Paul my interpretation of Butch is he is naïve, There is just too many trees in the way to see the scenery.

Kids should not be in detention at all. That is a blatant disaster both for the kid and for Australia. We are not a third world.

What is the crime these kids committed. These people come from a country where decisions are controlled by men. Women and kids do as they are told. I am not sure of what overpopulation of the homeland has to do with this detention here.

At least with a change from the brutal thoughts of Abbott in the distance we can be moderate and use common sense that tells you that kids in detention is an act of bastardry and need not exist in western nations.

I think we may see some commonsense prevail now Turnbull is in charge. We have been through an era of commonsense instability and confrontation rather than good govt; Which proved nothing and held us up as a nation

No one thinks it is a good idea to keep children in detention

BUT

Splitting the family up is your "solution" ?

Be careful what you wish for !
Just have a look at what is happening in Germany today, it has become
chaos with criminal activity and rape.
It really is a monumental mess.

Large riots in Sweden have become so common that it is no longer news.

There are only only 104 children in detention compared with 2,000 when Green/Labor finally blew government. Who's fault is it? The twaddle- talking Hanson-Young and Labor's failure in a basic requirement of government - border control. Hanson-Young and Co also forget that they, and Labor, were responsible for the DEATHS of children because of their bleeding-heart, politics-before-commonse, 'concern' for illegal arrivals who knew the risks they were taking with their children. Now they are still playing politics with something they caused and did nothing about. What a stinking bunch of hypocritical scumbags!

Well of course there should be no children in detention (in fact nobody should be in detention), but it is an interesting tactic to pretend as if children are there in order to deter others, even that they are tortured, while all have already been quietly settled in Australia... and keep the media out so that they can only speculate and interview a bunch of professional actors.

This is probably what I would have done, in fact I wouldn't have stopped or arrested those people in the first place, I would let them arrive but stage those concentration camps to deter others. I would also ask the refugees that arrived that in gratitude (perhaps also for a fee) they tell their families back home, their friends and especially the media that they are locked up on some tropical island in horrifying conditions.

Another way is to separate those arriving, then tell each one separately that they won a special lottery where one family in 100 was allowed to arrive in Australia while the others are locked away forever or even deliberately drowned, making each believe that it's so and only due to their sheer luck that they made it into Australia.

Can you tell that this is not already happening?

Poirot,

"How do you reckon your little grandchild would develop in such a fear-driven, debased environment?"

A lot better than if he/she had drowned at sea.

Good on the conservatives for stopping the boats.

So why does detention of kids have to be part of stopping the boats. I can’t see a link, can you.

I see this whole detention thing as an unnecessary cost and a drain on Australia as a nation. Refugees to Cambodia at 10 million $ a head. That is money Cambodian people will never see.

Surely boats can be stopped without detention. Some see detention as a better option than drowning at sea. That statement would be best answered by persons involved in detention.

Highly politicized situation is detention. It’s always the other-sides fault. Well we have a Liberal PM that may just fix that. So would that make the fault even. The last remaining promise of Abbott is on the line