Refugees: the nexus between power and responsibility

It is nothing short of unintended cruelty to leave these people to perish, and in their place settle strategic travelers who decide that Australia is the place for them. Most of the people arriving by boat are from Afghanistan, Iran or Iraq. These people are from half way around the world. They skated over or near dozens of other safe countries en-route to Australia. Every place they take is one less available to the genuinely needy.

This would mean that all of the people coming to Australia on humanitarian visas would come from the refugee camps dotted variously across the impoverished nations of the world, where the average wait for resettlement is well in excess of 10 years.

What about boat people and other illegal arrivals who come here demanding processing? The solution is simple. Australia needs to implement an inflexible policy that we do not process any person for a humanitarian visa who comes to our shores without pre-existing refugee determination.

This would stop uninvited arrivals, totally. The Labor mantra that increased boat arrivals was due to changed 'push-pull' factors has by their own policy admission being exposed as nonsense (hence the reason they tried to send refugees to Malaysia). The truth is that for the past decade refugee numbers in the world have remained constant at around the 14 million mark.

The world would be a much better place if Australia priortised humane outcomes over worshipping outdated legal instruments: it would mean an end to mandatory detention and drownings near our shores and ensure that priority in refugee determinations was given to the most needy (not the most pushy).

The world would be better still if we increased our intake of humanitarian arrivals. We can comfortably absorb many more destitute arrivals and should pin our quota to a percentage of our total immigration intake. Setting the rate at about 10 per cent would increase the current quota to about 25,000 which would be politically saleable in light of the above approach and humanitarianly desirable.