Appeal to emotion noted. Do you dispute that boat people are taking the place of those already processed waiting for settlement here? And that they are using up most of the refugee quota? Does this not concern you?
You make it sound like our refugee quota is an immutable, fixed law of nature or something. If the government can't lift the quota in times of need, such as when we have a regional crisis like the recent problems in Sri Lanka, to accommodate the small numbers of people who come here by boat to exercise their legal right to seek asylum, then that is on them. If these people arrived by plane, which they do in far greater numbers than they do boats, then you'd hear nothing about it, just like you do the thousands who already seek asylum every year at our airports. But, because certain elements within society are able to exploit the deep-seated fear of the 'yellow peril' that persists in this country, boat arrivals have become political footballs to be kicked around in a cynical game of political opportunism. It's this sick game of exploiting the weakest and most vulnerable of people to score a few political points that really concerns me.
As both parties are committed to stopping boat people in much the same way, what's your solution? Let people smugglers continue to dictate our immigration policy?
Save your glib partisan talking points for someone else, thanks. 'People smugglers' (another confected bogey-man for the masses, I wonder whether Oskar Schindler would be prosecuted under Australian law today?) never have and never will dictate our immigration policy, that's populist rhetoric designed to distract from the fact that our current attitudes and policies towards asylum seekers are failing.
As for what I'd do, well, both major parties are spineless wretches who put short term political gain ahead of any sort o ethical considerations, so it is little surprise that you can barely differentiate between the two policies. I'd say a complete overhaul of how we approach the issue of asylum seekers. If people smugglers really are such a concern then the obvious solution is to take the tried and true method of how states deal with unregulated markets, muscle in on their patch and monopolise the market. Set up a floating scale on or refugee quota to accommodate regional influxes of people who are seeking asylum, start working with or regional partners to get people out of camps and into processing, intercept people as they enter the region and get them on-shore and into processing. In other words, start doing our fair share of dealing with the regional problem of displaced people, no letting people rot in camps in non-UNHCR countries like Indonesia and completely overhauling our woefully inadequate system of dealing with our regional refugee problem.
