Immigration Minister Chris Evans yesterday announced that there would be a significant easing of restrictions on asylum seekers http://news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,,24094720-5005962,00.html.

I’ve been a strong supporter of mandatory detention and the whole border-protection policy overseen by Howard and Ruddock http://abc.com.au/news/stories/2008/07/30/2318283.htm?section=justin. But it is probably time to wind it back a little….just as long as the strong deterrence factor remains in place.

I don’t have a problem with those still in detention being placed in the community. I wouldn’t mind if they were all accepted outright as future Australian citizens, as part of the end game to this whole saga…if it was the end of the saga.

But I do have an issue with non-detention of new arrivals whose health, identity and security risk can be quickly determined. This could quite possibly lead to another wave of arrivals, if people think that they can quickly be placed in mainstream society if their documentation is in order.

It would only take another one or two boats with a couple of dozen or so people to really flare up this whole issue again…and earn the Rudd Government a great deal of criticism for burdening the country with this highly divisive issue and the enormous taxpayers’ expense involved, when they could so easily have just let it be.

Ludwig,

There are lots of inconsistencies in the whole migration debate. As Paul Sheehan in the SMH said yesterday http://www.ga.gov.au:88/newintranet/pmd/gpda/images/multibeam_shapefile2.jpg there were 178,000 people let in via the bona fide migration program last year. As I understand it only about 8,000 people have tried to come here by leaky boat over the time of the Howard Government. Which one of the two is the elephant? Why is it that the minority (ie refugees) should be used as the scapegoat and sacrificed at the altar of Australia's wealth?

As I've said once before, it's pretty rich to keep out asylum seekers when the hordes of "skilled" migrants are getting off their Qantas flight and being met with open arms by industry at the airport.

I agree with what the Labor Government has done. I also agree that it needs to ensure that we regulate the number of migrants that we take in each year. But is there a way of doing it where the human element is not trashed in the process?

Dear Ludwig and Rob,

I too like what the Rudd Government has done.
It's a step in the right direction.
Howard's detention centres were a nightmare,
and violated human rights.

People were kept in the centres for far too
long, under sub-human conditions.

We need to have deterrants for people that are
willing to enter this country illegally.
But surely, the processing could be fairer
and faster.

Why can New Zealand process their illegal
immigrants much faster and more humanely?

I have never supported detention as the cost is immense and stupid. hard to do if you are an ideologue, but possible.

A bit of information background to this debate is "detention centres" was Labor's, ex prime minister, Paul Keating governments idea.

Rudd perhaps is righting a wrong but it is also essential and a responsible action to maintain community health and screen for possible diseases that have been otherwise eradicated in Australia.

An example of concern is the rarer strains of tuberculosis emerging in developing countries and abroad, these unknown strains are drug resistant and have not been successfully treated with modern Western medicine.

It is also interesting to note that Australia's youth is not immunised against the most common strain of Tuberculosis until well into their teenage years.

This would suggest a window of opportunity for the disease to infiltrate one class of our most vulnerable.

Our governments in charge need to consider and maintain a level of quarantine to safe guard it citizens and our tentative guests need to realise and trust that they will be given fair passage and a "means" to do it with.

Sourcing identification information from developing countries and complicated dictatorships, also limit processing time frames, where record keeping is not a priority.

Suebdootwo, are tourists screened for those things? Because if they aren't, you don't really have a point.