“.. the idea of pursuing an idealised “obligation” of co-operation on refugees is probably pointless.”

Well, yes. After all, these obligations are unenforceable, and there is certainly nothing “in it” for countries taking refugees. And there is nothing wrong with self-interest when it comes to importing more people. We have too many of them in Australia now for our best interests.

Any possibility of an “emerging legal principle requiring states to co-operate on a basis of international solidarity and burden sharing”, would be far from “nice”, as the author thinks; it would mean that sovereign states were finally at the mercy of that looming ogre, World Government.

It’s to be hoped that Dr. Goodwin-Gill is right when he says that: - “Many states seem to want to put yet further distance between themselves and the United Nations ideal of co-operation in the resolution of humanitarian problems.” The retiring Australian ambassador to the United Nations was reported in the media yesterday as saying that the UN was “rotten”, as if we didn't know already.

To hell with the United Nations and internationalism. Let’s hear more about what is good for Australia and Australians, and how to pressure dozy governments into ensuring that the best interests of Australia and Australians are paramount.

Leigh,
With you on getting dozy governments to look after Australians mate. Sadly Globalisation seems to be an inescapable fact, led of course by USA multinationals. Even Aunty, ABC is now showing cartoons made in the USA on breakfast time TV portraying little girls and boys as boyfriend and girlfriend, something I won't allow my 7 year old daughter to watch, but when she say's "Daddy, what else can I watch?" I change the channels but it is everywhere. I still feel that a supposedly "rich" country like Australia can take a few refugee's although I would prefer the non-muslim type.

Perhaps if the United Nations collectively enforced bad countries to treat their people in a humane manner, the world would not be awash with refugees.
The western nations have been overburdened by the worlds desperate, how many poverty stricken millions is one country supposed to absorb?
Why should we lose our own culture by taking in "refugees" who simply seeking a better life at someone elses expense and then have to endure the violence and terrible religious practises that have made their own homelands so disfunctional?
We have too many aliens now who disrespect Australian law, we do not want any more of the same.

Just what the doctor ordered! A new bureaucracy to sort out the mess of a hundred other bureaucracies.

If we have not advanced enough to address these sorts of problems it is an indictment on the existing groups and their legal advisors that retard humanitarian help for 'Yes, Minister' reasons. It is the height of arrogance to proclaim that more of the same is the only answer.

Dr Goodwin-Gill, there are a thousand intellectual arguments that could be mounted in support of your hypothesis however, history is littered with the corrupted carcasses springing from the same, tired hypothetical solutions.

If the solution is to be found in hard decisions perhaps there should be real conditions imposed on foreign aid. If there are existing conditions I would imagine that they are crushed to zero on the political landscape in scenarios that would make the AWB look like a snow-white philanthropic organisation.

I live in a privileged country, by any measure, so I cannot empathise with the people that you are an advocate for but I can see what doesn't work and that is exactly what you are proposing.

If there is an answer here it is not in where we have been but in where we are willing to go.

The article commendably decries knee-jerk reactions to the ever-growing refugee problem. And it recognises that among the refugees are those who (quite reasonably in my opinion) abandon their country of origin for lands which hopefully will provide improved social and economic opportunity.
But the article shows the author to be the most culpable of knee-jerkers.
Where is the compassion for the child-brides, the women with long retinues of children forcibly conceived; their poorly-tended, malnourished, and suffering offspring; Those fellow-humans abandoned by the nations who could, and said they would, help but didn't?
Guy Goodwin-Gill, put your prejudices aside, cease knee-jerking and take up your pen for positive action: towards minimising the pressure which underlies the creation of refugees!
The matter is too urgent for you to wait for Vatican approval of contraception, and change from its underlying wish for followers to "outbreed" the others.
Guy, surely you know that the education and emancipation of women was agreed as a target at the major world conference in Cairo twelve years ago; That it was acknowledged there that all nations had a responsibility to control their human populations within their own borders; that the developed nations would provide assistance in achieving these aims. Surely you must be also aware that assistance has subsequently been inadequate.
We are currently six and a half billion people, and our waste products are grossly interfering with natural systems, including the atmosphere, upon which we depend. As our numbers increase social stress increases across the globe.
In the twelve years since Cairo, about a billion people have been added to world numbers; predominantly in less-developed countries. While the world is in thrall to people like Guy Goodwin-Gill, in the next twelve years it will head towards another billion of increasingly desperate people. The refugee industry will be a bonanza for them. And hundreds of millions of people will be subjected to unnecessary misery.

I really have trouble trying to figure out what people like Guy Goodwin-Gill use for a brain.

Thirty million people are added to the world's population every single month of the year. Naturally, that population explosion is almost entirely contained within the world's poorest, and most socially backward and politically repressive countries. Mr Goodwin-Gill's solution is simple. Everybody who lives in a poor country under a represive regime should have the absolute right to immediately claim refugee status and go to Australia.

Yeah. Sure mate.