desperate people coming by boat
yvonne,
I don't think you'd find too many Australians who would object to harbouring desperate refugees. I don't think they're the subject of the thread. Those who come by plane i.e. tourists & then try to stay aren't the fanatic types as many of those that come by boat. Why is it that many claim refugee status yet once here they refuse to refute the doctrine that supposedly made them refugees in the first place.
One would think that if they so desire to come to a western, sort of christian society because it appeals to them, then they would at least try to adopt that society's way of life because it apparently is more desired than that of the several countries they pass through ?

Yvonne,

Exporting education only looks profitable for Australia because the people who benefit from running this immigration scam can privatize the profits and socialize the costs. As a simple example, imagine that you have a business. You prefer to hire temporary migrants on 457 visas to hiring local people or existing migrants: you don't have to train the temporary workers, and they don't dare complain about low wages or bad/unsafe working conditions because they want you to sponsor them for permanent residence. Most of the other employers do the same as you, and eventually your city outgrows its natural water supply. More than 80% of migrants end up in capital cities.

http://www.immi.gov.au/media/publications/research/migration-in-australia/chapter-four.pdf

Your city can get its water from a desalination plant, but they are very expensive and prodigious consumers of electricity. The desalinated water is 4 to 6 times as expensive as dam water. You get the profits from the 457 visas, but the extra cost of the water is shared with everyone else in the community.

The same goes for other utilities. The cost of electricity has doubled in the last 7 years. The cost of housing has skyrocketed. It was recently reported that the median house price in Sydney has now passed $800,000. Congestion steals large amounts of time from commuters that they could be spending with family and friends.

http://www.drive.com.au/roads-and-traffic/sydney-among-the-western-worlds-worst-cities-for-traffic-congestion-report-reveals-20130410-2hkxc.html

I would like to see honest accounting that includes all of these factors.

The main culprit for the excessive cost of our universities was the decision in 1988 to turn all our colleges of advanced education (CAEs) into universities as part of the Dawkins reforms. Before then, Australia had a reasonable number of universities for a country of its size plus a network of CAEs that gave basic undergraduate degrees and various vocationally oriented diploma courses. Because the CAEs didn't do research or give advanced degrees, they were very much cheaper to run than universities. It is now politically impossible to reverse this "reform".

It is now politically impossible to reverse this "reform"
Divergence,
We still have a small chance to repair the Labor damage by introducing a non-military National Service. NS could be used especially for those who donn't like working & they in turn could be reformed by those who do have a sense of resposibility. Those who refuse can be thrown into work camps & supervised by the decent ones. That includes boat people & illegal immigrats that obtain residency here. Prohibit any religious activities in the two years of NS. Unless we get tougher we'll lose.