2017 Provides Australia with a genuine opportunity to do something constructive about the global refugee crisis. 14 million people are displaced by wars. The Australian Government is committed to bringing in 200,000 migrants each year. Whilst such numbers are unsustainable we surely could limit our total intake to just 80,000 new arrivals and then go the next step and join the solidarity city programme and ensure that the majority of them are refugees. https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/eurocities/solidarity-cities-cities-acting-for-refugee-integration?utm_source=Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0ef8ebde0c-DAILY_NEWSLETTER_MAILCHIMP&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_717bc5d86d-0ef8ebde0c-407380753

How about you start with cities in solidarity to the rest of the nation?
I don't want our cities becoming more of cities of immigrants telling the rest of the country how they should or should not live with this wave of progressive pro-immigrant anti-nationalist ideals.

This is OUR COUNTRY.
Not a piece of clay immigrants can mold in the shape of whatever hellhole they came from.

Take your Safe Cities, Strong Cities, Solidarity Cities or whatever you want to call them, and shove them.
Those are just pied-piper names to convince 'useful idiots' to turn the country over to immigrants and a pro-globalist agenda shafting the rest of country who identify as Aussies.

I'm not against helping others in need, but sell my country out?
Not going to happen.

Repeat the word 'Temporary Visa' 10 times out loud and then maybe we can make a compromise.

Seriously, if we got rid of all the refugees
would this speed up the 2 hour drive on
choked roads that many of us take to and
from work, or boast the numbers of nurses and
doctors in our public hospitals, or make our education
system any better ir increase wages, the dole, or
pension payments?

There are contradictions in this country that need
to be confronted. The anger at the effects of
globalisation, the deterioration in services
and infrastructure across the country, the increasing
"casualisation" of the Australian workforce, the
growing gap between the inner city and the rest of
society, the ageing working population, the
degration of our transport, education and health systems ...
None of these can be addressed through "Stopping the
Boats."

Yet immigration can revive country towns, refugees can
be settled in rural Australia to work in hospitals and
on farms

I really don't see that taking in people who are nothing but a burden to Australia is an "opportunity" - it's more like a death wish. There are too many useless, problem-causing people here now, including the products of the ridiciculously high 'legitimate' 200,000 per year stampede.

I've recently read an article in The Monthly that
disturbed me somewhat it pointed out the following:

"It appears that broader effects to change Australian
hearts and minds about the treatment of asylum seekers
have not succeeded. We'll lock up asylum seekers in
off shore detention centres, we'll stand idly by as
they slowly go crazy or harm themselves, we'll refuse
journalists the right to speak to them or to name them,
we'll redefine our borders to not let them in, we'll
farm them off to our impoverished, under-developed neighbours
rather than construct a humane and efficient system to
process their claims for asylum. It doesn't matter
that more than 83 % of asylum seekers who arrive here by
boat are found to be genuine refugees, and that as
signatories to the UN Refugee Convention we are obliged
to offer these people refuge..."

It is probably too late to save all of Oz, we probably need to remove NSW & Victoria, & try to save the rest, although I'm not sure Tasmania or SA are worth the effort.

I was in a major Sydney suburb recently, Fairfield, trying to find a taxi rank. It was only the 11Th person I spoke to, who could actually communicate in English. What is left to save?