UPDATE BELOW

Edited by Murdoch Rags Ltd: 3/2/2016 10:59:57 AM

I don't see the point in having extremely expensive offshore detention centres when, if we have to detain these people to do necessary checks, we could do so in facilities in major cities which would be cheaper.

I also cannot understand how these people are detained for so long. Keeping them alive for 18 months + is a joke. How does it take so long to process these people? Instead of spending money feeding them, spend it on staffing. It will also make the detainees less likely to become frustrated/angry which is better for everyone.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-03/high-court-throws-out-challenge-to-offshore-detention/7135504

Good news for right wingers across Australia
No need to fear the brown people!!
Phew!

I assumed you'd be very much in support of offshore detention but I agree with your post. It's a broken system and there isn't an easy answer. We need to discourage people from hopping on the boats in the first place but we also need to be humane. The current system is ridiculous.

Disappointing result but I'd rather our government did the right thing and abolished them ourselves.

Those lunatics from The Greens have the most developed policies addressing this.

Why is that? I assess every situation on it's merits. I guess I'm probably right wing on many things such as welfare, political issues and what not but everything is individually assessed. I support the evil greens ;) on many policies. I'm against religion having a place in civil life, I'm pro-choice for abortion and pro-LGBT rights.

There are two glaring issues which everyone must see with detention:

1) Offshore detention is ridiculously expensive. Private security firms bleed the government dry. Setting up these facilities is a rort. Feeding/clothing/housing these people is hugely expensive.

2) If I was a refugee and got locked up for 18 months I'd be pissed off too. I don't understand how countries like Germany are processing immigrants in a few weeks whereas it takes us 18 months? Clearly there is an issue here. Clearly they're either understaffed or completely ignoring the negative affects that prolonged detention has on these people.

My idea was to put these refugees/asylum seekers into regional centres to work. Our population is becoming more urbanized so we could use these new Australians to help arrest the population change. I don't know however if it is unfair to force these people to go to certain places or not.

The million $ question is how do we deter these boat people and do it in a humane manner?

These people are desperate, imprisonment achieves nothing but to disenfranchise.

Process them in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand or wherever many are staying a significant amount of time before continuing their journey on. Anyone that tries to take a boat send them back to that country and take more in exchange.

This is essentially the Malaysia solution but it was deemed unconstitutional. Really is bizarre to me that we can legally pay foreign countries money to lock up children but we can't do something more humane like the above.

Regional community processing would be far more humane and has plenty of merits, but if anything it would increase the incentive for refugees to risk their lives and hop on a boat.

My view is that they're going to do it anyway when things go bad overseas so we have to deal with them as they arrive rather than throwing out this rhetoric about stopping them.

It's as silly as trying to stop the spread of HIV by telling people to abstain. It's unreasonable.

Sadly this has become a politcal issue . Which it shouldn't be at all. This is now about getting votes. Just like how abortion is a politcal issue in the us .

It's also a legal one. Not that I know any facts/statistics but there are reports that some boat people are not genuinely seeking asylum but rather trying to enter the country illegally.

I'm sure you can imagine that anti-immigration groups are very quick to highlight this issue.

The logic of the whole system is that it is intended to be cruel. The reason they do it offshore is so they can tell asylum seekers arriving by boat that even if they are successful in their application for refugee status, they will never live in Australia.

It's this cruelty and arbitrary treatment of people arriving specifically by boat, that underpins the whole policy of stopping arrivals by boat.

That is why arguments over humane treatment will never work, because the whole point of it is to be cruel.

By the way - I am not in favour of the current arrangements. I am just stating the underlying logic behind it.

The problem with coming up with arrangements with other countries is two-fold. As McJules mentioned, the constitutional issues are the first stumbling block. Secondly, the requirement to get the other country to agree is the issue. They will obviously use any negotiation to get something out of us in exchange for doing a deal.

The rhetoric is always directed at those organising the boats and yet its the desperate people coming by boat that cop it.

We have an aging population, these people could help that issue if we put money into making them productive citizens instead of treating them like the worst kind of criminals.

Precisely. The problem is that there is just now such a knee-jerk irrational fear of boat arrivals (compared to arrivals by other means).

Admittedly, the current policy is effective. But it is expensive and cruel.

Both sides of politics talk about the need for a "regional solution", but it never happens.

Its such a toxic political issue, that these days I think that the best case solution is that the boat arrivals remain stopped and the remaining people have their claims resolved, and the camps close down due to no further boat arrivals happening.

Edited by AzzaMarch: 3/2/2016 02:33:17 PM

I understand the strategy but I'd argue there's no need to be as cruel as we are being. From my recollection, the Malaysia solution could have been legal with a couple of law changes but of course Tony was on a "block everything" rampage. Now both majors are supporting this disgraceful policy so there's no chance to do it. Only hope is that slowly but surely, public opinion starts to change like it did before Rudd changed it in 07.

How perfect is this typo? :lol:

I still don't how these are things with all of the atrocities that are happening there.

-PB

Thats magnificent. :lol:

You know that wont happen. Hello they be taking my jobs. In my experience if you treat the down trodden like people and give them something to live for they will become upstanding citizens. I give you an example, my wife and her family were refugees in germany for 10 years, my mother and father law worked during that time whilst over there. Give the refugees a job and they will thank you and be productive treat them like criminals and well you know what happens

Should put it to a referendum.

NBN, GST, Gay Marriage, Aboriginal Recognition, 4 year terms, locking the electoral cycle to set dates, republic, foreign ownership... Put it to a direct vote.

Yeah, fuck representative democracy!

:roll:

Exactly right. Treating people like criminals for 18 months while processing them is a terrible idea!

Yep. Give them hope and give them something to reach for and they will be grateful. Treat them suspiciously and tell them they arent wanted then they become the thing that people tell them they will become , its a vicious cycle

Sadly politicans on both sides just use them as a pawn in their vote getting . Yes be suspicous but treat like the way you want to be treated

And every detailed economic study shows that these people are net gains for society - they are generally younger than the average age of the population, and therefore have more years as a taxpaying worker to contribute to the govt coffers.

Plus they are clearly driven and resilient, given the risk they have taken to get here.

In fact, if you wanted to design an "obstacle course" to get here, which would select for entrepreneurial, driven, ambitious people, this would actually be the perfect design!

Yet we keep those people locked up on an island, and do nothing about the rich kids overstaying their visas working as shhitty baristas!

Another problem we have though is there are no avenues to turn these people into working tax paying citizens. In Virginia Brisbane, I did a job on a residential site where refugees were given a unit and left to their own devices. Piss poor management these guys could be working.

Yes. Fuck it. We have a direct democratic process in our constitution. Use it.

We should follow Sweden's model to economic prosperity and better standards of living.