Hey Rache,
I love it when someone challenges me when I know I'm right...
(I remember calculating it when I read the article)

Well it turns out I was wrong, but not about the $75,000 per person cost but about the number of refugees - it wasn't 50,000 it was 12,000.
Here's the article.

$900 Million divided by 12,000 - you do the maths.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-15/government-to-spend-900-million-dollars-resettling-refugees/7030866

you must be joking Aden, the guy is and was a complete dud.

mikk - Your figures are wrong, you are not taking into account what the various charities give them the cost of which comes from the taxpayer as well as the high cost of the administration of the charities, that also includes the churches.

Its truly amazing that one person can cause so much damage to an economy (K Rudd removing border controls) then carry on as if he has done nothing wrong. Whats even more unbelievable is that some still admire his failures.

In all seriousness, I don't think we will ever recover from where we are, unless of cause we make some serious changes to our tax system, and wean the freeloaders off the public tit, and I'm not just referring to refugees or illegals.

As for Rudd avoiding a recession, the fact is he was in a position to do so because of what he inherited. Although I'm still not convinced it was the right move in the end.

To me everything Rudd did was to further himself after he left politics, giving away millions of dollars as bribes to get the UN security council seat, even letting in the so called refugees all so he could try to get the top job with the UN.

rehctub, can you try writing comments based on what's actually happened instead of on what you read in the Murdoch press?

Rudd did not remove border controls. Though the immigration detention system changed, the border controls themselves were the same under Rudd as under Howard.

Australia owns the Reserve Bank, so can ALWAYS borrow money regardless of whether we've previously been running surpluses or deficits. Although I guess you could say that's a position Rudd inherited, as that's something that only became possible after Keating floated the dollar – Australia borrowed in foreign currency before that, so had limited credit.

Of course avoiding a recession was the right move – it lost us nothing but kept Australians in work, and kept our economy productive.