I've only just noticed this thread and the extreme views expressed on it. I agree with yours, although the jury is still out as to real policies by Labor, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Labor will eventually face Australia (and the world's) environmental and energy challenge which for me and many of my friends (some former Liberal voters) was the reason I voted for Rudd. He should have persevered and presented another bill, possibly a more comprehensive one, without a price for anything you cannot ever have a deal on whatever it is you're dealing with. I believe the electorate does not really understand what carbon trading would have been all about. Of course, our adversarial parliamentary system is often defeating good ideas.
I find the point of view that we should turn the boats back difficult to visualise and impossible to expect results from.
Does turning the boats back mean:
(a) We escort them into Indonesian Waters and tell all Australians to keep our fingers crossed so they won't turn round again? or come back some other way? (b) We turn them round and stand by to physically blast them out of the water if and when they turn back again? (c) We take them back to Sri Lanka, where the Tamils are simply an unwanted people who have no future there and can only expect genocide?
Has anybody in Government or out of Government the guts to stand up and firstly, analyse this problem properly, make some guestimates as to possible arrivals, and our capacity to absorb more people, and then devise a policy that would be practicable? After all we are a signatory to an International Agreement on Refugees - can we resign from that?
I can see one solution, namely: the Tamils are the Aboriginal population of India. Could we possibly do a deal with India to resettle Tamils in India in return for trained and educated Indians who we could use as part of our skilled migration scheme?
We should also stop the 'silent migration' of the large numbers of people who are here on a student visa and finish up staying. These people come in via the back door.
I would be for total honesty in this migration debate, and include the likeliness of people to adapt and settle in, racial problems which might emerge but most importantly: how many people can Australia really sustain comfortably. I think I have stated elsewhere on H.C. that I believe Australia will have a future obligation to surrounding Island peoples whose land mass is being taken by the sea - all due to global warming. But this is only my personal view, which, however, could be used in arguing a case over the agreement to take refugee, we signed.
We need to be aware that this world is overpopulated and Australia may seem like a very desirable place to many. We should be selective about who we take, but how to do this, is the question.
I feel concerned that we do not have people of great intellectual as well as persuasive characteristics to lead us through these difficult times ahead but who knows.
