Lexi,

The pacific solution worked. 160 asylum seekers a year vs 7000 is a clear indicator. Nobody died needlessly in boats that sank compare to an estimated 200 in the last couple of years. Neither was anyone beaten. While the pacific solution was not perfect, the Labor policy is a complete disaster.

After a decade shrilly criticizing and politicizing the Liberal policy, and creating a situation that about 80% of the electorate thinks is out of control, the Labor government has to face the music.

Now that Juliar has dealt her hand and announced the Malaysian solution, she is in an appalling negotiating position. If she backs out, she loses all credibility. The Malaysians know this and are ready to take her to the cleaners.

The draft policy is fairly indicative of what they want, and Juliar is in no position not to give it to them.

I'm inclined (for once) to agree with SM on the fact that Julia and Labor have almost no credibility on this issue, and their "solution" is nothing but a cobbled together gallimauphry of hastily instituted half-baked arrangements.

Desperation is the key word here....it's lucky that Australia doesn't have its own space program or Julia would probably send them to the moon - the "Lunar Solution".

guffaw...lol

'a stolen brief''

its funny how the us president
and the aussie foreign minester
[and juliar guilelard..]

can REMIND CHINA
OF THEIR..'human rights'...'obligations']

yet juliar..and her lab/minestering rats
cant tell malasia..

lol

..in a briefing note

you can be so funny bellies

can i ignore you
that is the question

remember to have your friends close
and even closer those who you dont be/friend

i vill be vatching you

because i know we're mates
cause im a unionist too

its..my blame
that we got rid of howard...too

but at least john howhard did
an excersize routeen now and again

and didnt sound like a fish monger
selling stinkey fish..on a hot day
by knocking...the other fish/smellers

politics needs police going through the lot of em
[not revenjue raising and ignorong govt malfeasance
guess thats why they were the only public servants to get a raise]

when the mob hits the street
at least those protecting
the green/lab/lib-o-rats
...got their silver*

Shadow- simple answer to your first question is that Gillard simply reads out what her party thinks their audience wants to hear;
Easier to do in opposition, but when in government (particularly when swinging voters are only supporting labor due to its seeming anti- Workchoices policy and the fact that Howard was planning to retire anyway), puts Labor on a precarious ground to maintain its mandate.

SM,

Marc Purcell writing for The National Times tells us that "from 2001-2007 Australia spent more than $1 billion to process less than 1,700 asylum seekers in the discredited Pacific Solution's offshore locations of Manus Islands and Nauru. This equited to more than half a million dollars per person."

"Most of the people were found to be genuine refugees and were settled in Australia or New Zealand. One of the first acts of the newly elected Labor government in 2007 was to affirm its policy never to institute the discredited Pacific Solution."

This was due to the fact that as we all know asylum seekers held in detention under the former Pacific Solution paid a heavy price in mental health and wellbeing. According to Purcell - "Many suffered persecution at the hands of the Taliban, Saddam Hussein or the civil war in Sri Lanka, were left isolated with inadequate access to mental health support."

"Riots and a malaria outbreak were experienced by the first Manus Island detainees and in September 2002 - more than 40 asylum seekers tried to escape by swimming away from the island. Rates of depression and self harm soared as the remote locations were far from adequate psychological services. On Nauru the Pacific Solution came to a miserable end in 2005 as the final 25 asylum seekers were brought to Australia for urgent medical and psychological treatment by then Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone - on the advice of medical and psychological experts."

- "Public accountability also suffered. The media, lawyers, human rights reps were either barred from visiting or were hindered by the high cost of reaching these remote locations. This placed the actions of commonwealth officers and private contractos out of the reach of public scrutiny and accountability."

And you claim this solution was successful? The financial costs of the Pacific Solution does not stack up either as the cost was vastly more than what it would have cost to process asylum seekers for identity, security and health checks on the Australian mainland - a system that is proven to work effectively if adequately resourced.

Lexi,

Labor is spending more than $1bn per annum between incarceration, processing legal costs etc, compared to the same amount over 8 years you cited, I would say that labor's policy was an epic failure.

In the later of the 8 years the average arrivals were in the order of 100. Today we have nearly 7000.

By what fantastical metric is what we have now better than what we had prior to 2007?

P.S. How is the mental health of the 50 lost at Christmas island and the estimated 170 lost off Indonesia since 2008?