This writer considers that the tax payers of Australia should be prepared to support another 65 million who are likely to end up looking for a new home.
Given say another three generations , how many more will that lot total? I do not think the small body of tax paying Australians will absorb that amount happily.
The newcomers then could sue us for not keeping them in the comfort to which they feel entitled. After all , everyone else does, there are plenty of hungry lawyers who would help them.
Perhaps some of the countries in trouble would do better if they used birth control to keep the numbers down, refrained from ethnic wars and generally made a proper effort to be self sustaining.
The Australian tax payer has already got an enormous amount of needy people including our own homeless, Aboriginals and those "asylum seekers" who are here now. Give it a rest.

"Estimates of the likely numbers of environmental refugees in the Asia-Pacific region vary but a common figure cited by many, such as Professor Norman Myers of Oxford University, is of the order of 65 million people." From which sources? Over what period? From what causes? This is vastly greater than the Pacific island population, presumably mainly Bangla Deshis from low-lying coastal areas, who might (or might not) be displaced in a 100 years or so IF sea water levels rise in accordance with some estimates. Surely you can find more pressing issues to address? Such as clean water supplies in poor countries?

What a depressing piece.

Targets are selected almost at random, sniped at with a few statistics, but reach no intelligent conclusion.

Our ODA "remains at an embarrassingly low level" compared to other countries. This is like saying "Rolls Royce make an embarrasingly small number of cars" compared to Toyota. Without an understanding of the destination of the funds and the use to which they are put, this remains a pointless comparison. Detail, please.

And please try to understand a little more the nature of money: it has no value when it sits in a Bank somewhere, only when it is used. If the local economy is dead, investing that money in international trade can actually be the best possible outcome. When the Middle East suddenly became awash with funds in the mid-seventies, they spent a good proportion of it in construction, the majority of which was contracted to European companies. If they had insisted upon spending it only within their borders, there would have been too much money chasing too few goods and services. Economics 101 tells you that delivers hyperinflation.

And of course Australia "remains deeply committed to the ideology that believes development flows from economic growth", because that is where the weight of evidence lies. Sure, there are exceptions. But the chances are that those are countries also disadvantaged by a corrupt government.

But the overwhelming question that was carefully left unanswered was who will pay for all this, if at the same time you want to hobble industry with impossible restrictions on what they can and cannot sell or buy, and a whole new set of regulations that will cost our economy... what?

Lots of give-aways. But carefully not, I notice, added up anywhere.

Everyone talks about us giving foreign aid. What foreign aid?. Listening to them you we would think we had foreign exchange to spare that we could give away. The fact is that we are so short of foreign exchange that we are currently borrowing $1 billion a week from foreigners (mostly Chinese and Japanese). I believe that our foreign aid should be limited to what we can supply, and that would be young teachers who could go out into the third world and help to educate the people, particularly the women.

As far as refugees are concerned, public opinion will not permit any sizeable number of refugees to enter the country. Countries who have permitted their populations to rise above sustainable levels will reap the whirlwind in the near future. Many people consider that we have already exceeded our environmentally sustainable population level. There is, of course, an extemely simple, understandable solution to the whole immigration problem, which is to bring back the dictation test.

Thank heavens we have a sea boundary.

It is so strange in Australia that the word refugee only has to be mentioned and the ranting starts.

What if 65 million human beings are in danger of drowning in our filth? We are one of the world's worst polluters yet when the tiny population of Tuvalu ask for our help to re-settle them if their island sinks we say piss off. It is a few thousand people and New Zealand has come to the rescue.

I haven't heard or read anyone claim that Australia should take all 65 million environmental refugees but mickijo and others need to ask a simply question - should the world let them drown because we are fat, stupid and increasingly selfish?

Why is there this assertion that we have no money for foreign aid and anyway we should help aborigines first? Costello gloats about $11 billion sitting around to pay nothing - we give $1 per year per person for the poorest people on the planet and squander $6 million per year to keep one man locked up on Nauru.

Ridiculous, knee jerk, reactionary - that is Australia today with people who would rather 65 million people drown than to accept responsibility for anyone at all beyond their own backyards.

let them in,

why not, they will work and they will work hard