People in immigration detention centres receive over and above what many people in Australia receive, and they get it for free.

This includes: -

"- accommodation including bedding and bathroom facilities
- catering, which includes the provision of a minimum of three meals per day and the accommodation of particular requirements such as halal, kosher, vegetarian
- access to religious practitioners, prayer rooms, services and other religious activities
- access to television, library services and other educational and entertainment facilities
- access to visitors (including visitor accommodation), a mail service and to telephones, computers and the internet
- access to interpreters
- excursions to locations or venues external to the immigration detention centres (for example fishing and shopping trips)
- a schedule of programs and activities (participation in which is voluntary) targeted at enhancing the mental health and wellbeing of detainees (for example, cultural and lifestyle classes, sporting activities)
- an income allowance program and operating shops and a hairdressing service
- recreational and sporting facilities
- supplying and replenishing clothes, footwear, toiletries, hygiene products and other personal items"

http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/2012-2013/AustGovAssistRefugees#_Toc336609242

All this is provided for free, and provided after these people illegally came to Australia.

And Australians who have carried out no illegal activity are required to pay the costs of those who have carried out an illegal activity.

Perhaps the illegal immigrants should be put to work to pay for the cost of their illegal entry, and after that, Australia should see if they are entitled to come into the country.

Interactive: Yes and not a bad idea. But not here, somewhere comparatively close, like inside East Timor sweat shops and for the same dollar a day dawn to dark gut bust that's common fare there? As are tin shanties and bicycles! And not so much as a single Mosque in sight?

Moreover, nothing to prevent the ultra religious attending local church services and joining in Christian prayers and hymns? After all there is but one God, regardless of preferred regional differentiation labeling

And East Timor is a signatory to the UN convention! Even so, shouldn't be asked to provide better conditions or amenity just not available to their own nationals! The problem previously?

I wonder how long it would take our "guests" to decide they wanted to return home or to Nauru? If they decided they would return home? Economy air travel could be provided along with a generous grant of around fifty thousand AUD or so, to set them up in some Family enterprise?

And a dam sight cheaper than simply housing them on Nauru, Where we apparently supply the world's most expensive economy class, family friendly, tropical resort style accommodation? Of the stories of abuse emerging? who are the abusers? Family? Friends? Other detainees? Employees? Guards? Aliens? Fairies at the bottom of the garden?

I would want to test these claims with the aid of unbeatable space age lie detection technology! And if proven? Result in heads falling! Even Nauruan Nationals, even if that required gunboat diplomacy!?

These folk take our money, shoveled by the shipload for a product! Namely safe and secure haven for a medley of uninvited guests and need to be held accountable for that delivery!

Ditto Manus! Whose courts and latter day finding was extremely convenient! And where getting it overturned by legislation ought to be the price they're willing to pay for the continuance of billions in aid money/current defence arrangements/assistance?
Alan B.

Rodney,

The moment you tried to show that detention was not a deterrent based on research into the death penalty, you revealed a vast ignorance. The reality is that illegal immigration dropped by 98% when detention and tow backs were introduced and increased from about 100 p.a. to 1000 per week after the incompetent labor government removed it.

The disaster that has hit Europe is entirely due to the same left wing idiocy.

With Europe falling apart with civil unrest, terrorism, mass rapes, bankruptcy, and now talk of civil war, it is just incredible that Rodney Crisp is still pushing the line that open borders is the way to go. I would have thought that Rodney and his friends would be scuttling back under their rocks and hoping that nobody remembered that they once pushed an ideology that ensured social self suicide?

The repeal of the White Australia Policy has seen.....

Armed guards outside of Australian newspaper offices and Jewish schools.

Six Sydney schools in the "troubled" (read "Muslim") Southwest of Sydney now have permanent security guards to protect teachers and students from violent imported students.

Australian soldiers, SES volunteers, ambulance drivers, and Rural Fire Service volunteers advised to not wear their uniforms on duty to minimise the risk of being beheaded.

More Muslim "Australians" fighting for ISIS than in the entire Australian Armed forces, with Imam's claiming that "thousands" more want to go.

Several mass murder terrorism plots foiled by our alert security police.

Freedom of speech in Australia is now banned, and other cherished civil liberties in Australia being curtailed because of the negative effects of non white immigration.

Cabramatta the heroin capitol of Australia.

Sydney being Balkanised into ethnic ghettoes, some with high rates of welfare dependency and violent crime.

African gangs in Dandenong out of control with the police advising residents to flee them on sight.

The Minister for Education in Victoria, James Merlino, has just issued a directive to public schools that “praise music”, being “any type of music that glorifies God or any deity ( meaning Jesus and Santa) is now banned. So Christmas carols are not to be played or sung in Victorian Socialist Republic public schools from now on.

I think I would prefer the White Australia Policy, Rodney. Australia would now be a much nicer and prosperous country if we had. I don't care about what the rest of the world thinks. They all just want to go to a white country because we know how to run a country, and they don't.

.

Dear Shadow Minister,

.

You wrote :

« The reality is that illegal immigration dropped by 98% when detention and tow backs were introduced and increased from about 100 p.a. to 1000 per week after the incompetent labor government removed it »

So far as I am aware, none of our successive governments ever intended to open the flood gates to illegal immigration. I think that is crystal clear to everyone.

Managing the problem has not been easy. Governments (both left and right) have had to feel their way, navigating between the imperative of maintaining effective control over our borders and humanitarian considerations for the migrants. It has been pretty much a case of trial and error all the way for the past fifteen years.

Sometimes they got it right, sometimes they got it wrong – each of them, alternatively – neither one more than the other. Lives of real people have been lost due to errors and omissions on both sides of the political floor. There has been an overall increase in our migrant intake but no more than we can handle so far.

The Howard government set up the so-called Pacific Solution for offshore migrant detention centres and it received bipartisan support from the Liberal-National government and the Labor opposition. This has now proven to be a mistake because Manus has to be closed as it has been declared unconstitutional by Papua & New Guinea where it is located. It is by far the largest offshore migrant centre of Australia with its 854 detainees.

The second largest offshore centre, of course, is Nauru with its 442 detainees. Here is what Joshua Dale, an Associate at Carroll & O’Dea Lawyers and Chair of the Australian Lawyers Alliance Human Rights and Criminal Justice Committees has to say :

http://www.lawyersalliance.com.au/opinion/australias-opaque-offshore-asylum-policy-on-nauru

Let him (the political party) who is without fault cast the first stone.

Also, allow me to suggest that the only way to avoid deception in government is not to place so much hope and trust in it. Best to be pragmatic and remember what Churchill said about democracy.

.

.

Not surprisingly, the comments posted here so far are essentially manifestations of the territorial instincts we human beings have inherited from our common ancestors with the chimpanzees.

Research in human ethology has highlighted behavioural patterns in relation to territory which extend to the defence and control not only of physical space, but also of concepts and non-spatial, non-physical entities. It includes “that area of an individual’s life which he experiences as his own, in which he exercises control, takes initiative, has expertise, or accepts responsibility”.

Personal space acts as protection, a safety device, and a status marker. People with a highly developed territoriality instinct tend to place greater value on possession than on actual usage. They prefer to own rather than rent or borrow. They mark their territory and seek to control and defend it.

However, the territorial instinct plays a less important role in some individuals than it does in others. Many are willing to share territory with others, cooperate with them to find alternative solutions, and settle territorial conflicts and disputes peacefully rather than by force and aggression.

According to the latest anthropological estimates, the first wave of migrants arrived here about 60 000 years ago after a 40 000-year trek by foot from Africa. The second wave sailed in from the UK just over 200 years ago. The third wave is now flowing in from Asia and the Middle East.

When the aborigines arrived they had neither entry nor permanent residence visas. Neither did the British when they disembarked some 60 000 years later. They simply pushed the aborigines aside, decimated them, disseminating the survivors, and took over the country without any further ado. That didn’t seem to worry anybody, apart from the aborigines, of course.

The first wave was no problem. Hopefully, we’ll handle the third wave better than we did the second wave – at least in a more civilized and humane fashion.

We need to brush-up a little on our manners and act like ladies and gentlemen and not like a bunch of wild gorillas defending their territory by tearing everyone apart.

.