Dear Banjo,

Boats could be stopped if the government provided
free passage by - shipping the
asylum seekers from Indonesian centres where
the local authorities would register the applicants
and then the government hired passenger boats to take
a set number of refugees per year and processed them
on board on the way to Australia. This would eliminate
boat smugglers and unnecessary deaths on the seas.

In the 1940,50s,60s. That is how most refugees came to
Australia. So what's wrong in repeating the process.
Why would anybody pay huge sums of money to get on
a leaky boat - when free passage on a safe ocean
liner would be offered.

If such an offer was made by the government to the
United Nations, I'm sure the world would support it.
It doesn't take that much intelligence to solve this
problem. It's only complicated by the games politicians
have decided to play. There is no need for the Malaysian
Solution, Nauru, leaky boats, or shipping people back
to where they came from.

Lexi

Excellent points and affordable given the current cost of off-shore processing both in dollars and human misery.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/offshore-option-five-times-dearer/story-e6frg6nf-1225983879727

http://www.championsofchange.org.au/?p=50

Banjo/Bazz sorry about the limp, blew a thong getting out of the Ute.
Us blokes are at it again, getting in to deep mud saying just what we think.
War comes we are the first in line our sort always are.
Think we all understand the costs in human suffering and money terms.
I think just maybe we are not alone in thinking are these boats refugees or financial migrants.
Never mind our views come from that insistent troubling , unfocused, group the vast majority, if it is not held by some we are .
Well lets see, uninformed, uneducated, inhuman, self centered, my list is long but just 100 years ago no longer, we would have called this invasion.

Lexi, I am surprised at you.
The government is doing exactly what you suggest except they are
coming on aircraft !
They are getting on boats because the queue at the aircraft steps is
too long for some of them so they get on boats !

Lexi,

I love the partial logic of the lefties. True the cost per person of processing off shore is 5x that of processing on shore. However, the fact that there are nearly 50 as many people with on shore only processing explains why the cost of processing people under labor is an order of magnitude higher than under the Coalition.

As for processing in Nauru, the site will probably take a couple of months, but a considering that Labor's stuff up has been going on for 3 years, it is worth the wait for a workable solution.

Lexi and Ammonite,
You are proposing an 'open door' with us providing the transport.

Unbelievable!

How do two adult people come to be so naive and gulible?

There is so much wrong with your proposal that I would not know where to start. I am trying not to laugh.

Guess you haven't thought about it much. I think it was Yabby that mentioned 'unintended consequences'.