Foxy

"I'm not interested."

You're not interested in refugees. You're just interested in your conceited public self-preening about how wonderful and caring you are.

All fake, as we've just seen.

Justine
Could you please post the signed scanned original PDF of the Deed and Declaration? It's to settle a bet. My friend is arguing that you're a nasty hypocrite, and I'm arguing that you're not, and I can prove it.

Hurry up?

Loudmouth

If “offshore processing” meant just that, as it did in the 1980s when Vietnamese refugees were “processed” offshore and then flown here for resettlement, then I’d agree. But “processing” is now also a euphemism for indefinite detention without trial, not just the bureaucratic processes necessary to establish someone’s security and refugee status.

JKJ

Why is coercing taxpayers to support community settlement of refugees a bad thing, but coercing them to pay for offshore detention acceptable? As the fiscal burden of our current treatment of asylum seekers is far greater than the one I propose, then by your logic I should be entitled to a tax rebate if my proposals are adopted.

On a more serious note, studies have shown that community hostility to illegal immigration is higher in countries with comparatively high welfare safety nets – the Americans, for example, are comparatively relaxed about illegal migration, but allow them few government benefits (illegal migration is not the same issue as asylum seekers, but there are parallels). Would you support allowing asylum seekers' entry if they had no access to housing or unemployment benefits? There are already organisations that provide community support for refugees in that situation in Australia using voluntary donations.

Suseonline

I think both major parties are equally at fault here. Labor introduced mandatory detention. Howard moved much of it offshore. Rudd and Gillard embraced this and took thinks to a new low by detaining refugees in countries not signatory to the UN convention. Abbott continues the race to the bottom.

Hi Rhian,

I'l take it even more slowly then.

You don't approve of either 'stopping the boats' or offshore detention, in Cambodia or Manus or Nauru ?

Fair enough.

So let's take those dreadful processes out of the equation:

* boats shouldn't be stopped, and

* people should be processed humanely on-shore, and if genuine, quickly moved into the community with all the benefits they are entitled to.

Is that your position ?

Then, I'll ask again: why expect people to go through the process of paying high fares and traveling here by leaky boat ? Since the boats shouldn't be stopped, why should so many people have to get here that way ? Why not just let people pay a standard fare to Qantas to fly here, process them here and take them into the community ?

If people don't have to get on a boat in Indonesia, then why not - seriously - let people fly direct from wherever they are, as long as they are genuine refugees ?

What could be so hard about that ?

Joe

Dear Joe,

<<Similarly, why the stage of payment to smugglers and getting on leaky boats ? If they are going to be welcomed anyway, then why not just fly direct ?>>

Then ask further - who cares how they arrive? What's wrong if their method of transportation happens to be a boat? Perhaps they don't fly because they are environmentalists who refuse to burn carbon?

The rabbit was not welcome outside his jail cell - he simply came out and having already been out, I think he should pay for the damage he caused to his cell by unnecessarily drawing a door. Similarly none of us is obliged to welcome those who arrive in Australia, yet there are many shades of grey between "welcoming" and actively preventing people from arriving - and those are somehow ignored here in what turned out to be a black&white discussion.

Hi Joe

We have no legal or moral obligation to take everyone in the world who may qualify as a refugee, though were have a moral obligation to take some – as we do. We do have particular legal (and I believe, moral) obligations to people who arrive here and claim refugee status. So offshore processing alone is never going to be sufficient to prevent people taking risky boat trips, even in the unlikely event that Australia agreed to accept any and all genuine refugees.

Yututsu’s points are right: there is no basis for the different treatment of plane and boat arrivals, and a plethora of options between open borders and indefinite offshore detention.

Rhian
"Why is coercing taxpayers to support community settlement of refugees a bad thing, but coercing them to pay for offshore detention acceptable?"

I don't think it is. I think the whole subject is a great example of government provoking unnecessary stinking conflict in society, then intervening and aggrandising the power and budgets of its own functionaries in the process.

"As the fiscal burden of our current treatment of asylum seekers is far greater than the one I propose, then by your logic I should be entitled to a tax rebate if my proposals are adopted."

Certainly if policy enabled those who volunteered, to pay the costs of the refugees themselves and not impose them on others, they could work out how to provide a decent process at a fraction of what it now costs, and the savings, like the costs, should be all their own.

The problem is precisely that the 'dominant paradigm' - the current framework of the Convention and immigration policy funded by tax - spreads calculational and valuational and moral chaos throughout the whole subject area. It's not hard to figure out how to save money and improve government performance - but good luck trying to get a tax rebate.

That's the whole point. While ever people can shuck off the costs of their pretensions to compassion, onto others who are forced to pay even though they disagree, we will continue to have more humane and economical solutions going begging.

The whole problem would be solved by a change so that those who want to bear the costs, can, and those who don't, don't have to.

"... studies have shown that community hostility to illegal immigration is higher in countries with comparatively high welfare safety nets ..."

Yes indeed. If the ostentatious self-preening fakes like Justine, Foxy, and Burnside would stop using the state force to others to pay for the costs of their pretended values, you'd find the whole issue doesn't exist.

So anyway, are you going to sign and post the Deed, or not?