bjbelly

What Yuyutsu said.

Australia has the capacity to accept all the refugees it wants, without the Convention.

The Convention just results in cases being determined not on merit or urgency, but on the seaworthiness of the applicant.

If all the people who claim to care about refugees, genuinely cared about them, they would offer to relieve their fellow Australians of the costs, and there would be no issue. You could have all the refugees you want.

So why don't you? All you have to do is print out the above Deed and Declaration, sign it, and post the signed original in PDF back into this thread. Then we'll know you're fair dinkum.

Go ahead. Prove you're not a fake.

Rhian
bjbelly's post is an example of the evaluational chaos - not to mention the nauseating pretentiousness - enabled by the socialisation of the resources in issue.

Instead of discussion being focussed on the real issues, we get these fake discussions about diversions. (Notice that bjbelly assumes that anyone who disagrees with him suffers from "manufactured" political opinion, whereas his own political opinion is not manufactured, it's the real deal, he is a prophet speaking absolute truth, he's got a telephone to God. Nauseating. And so dumb.)

These insufferable Puritan know-it-alls are what's causing the entire problem, because they're the ones who wanted the Convention in the first place, so they could pose in their cafes about how caring they are, while shafting everyone else in the population for the costs.

Hi JKJ

I have also worked with refugees, and regularly donate to organisations that assist them – so I do put my money (and time) where my mouth is.

The Deed in its current form would not be tenable.

I’d happily sign this though:

I agree to pay, or receive payment for, the net fiscal impact of transferring a refugee family from detention into the Australian community.

This includes the cost of:

Ensuring their safety at sea and safely landing in Australian territory
• Health and identity checks
• Accommodation, food, health, mental health, sport, recreation, training during processing
• The costs of determination of refugee status, including all reviews administrative and judicial
• The costs of administration, including all premises, equipment, travel, accommodation, staff, salaries, tax, superannuation, workers compensation, holiday leave, flex leave, long service leave, maternity leave, study leave
• The costs of resettlement including income support, housing, and training

Less the costs that would have been incurred under the current policy, including:

• Health and identity checks
• Accommodation, food, health, mental health, sport, recreation, training during detention
• The costs of determination of refugee status, including all reviews administrative and judicial
• The costs of administration, including all premises, equipment, travel, accommodation, staff, salaries, tax, superannuation, workers compensation, holiday leave, flex leave, long service leave, maternity leave, study leave
• The costs of detention, including salaries, other operating costs, capital expenses, maintenance and depreciation
• The costs of “resettlement” in a foreign country once refugee status is determined
• The costs of payments and donations in kind to host countries made in return for hosting refugees

Less other fiscal contributions, including the value of any income tax, GST and other taxation paid by the family in Australia.

The Commission of Audit estimated it costs $400,000 a year to keep a person in offshore detention, and $40,000 a year to settle them in the community.

https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/law/commission-audit-reveals-offshore-processing-budget-blowout

Assuming a family of four, $1,440,000+ a year sounds a good deal. I reckon a few other people would sign up, too.

Rhian, the bit that's missing from your proposal is the numbers involved.

As I see it the main purpose of the current policy (like it or not) is to deter many who would otherwise come here. Comparing the cost of a single person or family in detention to the cost of that same person or family in the community does not deal with the expected significant increase in numbers if access was easier.

It's not a real answer unless you have a proposal that addresses that aspect.

R0bert

R0bert, your point is valid, but to establish numbers with or without the policy is impossible. Furthermore, it would depend on the level of take-up of people willing to sign similar Deeds.

An economist could hypothesise that the supply of refugees would settle at a level that equilibriates the market – presumably where the estimated cost of community settlement and offshore detention is roughly the same, perhaps with a discount to reflect the preferences of people like me who would rather they we settled in the community. We could even, in the interests of an entirely free market/voluntarist solution that JKJ might approve of, introduce a deed with exactly the opposite commitments, allowing those who prefer refugees to be held in offshore detention to bid to underwrite the net costs of that arrangement. This could be the perfect free-market solution – each person (except the refugees, obviously) freely chooses whether to support detention or community settlement at the prevailing price, the government needn’t pay for either as the market clears automatically, and the market also determines supply according to cost and the prevailing balance of incarcerators/liberators. It should even be possible to establish derivatives and futures markets so prospective refugees can determine the best time to get on a boat. But that might be a little extreme.

Hi Yuyustu,

I don't know why they do it. All I know is that most people believe what they have been told repeatedly by politicians and the media for over a decade, that Asylum seekers are illegal migrants and queue jumpers. This is simply not true. The mis-information has allowed an otherwise generous and fair-minded people to lock up and detain innocent people for years - the only way it could be justified to us was to label them illegals. It doesn't have to be this way as was shown by the humane way the Fraser government dealt with the Vietnamese boat people - at a time when we were not such a wealthy country, and yet far more humane and generous.

I agree the Refugee Convention is arbitrary and leaves out many people who need assistance.

"Those who love and care for others, would do so with or without a convention. Those who don't will always find ways to avoid following even those obligations they signed for." I totally agree.

JKJ,
You assume too much. I'm as gullible as the next person. I am no better or worse than anyone else. I want to increase my understanding of how the world works. One thing I do know is that governments of all persuasions spend a lot of money on spin doctors and public relations - they are there solely to massage the truth, and teach politicians the art of omission and misdirection - to engineer or manufacture consent.

I work with disadvantaged kids and do my bit to help those in need when I can. I don't need to sign a deed. I would just like my government to stop lying and do the right thing by vulnerable people by simply abiding by its commitments under the Refugee Convention - nothing more or less.

Finding out about how propaganda works has improved my understanding of how the world works, and I thought that others may be interested in finding out more about it too.

Edward Bernays knew what he was talking about as he was an influential public relations man - he was the one who promoted it's use over the term "propaganda" which took on negative connotations after WW1. He was involved in a variety of commercial and government related PR campaigns from promoting bacon and soap, through to the propaganda campaign in support of the overthrow of the democratically elected Guatamalan government on behalf of United Fruit Company - sounds crazy - but absolutely true.
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2010/12/9834/banana-republic-once-again

We are all subject to propaganda. Sometimes we can see it, sometimes we are blind to it. But to pretend it doesn't happen is foolish and naive.

As Mark Twain once said - if you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.