Adam, I must pick you up on your statement: ‘…they (refugees and asylum shoppers) have no powerful lobby groups, they don’t vote in this country (unless they achieve citizenship), they have few resources and little political leverage.’

Are you saying that voters have real power and it is their wishes which must be respected? Isn’t that us? Don’t we, Australians, have a say in how we’ll receive refugees and asylum shoppers? Are we allowed to challenge the notion that people from faraway countries have a right to immigrate to the Western country of his or her choice?

Adam, you are right, we need to greatly simplify the whole postion on refugees and immigration to eliminate confusion, racism, prejudice and bigotry.

Let's bring back the dictation test.

Sage:

What God given right do you have to say whom comes to this country and who does not. The fact of the matter is no individual, parliment, court and most certainly no arbitary commission have that right. It is something we grant our selves simply because we have bigger guns than the refugees, not unlike a gang of Iraqi Insurgents taking over a neighbourhood and setting up check points.

As far as the UN rules go, those escaping from persecution for what ever reason must stay in the first port of safety.

Australia's location on the map suggests that there are other safe port and countries that the refugee have manouvered through.

Most of the true potential refugees never get to leave their own countries because they do not have the connections nor the funds to make it out.

Britain has a concern now with the movement of a European sector Labor market and others.

Britains social security system is now the governments major focus with the unrealistic expectations of an increase to population because of this populus movement, the impact of affordability and the jewel in which so many migrating are drawn to.

However it appears that the Papuans may have been the subject of persecution and they are one of the rare island countries that are across our seas.

What Suebdootwo says about Australia's locality holds true for most refugees - except for West Papuans, who's first port of call probably is Australia because of winds and currents and the difficulty in travelling to PNG. The other exception would be New Zealand.

DLC - What God given right indeed. Probably the same god given right which gives those coloured bits of plastic in your wallet their value. The numbers in your bank accounts their meaning. The same god given right that looks after you when you are sick or injured, that educated you (obviously failed in this instance), that provided the roads that deliver your food to the shops, the God given right that provides your phone, your electicity, your interference free TV and Radio. The list can go on and on. In short it's called society.

Now the Government is “attacking” asylum seekers. You know that they are running out of arguments when they have to resort to such purple prose to get our attention. A democratically elected government exercises its right to repel attempts at illegal entry in accordance with BI-PARTISAN laws, is supported by the Leader of the Opposition, and wins by a large majority. The majority, it appears, didn’t see the aggression, or “attack”, that Adam Ferguson did. In fact, most of the attacking was done by spitting, screaming asylum seeks on Australian troops.

When he has our attention, Mr. Ferguson goes on to be the umpteenth whinger on what he calls “Pacific solution Mark 11”, which was “widely criticised” (by the usual suspects).

He then explains to us, like all of the others have, that the proposal has all illegal arrivals processed off shore and, despite the assumption that they are-fleeing-from-persecution, they will be most upset by having to spend time being “traumatised” in remote “camps” (which are probably better than any other accommodation that they have had in their lives).

Would he rather the detention process be drawn out further, with access to Australian courts and greedy lawyers dragging it out with appeal after appeal? At least without the self-serving lawyers their cases will be brought to a quicker conclusion.

So, they might go to somewhere other than Australia, but is this a problem – particularly when their friends keep telling us they just need asylum, and they are not really country shopping?

As for the “powerlessness” of asylum seekers, what on earth does the author expect when people pop up in a foreign country illegally? There is the usual harangue about obligations, of course, but any obligations the Australian Government has are owed first, second and third to the Australian electorate. And, the Coalition, for all its faults, is doing just that. Anyone who thinks the Opposition in government would not do the same is extremely naïve.

If, as the author hopes, Coalition backstabbers hold sway, our soon to retire PM will look weak