mac - You failed to answer the post directly above you last one.

DO YOU STILL THINK IT IS A MINOR PROBLEM?

SPQR,

(I think it's worth a grammatical faux pas for the following)

Reading your prose just makes me boreder and boreder.

Philip S,

We only have 4 comments, so I was going to wait to reply to other commenters, however since you're becoming agitated.

(1) Compared to the enormous economic costs of a high rate of LEGAL immigration, the expense of processing refugees is relatively small.

(2) If we treat the arrival of refugees as a major problem, costs will rise accordingly, your assumption that processing refugees is invariably expensive is not necessarily correct. We've probably made it hugely expensive because of both the Labor and the Howard governments' harebrained and inhumane offshore processing regimes.

mac,

Although you only get four comments in 24 hours in the articles' section, you get eight in the general discussion section...(I think)

mac - Thanks for the answer. here it is 8 per 24 hours.

Quote "the expense of processing refugees is relatively small." the processing is not the issue.

2012/13 year the projected cost of the refugees is $6.6 BILLION dollars that does not include hundreds of millions of dollars for our navy and air force to sit in the middle of the ocean till they call 000 and asked to be picked up hundreds of KM's inside Indonesian waters.

Also the thousands that are due to be released into the community and looked after by the charities IT IS THE TAXPAYER who will pay the money not the charity.

You release thousands NO HOMELESS REFUGEES and where are the houses coming from - up goes private rental Government does not care how much it pays for the houses after all it's not there's it is TAXPAYERS again.

Projected arrivals for next year 30,000 last month alone there were 2,600.

Poirot, Phillip S,

Didn't know, thanks.

Phillip S,

I'm definitely not comfortable with the present situation but my position is that there's very little that that Australia as a liberal democracy can do unless we tow the boats back out to sea. Both the Government and Opposition won't admit that obvious fact for different reasons. The present surge has more to do with the end of the Sri Lankan civil war than any soft policies of the Labor government. Even if the present policies are a deterrence, given the ignorance of the refugees and the unscrupulous behaviour of the people smugglers it might take years for a reduction to occur.

I'd need more info on the method of costing armed forces involvement before I expressed an opinion, the RAN and RAAF would be still undertaking exercises if they were't intercepting refugees and running up huge bills.( We need a Coast Guard BTW).