Oh dear!

The first 4 comments came from children who have mistaken maturity for the capacity to justify inhumane treatment of others.

Those who accept the status quo have set aside the definition of asylum seekers and have resorted to applying entirely unjustified namecalling using emotionally charged epithets, yet these same people pretend that they are not emotional, that they are the rationalists, that only their opponents are being emotional.

What is rational about early, brutal death in captivity?
What is sensible about the way that refugees are being housed and treated?
What is justifiable about repeatedly, constantly and willfully breaking international treaties and law?

We are not talking about Centrelink dole bludgers as someone stated. Well over 90% of boat arrivals who have been objectively assessed in recent years have been found to be actual refugees. That means, by definition, that the reason they are here is to find refuge. Their lives depend on them finding refuge, the same refuge which we Australians are refusing to provide. Their highest priority is safe refuge, not the dole. That also means that Australia and Australians, from the PM down, have legal, ethical and, for those with a personal compass, moral obligations to provide refuge.

This discussion isn't me or others being "emotional", as this is an inappropriate response when others are subjected to avoidable pain. It is about man's inhumanity to man. It is about the irrational, insensitive, inhumane and sometimes even religiously bigotted attempts by other Australians to deny unfortunate, desperate, hurting people their rights as humans.

Maybe the 500,000 long term annual arrivals are the real latent dole bludgers. No statistics have been put forward that could support the notion that boat people and other extremely desperate refugees are truly seeking to become economic immigrants? That is because there is none.

Australia is very much out of step with the reasonable expectations and standards adopted by every other Western country. This needs to be changed and soon.

We need stop making excuses.

We must close the death camps.

JohnBennetts:
Well said. One sane voice so far .
The racial tones of the other rants are obvious.
It does make me ashamed to be an Australian and no I will not leave for somewhere else but stay and try to bring the view point of the MAJORITY out over the propaganda of the shock jocks and the lame stream press.
The Abbott so called government will not be calling the shots for much longer and after they have gone with their fascist idealism reason will prevail.

The author seems to have no idea of the current world situation and seems to think we live in an equal happy world without borders.

There is no recognition that in the world of sovereign states in which we live entry into the territory of another state is by leave, and that entry without leave constitutes invasion.

As other posters have mentioned, the underlying problem is world overpopulation, and the only solution to this will be provided by the four horsemen (War, Famine, Pestilence and Death).

The world cannot cope with the current population of 7,200,000,000, and when it gets to 10,000,000,000 things will get very much worse.

The response of the elite is to ignore the problem and make discussion of it politically incorrect.

At a conservative estimate, there would be over 1,000,000,000 people in the world who would love to move to Australia, and this is not going to happen.

The most obvious first step that the government should take would be to abrogate the Asylum Convention, and I am puzzled why they do not do this.

After that, all that is needed is legislation to provide that all non-citizens without visas on a boat that seeks to enter our territory would be declared to be enemy aliens, and the task of preventing their entry would be assigned to our armed forces, with the authority to use lethal force if necessary

< We will never stop the flow of asylum seekers… >

< There are ways to deal with people smuggling and boat arrivals and stop people drowning without being unnecessarily punitive to needy people. >

Kathryn, these statements appear to be at odds. Do you want to tackle people smuggling and boat arrivals or do you want to just accept a continuous stream of arrivals?

Please clarify this. Currently it looks as though you are highly confused about the bigger picture… or perhaps only just cursorily mentioning it and not really interested in it at all.

You know full well that if we were to treat asylum seekers as you would want, it would create a huge pull factor, and we’d find ourselves dealing with many thousands more. And if that was to happen, we’d have to take a considerably harder-line approach, in which many more people would get turned around at sea, would be placed in detention, would get hurt, would die… and in short would be treated in ways that you so vehemently protesteth about.

It appears that you haven’t thought this issue through. Not by a very long way.

Write us another article that is more about the big picture of asylum seeking. And please tell us exactly what ways there are of dealing with people smuggling and boat arrivals without being ‘unnecessarily punitive’ to needy people.

Absolutely agree with runner.
And as things stand, the flow of refugees can only ever grow, along with the internment camps that are the only places left for around 50 million people.
[They're all invited around to Screamer's, for afternoon nibbles.]
Greece with a population of around 12 million people, opened her door to around a million people, many who would now be better off, if they'd stayed were they were?
What do they have now? Apart from a million with no money, no homes, no work; and clean out of charity!
My heart bleeds for people, who are locked up in internment camps, sometimes like the Cohen, for literal generations.
And in those filthy hovels/tin shanty towns/tent cities, with no running water, no proper sanitation etc; one or two deaths P/W, just go completely unnoticed, but particularly by those screaming the loudest, about far better conditions in a tropical paradise.
The standards on Manus Island are far better than those of more than 85% of Papuans.
And native women in particular, are handed a truly shocking deal/can be summarily executed for alleged witchcraft, for heavens sake!
These screamers need to get things in context, and start working for a better world; and fixing those things that they scream about, at source!
Imagine, if we all believed in reincarnation and Karma!?
This world would be a far better place, and few if any needing to flee anything, let alone injustice, persecution or poverty!
Scrrreem awah.
Rhrosty.

Our “boat people” are a tiny manifestation of a world wide phenomenon, and to understand that requires the “big picture”, not screaming and abuse.It involves a stage of advanced imperialism, with enormous flows of finance oblivious to borders; massive concentrations of wealth and global disparities; geo-political conflicts over strategic resources; endless local wars with displacement of people. Threatening the whole world has been the doubling of population since 1960, with numbers still increasing most in poorest countries. Over the same period, per-capita cropland has fallen by more than half. ( Just imagine the catastrophe if/when predictions of climate change are realised).