Bonmot good morning.
In answer to your question the High Court changed every thing why do you not understand.
Well many commentators do not.
Others, good morning SM will not.
Why has no one asked NEGATIVE MAN is drowning at sea less cruel than not being flogged in Malaysia?
An agreement exists promising it will not happen.
Dislike of a party, person, has become a reason for comments boareding on dysfunction.
Rants and raves, constant referrals to a past no one can change.
A blind belief conservatives siding with the greens, is normal!
This plan will pass the lower house early next year,will it pass the senate, will Abbott put Australia before his self interests.
Can we, forever IGNORE most Australians want the boats stopped.
Get it done, stop mud throwing , do it.
recall Parliament on Christmas day, showing commitment to this country's voters.

Some here say Labor is not to blame, well I do say Labor is entirely to blame and since 2008 there is now at least 400 deaths. The blood is on their hands. If Gillard and Rudd had any consience or integrity they both would resign from parliament.

They demolished a system that was working OK and stupidly enticed these gate crashers to come here and sponge off us. Another stuff by Labor.

I do not have a lot of sympathy for the shonks that drowned except to say it was needless, if they had been discouraged beforehand.

SM are you aware that Lexi and that stupid greens woman, Hanson-Young, both want Us to give the illegals safe transport to Aus.

The illegals can effectively be discougaged from making the voyage, if government is strong and sensible enough.

Belly "the High Court changed every thing"

That's a matter of perspective. Julia has other options but they are not politically palatable. Eg she could have gone with the options offered by the coalition which as I understand it offered options other than Naru.

Malaysia may have worked but there were a lot of questions around it, on one side the perception of treatment of refugee's in Malaysia and concerns about sending kid's there. On the other the exchange rates involved, eg Australia takes thousands of refugee's in exchange for hundreds of boat arrivals is hardly going to cheer many. Also a lot of questions about what happens when the 800 quota was full.

The whole thing is a messy business that I think Australia could do far better with although I don't think that there are any perfect solutions.

I've previously stated my liking for the idea of TPV's (or similar) and a preference for us to use the opportunity to do what we can to train people while they are here with skills that they could take home when things settle to make their countries work better.

Rather than further dehumanise those who have already been through hell we could be helping them recover from the trauma and giving them tools to make a difference.

Expensive in the short term but not necessarily worse than keeping people imprisoned and possibly a lot cheaper overall if others starting to do the same and it made a difference to the way the countries of origin operated.

R0bert

You don't have to be too smart to understand what happens to the population of a country that does not repel an invasion. An invasion does not have to be by an army.

You only have to look at our own aborigines, or the North American Indians to see the result of failing to repel a settler invasion. Progressive invasion by small groups is just as overwhelming, just less dramatic.

The fact that both of these peoples had no organisation, or coordination made suitable resistance impossible. They had little chance.

We on the other hand have control, & could stop this invasion any time, if we would just stop pandering to a minority, to buy a few votes. Long term it will be our bleeding hearts, rather than lack of courage,that well destroy us.

Most of the comment here is illogical.
First, the government could pass its Malaysia legislation through the
House of Reps even if the lib/nats opposed it.
In the senate it would be up to the lab/greens to pass it.

Whats the problem ?

Well, the greens would have to own up to their own policy and wear the
opprobrium that they deserve.
To avoid the greens getting the blame the govt won't put the
legislation into parliament. So they blame Tony Abbott !

That is totally illogical, but when did the govt use logic ?

Thanks Lexi for referring me to this article:

http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2011/09/13/The-Pacific-Solution-was-a-fraud.aspx

But it really is the biggest load of bunkum!

OF COURSE the Pacific solution was a major deterrent. It is not hard to imagine what would have happened if we’d had a much more lenient mainland policy instead.

Graham Richardson said:

'The original Nauru solution was arguably the greatest and most successful fraud committed by the Howard regime'.

What a load of codswallop!

Howard managed to pull off the extremely difficult balancing act between treating onshore asylum seekers pretty damn well while at the same time decisively deterring further arrivals.

Given the current onshore asylum seeking debacle, we can all now appreciate just how important that was.

The notion that:

< nothing of any substance is being offered by both parties regarding asylum seekers >

is completely wrong. Abbot is miles ahead of Gillard.

There is a major contradiction here. The article writer suggests that if potential asylum seekers were being told that they’d go to Australia or some other wealthy western country after spending a year in detention on a Pacific island, then they’d jump at the opportunity.

But… the detention centres are/were apparently so bad that there were riots, self-harm and all manner of other bad effects on the people involved, word of which would have quickly filtered back to potential asylum seekers.
.

It would seem from this experience that an indefinite period in detention was something that most potential asylum seekers really didn’t want and would have been considerably deterred by.

Lexi, what do you want to see happen? An end to onshore asylum seeking? A continuation at a considerable rate of arrivals, for ever more? How should it be managed?

What about this from Shadow Minister?

Onshore processing is killing boatpeople, says Mark Latham
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/immigration/onshore-processing-is-killing-boatpeople-says-mark-latham/story-fn9hm1gu-1226224975481

Absolutely right!