Panic stations everyone...awaiting comforting and fatherly advice from Uncle Jo...oops, he's gone now...

Amazing how a boat on the horizon turns the government into a bunch of incompetents.

Whatever you do don't talk to foreigners. Remember, "those kind of people" have no place here.

Rest easy, Ozzie and Col, there's no risk of those pesky foreign asylum seekers putting as much as a big toe on Australian soil. They've been whisked away to Christmas Island and our very own 400 million dollar state-of-the-arts Fort Knox will keep them well away from good citizens like you.

At over $1,800 per detainee per day, you can rest assured your taxes are hard at work. It would only cost a few hundred dollars to detain them on the Australian mainland, but that of course would be too close for some citizens to sleep easy at night.

The Rudd government is maintaining the excision of islands from Australia's border territory, it's provided $100 million extra for the Defence Department to intercept boat arrivals, and it's spending millions of dollars every year to maintain an impenetrable prison on Christmas Island. This is no lily-livered government. They've made a few changes to placate that noisy refugee-loving rabble, but in essence nothing has changed.

Relax, rest easy. Bennie's advice on talking to strangers though is worth following. You just never know.

Bronwyn's quote of $1,800 per detainee per day for detention at Christmas Island can no doubt be justified, in an accounting sense, in the same way as it was able to be claimed that the rescue of French yachtswoman Isabelle Autisier from her disabled yacht in January 1996 cost Australian taxpayers around $2million. The point being that the bulk of the imputed expenditure would still have happened even if there was not a single detainee held, just as the bulk of the cost of the HMAS Darwin rescue would have still been incurred if she had never left port.

To then claim that it would only cost a matter of "a few hundred dollars [per head per day?] to detain them on the Australian mainland" is therefore misleading.

Either quoted cost is obscene.

Bronwyn then continues, claiming: "....., but that of course would be too close for some citizens to sleep easy at night."

Too right. I'm one of them. This is why.

Its not that the detainees would be too close to me, but that they would be too close, too accessible to the pro-immigrationist lawyer push that would then busily set about representing these non-citizen illegal immigrants at taxpayers expense, with the aim of setting them at liberty as soon as possible, with as much compensation for their detention as possible, into an unskilled employment market that doesn't have enough real work to go around the Australian job-seekers.

When, as an Australian who attended an open public hearing into a workplace death, I was subsequently denied access to simply VIEW (not be given a copy) the transcript of that inquest, I simply see the whole administration of the law so far gone that I do not wish to see a single dollar go the way of lining the pockets of a legal 'fraternity' that is not right on top of these much more basic departures from proper procedure.

Just try and qualify for New Start allowance as a senior Australian citizen.

Bring on biometrication and automatic permanent exclusion for rescued detainees.

Bronwyn “At over $1,800 per detainee per day,”

It is not the price of the detainee which is important, it is the overall saving enjoyed by detaining that one, it discourages (stops) another thousand from commencing the same perilous journey.

So $1,800 and day = $1.80 / day spent stopping every skanky migration evading scumbag thinking about it.

As to talking to strangers, I talk to heaps, overseas through emails and MSN to long standing friends, spoke to a few just the other evening. They share my view too… if all else fails blow the smugglers and their cargo out the water.

And I also worked, for some time, with a person who was for some time manager of Baxter detention centre. He enjoyed his work there but said the inmates were the scum of the earth.

And Forest Gumpp your very valid point about the useless immigration lawyers who exist to suck the welfare dollar out of the system for presenting their worthless services, we should try and export that lot maybe mistake their vessel for just another SIEV-X

And regarding “Bring on biometrication and automatic permanent exclusion for rescued detainees.”

Excellent suggestion, I would vote for that.

Heaven forbid Australia should be made to honour its commitments regards asylum seekers. We simply can't afford it.

I speaks volumes that the manager of a detainment centre would view the inmates as 'scum of the earth'. There's no telling where a humanitarian approach would lead. Just the sorta person we need!

Apart from SIEV X there is another SIEV that is worthy of official investigation.

Secondary movement asylum seekers can be described as asylum seekers who move from a first country of de facto asylum, moving long distances around the world through countries with little interest in persecuting them, in order to settle in an affluent Western country.

Almost all secondary movement asylum seekers arrived in Australia without identity papers or travel documents, deliberately destroying them to make the determination of their identities and verification of their stories of persecution and return to their countries of residence a very time consuming, difficult and costly task.

But what happened when a boat carry secondary movement asylum seekers with documentation headed for Australia was intercepted ?

In July 2001 (just before the arrival of the Tampa) a boat departed from Cambodia for Australia with 241 Afghans and Pakistanis on board, who were believed to have paid between $US5,000 and $US10,000 per person for their journey (note: average per capita income of Afghanistan is $400 per year).

The boat was intercepted and most were found to be carrying Pakistani or Afghan passports, many Afghan documents indicating long term residency of Pakistan. The asylum seekers could have applied to the UNHCR for asylum in Cambodia which is a signatory to the relevant UN conventions. Only after interception did many of the group apply for asylum. Only 14 of 241 (6%) were accepted by the UNHCR as refugees, and the remainder were returned to their countries of origin.

Note the extremely low acceptance rate of this group of secondary movement asylum seekers when intercepted carrying documentation and processed under UNHCR procedures (as is done in refugee camps), contrasting greatly to the high acceptance rates of secondary movement asylum seekers arriving in Australia without documentation and when processed under Australia’s much more lenient legal procedures.

Additionally, the Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence reported the existence of coaching schools located in the Pakistan/Afghan border region where Pakistani clients of people smugglers would spend a few months preparing for DIMIA interviews.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/11/12/1037080728677.html

This SIEV is worthy of official investigation.