manus Island). My work involves sitting with them for four hours at a time, hearing in confidence all their troubles, and even their sobs and howls of pain when they recount their experiences of torture, bashings, rape and attempted murder at the hands of the statists in other countries. Anyone on this site will tell you I do nothing but put forward the arguments for liberty, and I can honestly say there are many refugees who owe their freedom from persecution, and even their life, to my work.

However it's not enough to *feel* strongly. We need to *understand* correctly. And just because I feel for, and act for refugees, doesn’t mean I share the view that the solution is open-ended governmental handouts paid for through the coercion system.

I have already shown the collectivist error in the idea that “Australia” hates asylum-seekers. I hate the shallow, facile, pious, ostentatious, vilifying ignorant fakery of the left wing. In the end it consists of nothing but insisting that what they want should be paid for by someone else under compulsion. At best, it’s moral and intellectual confusion and self-contradiction.

In particular, it is completely illegitimate to fail to distinguish, as that article does, between people not wanting asylum-seekers here because of:
• crimes refugees commit
• the huge costs to the taxpayer, and
• mere blind prejudice
and just thoughtlessly, fatuously lumping all objections into the last category.

I don’t think anyone objects to asylum-seekers when they’re in someone’s private home, not committing crimes, and not consuming costs that are publicly borne or imposed. (If they do, that’s sheer blind prejudice, and we agree it should be ignored.) The issue is the financial and non-financial costs they impose on Australian society.

Thus the root of the problem is the collectivist mindset itself, for three reasons.
Firstly refugee flows are overwhelming caused …

(cont.)

… by statist beliefs motivating persecution in the countries of origin. It’s precisely the Greens’ same creed of unlimited State power, that you’re justified in using violence to get whatever you want so long as you do it through the State, that rights are whatever the State says they are. This is by far the main 'push' factor in the refugee-generating countries. It’s an intrinsically abusive belief system.

Secondly, the main reasons people don’t want refugees are to protect socialist institutions. The main argument is that these people use common resources such as schools, hospitals, water etc. (People also resent refugees as competition for jobs – exactly the same reason why the Labor party initiated the White Australia Policy. The xenophobia is socialist to its core.)

Socialism would be better called "anti-socialism" because that's what it really is.

Thirdly the reason why we can’t just take refugees in privately, is because
a) immigration is a quintessential government monopoly, and
b) of all the government regulations.

For example, on my farm we could easily accommodate and employ refugees, and it would be mutually beneficial. Why can’t we? Because for every $100 transaction, the worker gets $84 and we pay $136, so the government gouges 50 percent of every transaction, making it completely non-viable – not counting the zillions of other regulations!

And the collectivists, who are overwhelmingly causing the problem on so many fronts in the first place, want even more of these heavy-handed coercions stripping away private property and liberty, and vesting all decisions in the political coercive class on behalf of the greater good, what else?

“I hear the points you raise, but find it difficult to find a way to make my points,… whilst holding in my mind, the collective, as represented by "our" government, which isn't really representative.”

Can you see how you’re confirming what I’m saying? It’s the mental habit of giving primacy to the collective that is causing the problem, because - even though you see it’s factually and morally wrong - it’s preventing you from thinking about better, more humane solutions.

So, all those who know what the problem is, get up & solve it. Go out & prevent people from becoming refugees. Taking in refugees only exacerbates the plight of refugees. As long as people are not stopped from sending people away from their countries than it is that long that refugees will seek out countries which advertise generous social services at the expense of those who funded those services with their own future in mind & not those who are unwilling to join them.
Most decent people will offer refuge to the needy. Most people also object to being taking for a ride to their own detriment. Why not conduct a survey on what percentage of able-bodied refugees would go back to their country in an australian army uniform & help fight their oppressors. Would they still be called murderous invaders by the Marylin Shepherds & David Gs for fighting to regain freedom in their own country ?

JKJ,
Thanks for your posts.
I like the way you think.
Your posts on this topic are really worth reading.
So far from the rabid rantings usually associated with this subject.
SD

<<JKJ, Thanks for your posts...Your posts on this topic are really worth reading>>

I'll second that

this might at first raise anger
but then..its time we knew..that terrot..
is just error..[with a capiTal..T.

noting capital/terror..
go hand in hand../with gun in hand

crime pays..
hence bigger crime pay off..is bigger
how big..watch..learn..but dont get angry..get even

learn more
teaching dissipate the anger

its an info war
http://www.repubblica.it/cultura/2013/09/11/news/the_pope_s_letter-66336961/

our weapon..of choice..is words
freewill..free voice
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=5995&page=0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr6T-4Voe0g

Thanks guys.

There’s also another dimension that all the mainstream parties are missing.

The definition of “refugee” is so wide, and this world is so bad, that there are many more people in the world who qualify as refugees every year, than there are people in Australia.

There are about 45 million refugees in the world, and most of them are living in desperate circumstances. Saw a video once on a massive refugee camp in Kenya. A complete hell-hole. At night the UN staff barricade themselves into a fort with all the armed guards, and the rest of the place is given over to rape, looting and murder.

I’ve heard people say the boat people coming to Australia aren’t refugees - they’re wearing fashionable clothes and they obviously work out in the gym. But being a refugee doesn’t mean you’re poor or sick, it means you’re at risk of persecution. Middle-class Iranians at risk of being hanged for converting to Christianity or being homosexual are just as much refugees as poor Africans.

Both Labor and Liberal governments spend approximately a zillion dollars per onshore refugee, and approximately zip dollars per offshore refugee. This difference is because of the Refugees Convention.

The Convention creates two different legal classes of refugees. A State, by signing the Convention, doesn’t agree to take all the refugees in the world. They only agree not to return the refugees who are in the State’s territory. (Australia also grants rights of residence, freedom of movement, employment, education, etc. – PNG doesn’t.)

So if you’re applying onshore, you only have to prove that you satisfy the definition of refugee, basically (and security clearance).

But if you’re applying offshore, you have to prove that you satisfy the definition of refugee, and then you go into a huge lottery for one of the few places in the offshore refugee component of the general immigration program. I know an Afghan who applied offshore FIFTEEN TIMES for a refugee visa, was rejected the first fourteen times, and got it on the fifteenth. Many meritorious cases never get it and languish in …

… the camps forever.

This means the Convention confers huge unequal advantages on people applying onshore. That’s the underlying *legal* reason why asylum-seekers come by boat.

Thus it’s completely disingenuous of the major parties to blame “people smugglers”. The problem isn’t being caused by irregular transport agents contracted to bring people from hell to Australia. It’s being caused by the hypocrisy of the major parties, in signing on to the Convention, and then doing everything they possibly can to try to squirm out of it.

Blaming “people smugglers” is like calling the people who aided Anne Frank “people smugglers”. It’s like calling Schindler, the guy who illegally delivered Jews from Nazi persecution, a “people smuggler”. Politicians!

(It’s true many of these agents have been fraudulent but that’s not in the nature of the business of transporting people, it’s because governments deny protection or justice to both parties to the contract – because they’re trying to rely on, and governments are trying to evade the clear requirements of their own undertaken obligations.)

Clive Palmer said one of the most sensible things I’ve heard on the entire topic. These people are paying $15,000 for a boat trip from Indonesia to Australia. The market price for an airfare is $800. Why not let them fly in at their own expense on a return ticket? Hear and determine their claims in appropriate facilities at the airport. If they’re not refugees, send them back at their own expense. If they are, grant them refugee status in accordance with Australia’s obligations under international law.

That seems to me far more humane, sensible and economic, but the only response from the Greens is to hate and villify Palmer because mining wounds the Earth!)

The question which needs to be answered is: why be on the Convention at all? Withdrawing does *not* mean the government doesn’t take in refugees. It means that the government could determine the numbers and conditions of onshore refugees, just as it does for offshore refugees and all other categories of non-refugee migrants.

There is no similarity between what is happening now and the regional solution we entered into to resettle 100,000 Vietnamese refugees.
Further, the criminal element, namely pirates, were preying on fleeing refugees, rather than trying to smuggle them in here for exorbitant fees!
The regional solution we entered into, when Malcolm Frazier was our PM, reduced the risk to refugees, by making Hong Kong, the first port of call for intending refugees, reducing the time, length and danger of the journey.
Moreover, most of those seeking shelter were our former south Vietnamese allies, and at very real risk of reprisals from Ho Chi Min's Tigers?
Typically, the tail wagging the dog, antiwar Greens, set themselves up, with their moral superiority, to speak for the majority, without ever once seeking the views of that majority.
They were, I believe, the tree hugging rent-a-crowd group and craven coward draft dodgers, who were anti war, and spat on returning veterans, labeling them baby killers and the like!
When in fact, the rules of engagement only allowed our soldiers to discharge their weapons, when fired on! And sometimes, not even then! (Friendly fire.)
I have no problem inviting more GENUINE refugees to settle here.
There are millions in camps around the world, and some have been waiting for decades!
However, if someone knocks on my door seeking entry, they need my invitation before entering!
I don't take kindly to anyone, even a friend, simply walking in without waiting to be invited!
When we resettled all those Vietnamese, they were invited and at GENUINE risk!
Yes by all means lets honor our obligations to asylum seekers.
No ifs, buts or maybes, as long as the recipients of our generosity understand, that generosity doesn't automatically include resettlement in Australia or Australian citizenship!
Rhrosty.

i note..that the two..
big informative posters..to this thread
have each posted twice..sadly..they had to post 4 posts for just two replies

i know we would gladly..give up a post
we could post..to either of the other..to post more

anyhow..jkj..great..info..[the people/state thing]..etc
i think it was you that raised the wage/tax issue..and im sure you know

but wage is not income*
thus to tax wage..*AS IF it were TRUE in-come..
is a fraud..

upon the people by..the state

look-up the meaning of income*..
[that profit earned..*without*..a value adding componant..such as labour

wage=wage..[value adding]
income=things like profit/interest/capital gain/shares art fines fees levies..etc

corporations..for egsample..CAN ONLY produce income*
[they arnt a living entity]..but by a legal paper fiction..[under the act of incorperalisation..[as if living personhood[..thus they are born as entity/egzisting..*only on paper

ie..a person..[under the act]
/under the act..of their incorp-oration..
[effectively a trust]..limited/liability..because its not living..[an entity..a personhood fiction]

they*..have subverted the lawful meaning of ;person;
then put up laws..that apply *ONLY to state created persons

[corporate persons]..that first subverted the rights..[of the living]
while a dead capitalist/socialist..bails out the dead..[person/corporate fictions

if only people knew
we got income tax
not wage tax

Thank you Daemon Singer, for answering for me the question as to why why some people in Australia insist upon Australia accepting as a "refugee" every person who hops on a boat in Indonesia and manages to put his big toe on Australian soil. It is our punishment for being an ally of the USA and getting involved in the wars of the USA, isn't it?

Daemon asks "What makes an Australian?" And then he makes it pretty clear that he regards "first people" as the real Australians and the white "boat people" as "usurpers". " Can you see the racism here? Daemon accords being an "Australian" with race, but he would hop around in red faced apoplexy if I did the same thing and bestowed an "Australian" as a white North European. Daemon is just as big a racist as I am. Daemon's racism is particularly virulent towards one particular white demographic whom he stereotypes as "pale skinned, round eyed, fourth generation welfare recipients in Western Sydney."

If anybody on OLO had referred to Asians as "slant eyed" and prejudged them with a long list of negative stereotypes, they would almost certainly have been banished from OLO for racism. But there seems to be a curious double standard which applies to whites and minorities in the western world. Racism towards minorities is totally unacceptable, but self evident and virulent racism towards white people gets free a pass. No one in the Human Rights organisations in Australia is going to prosecute Daemon under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act because the employees of those organisations would probably agree with Daemon's opinion of white people.

I used to be a bit of a trendy lefty myself in my younger days, but unlike Daemon I soon grew out of it. I opposed the war in Vietnam, but I never "hated" the Americans for trying to save an apathetic people from the horrors of Communism. And I soon figured out that many people like Daemon were self loathing, white despising racists who hid their own racism behind a facade of moral superiority.

Actually Lego, that is only one way of reading what I wrote,and whilst I am limited to only 500 words or so, I am aware of the possible alternatives to that reading only too well. I didn't say we should accept every refugee, nor did I even hint at it.

As to your description of my "Australian" as being racist, that should be perhaps supported as to it's position in the lexicon, as "your opinion", in my view.

Apart from those little additions, thank you for taking the time to comment, on what is a very divisive debate, nationwide, and becoming same, worldwide.

Hello Mr Damaged Singer.

Your article plainly identified "first people" as the real Australians, and the "round eyes" as the "usurpers." That is an act of racism, because it judges black aboriginal people as being more Australian than white people, and it also submitted the racist slur of calling white people "round eyed".

I find it incredible that you are unable to see the self evident racism in your own article. It is exactly as George Orwell said. Trendies like you are blind to the contradictions in your own ideology. You are so full of your own moral superiority, that it never occurs to you that you have to abide by the same anti racist rules that you preach, and which you think that those lowly, cretinous western suburbs suburbanites should unquestionably accept. Either racism is wrong, or it is not wrong. You can't get up on a pulpit preach against racism surrounded by a chorus of singing angels, and go and do it yourself.

You Daemon, have reached a Jimmy Swaggard moment. You had better get down on your knees and cry "I have sinned, Lord!" before your chardonnay sucking mates banish you to western Sydney for conduct unbecoming an ideological zealot.

Look mate, I used to be a trendy myself, but unlike you I recognised the white hating racism that was constantly preached by the evangelical social regressives who claimed that they were anti racist. You can't educate me at school to recognise racism in all it's forms, and then get surprised when I recognise, plain as day, it in the articles of the trendy left. Unless you can address this contradiction, your moralising, finger wagging position, is more worthy of hilarity than serious consideration.

Please don't look at your article again and see the obvious racism, because your ideology is hopelessly compromised at the moment. You just can't see it, can you? I want you to keep writing anti white racist tripe so that I can show any impartial reader with a brain how hypocritical and muddled is the thinking of people like yourself.

I tend to agree with LEGO's assessment.

Both the article, and its authors other contributions to the thread are loaded with misrepresentations --something we have come to expect from apologists for illegal immigration.

What price a quiet heart? indeed!

How can the article writer engage in such spin and have a quiet heart...doesn't seem to bother him in the slightest!

The ad hominem response, may well be beneath you Lego, I can't say as I haven't sought your other work, though I have suspicions.

At no time did I say I wasn't or am not, racist. I merely laid out the basic issues I was asking in my effort, which has obviously been something of an Amaeus moment for you - that some "chardonnay socialists" have the gall to speak, rather than remain in simpering silence behind plastic beaded curtains in Newtown coffee shops.

I have to confess, as I showered last night, that I wondered how come no one had used the "chardonnay socialist" sobriquet at that time? It won't be long I thought.. then there you are. Thank you for re-inforcing my faith in human nature. Thank you for calling me from your ivory tower of judgement.

Thank you for supporting what I had always thought.. you can't mention the inherent racism of Australians, without being attacked for your own hypocrisy because you don't mention, as the writer of the article, that you accept you also have an essence of racism, but that you try and manage it, by doing something, rather than flinging stones at others, who choose the path you do.

I fully accept all you said, but how about commenting on the issue, rather than on the messenger?

@Damaged

I know, I know, your post was addressed to LEGO and I have every faith that he will thoroughly answer it.

But I would just like to squeeze in one incy-wincy reply to this comment of yours:

<< [It] has obviously been something of an Amaeus moment for you - that some "chardonnay socialists" have the gall to speak, rather than remain in simpering silence behind plastic beaded curtains in Newtown coffee shops.>>

The imagery alone is hilarious but the idea is well beyond hilarious, when one considers that:
1) "SOME" implies a small number.
2) What you have said in your article & subsequent posts is really very little different from what we have heard over and over and over again from:
--the various channels of the ABC & SBS
--practically all of the student campus newspapers/ magazines,
--Various writer in the Fairfax press & even big bad Murdoch's (free giveaway newspaper) the MX (and you yourself cited The Monthly)
--95% of all article writers on OLO and 100% on most other forums &
-- and the thousands of groups & QC's that make up the refugee lobby/industry.

Yet still, you have the fantasy that your "message" gets little airing and you are a lone (brave) voice crying out in the wilderness --what a joke!

ROFLMA

SPQR,

Well said and how true.

However a keyboard warning next time please so I can put down my coffee before reading. LOL

Dear Mr Damaged Singer.

I stereotyped you as a chardonay sucking, social climbing Socialist who hates racism, because your article was full of the usual attitudes which mark you indelibly as a member of that particular demographic.

To begin with, your article did the usual trendy lefty trick of claiming the moral high ground. Trendies are convinced that they are morally and intellectually superior to both the bourgeoisie and the Great Unwashed. They claim that they believe in human equality, while at the same time showing their total contempt for their social inferiors. Which, My Dear Mr Singer, you did in aces. You absolutely trashed the western Sydney suburbanites who you feel so superior to.

Trendies claim to be the vanguard against racism. Which is pretty funny when you see their anti white racism on display in anything they write. If anything goes wrong in the world, the trendies can always find a way to blame the white race, even if the facts need a bit of pushing and shoving to fit the theory. Once again, you ticked the box. Your racism towards working class whites was plainly on display, a fact that you rather sheepishly chose to ignore in your reply to me. Did you reread what you wrote and the penny dropped? You will have to be a bit more clever in your racism next time. You can't make it too obvious.

Next came the reflexive anti Americanism, and then the finger wagging about "refugees". Yep, you are a trendy lefty all right.

Could I give you a bit of advice in psychology? Talking down to your audience and telling them that they are a "self centred greedy bunch" is a great way to convince people that you are an arrogant moral puritan who thinks he is God's gift to the human race. You can bet that they will do the opposite of what you want, just to nark you