Paul1405,

Your nose will be a metre long. LOL

I said first up that it would be a waste of time asking the Greens (Protest) Party or Socialist Alternative (they are much the same serial activists?) what they would recommend that the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) should do about Visa overstayers and Non-Citizens working illegally.

There was no need to prove me right.

otb,

"....what strategies would you recommend?"

Well Id recommend any strategy be inside the law for a start.

But Greg Jericho puts it better than I.

"But that was the whole point of the furore: what was being proposed by the ABF was outside the law.

One of the great things about social media is that people from all walks of life use it - including lawyers. And thus it did not take long for lawyers such as Leanne O'Donnell to tweet links to the relevant sections of the Migration Act.

This showed it was clearly outside the ABF's legal bounds to be "speaking with any individual we cross paths with" about the state of their visa or any other matter.

At 12:54pm, the ABF issued a clarification, blaming any misunderstandings on "media reports". It tweeted shortly afterwards, "The ABF does not and will not stop people at random in the streets," which was fine, except that was the exact opposite of what its own regional commander had said it would be doing.

By this point, the crowds in Melbourne were already gathering, but no one from the ABF or from the office of the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, had appeared to explain the situation.

It was this silence that showed that social media was not over-reacting.

This Government has gone out of its way to keep the actions of the Border Force secret. And once again this was the case with the Minister's office immediate response being to state that Operation Fortitude is an "operational matter" and Ministers do not direct ops.

Thus we had a department suggesting that it would be doing something outside the law, and the Minister responsible wanting to say nothing.

Random visa spot checks are no small matter - the Prime Minister recognised as much when he said the media release "was over the top and wrong because we would never stop people randomly in the street demanding their visa details. We don't do that sort of thing in Australia and it will never happen under this Government.""

Etc...

otb,

"I said first up that it would be a waste of time asking the Greens (Protest) Party or Socialist Alternative (they are much the same serial activists?) what they would recommend that the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) should do about Visa overstayers and Non-Citizens working illegally."

So your suggestion is to start up a govt paramilitary unit - dress them in sinister uniforms and deploy them on the street to randomly harass "foreign looking" people?

Right then....

Here's the link to Greg Jericho's piece.

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-31/jericho-social-media-and-the-border-farce/6738140

Reports that some Navy personnel are involved with racist anti-Islam groups have caused alarm. The far right has been reorganising around Islamophobia for some time, writes Andy Fleming

The recent revelation that members of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) responsible for carrying out "Operation Sovereign Borders" are also members or supporters of the anti-Muslim Australian Defence League (ADL) has caused a great deal of embarrassment to the authorities

Abbott has serious leanings toward jack boot tactics. The Boarder force is just another extension of Sovereign boarders.

Poirot,

You were asked the very simple question,

"If there are 60,000 plus Visa overstayers and illegal workers and 20,000 are being added annually, what performance targets would you set and what strategies would you recommend?"

However you ducked it. You like other serial critics have nothing to offer.

As soon as Nazis are called into a discussion you know the posters have no argument, and it doesn't take much more than the mention of Border force to get the fringe whingers goose stepping everywhere.

The operation fortitude organised by the Victorian state police (reporting to Daniel Andrews of Labor) had organised:-

"Metro Trains, Yarra Trams, the Sheriff’s Office, Taxi Services Commission and the ABF will join Victoria Police as part of the inter-agency operation. With a particular focus on people travelling to, from and around the CBD, the group of agencies will work together to support the best interests of Melbournians, targeting everything from anti-social behaviour to outstanding warrants."

With not one mention of stopping people and asking for visas. However, for the pinheads of the twitterati, facts are a pale substitute for their delusions, and instead of the CBD getting a demonstration of police involvement, they got a handful of indigent half wits blocking traffic.

Of course the closest Australia got to a police state was the labor green attempt to impose state censorship on all media.