Tonight's prize in the repatriation game: a holiday to hell

This could be the opportunity to clear the overcrowded prison system. What incarcerated-for-life murderer would not be interested in $2000 and a new life in Afghanistan? The program could also be extended to prison wardens and prisoners' families - what sort of individuals associate with known criminals anyway?

Maybe the issue should be put to a Big Brother-style vote and extended to all un-Australian Australians. No-one is going to miss that little kid down the road who was so kind as to scratch his name into my bonnet; he would probably grow up to be a criminal anyway - entirely un-Australian. And he's probably descended from convicts anyway.

Finally, the Government could cut the cost of the refugee policy.

People smuggling is clearly illegal but, thankfully, refugee trading is not. The proposal to swap asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island with US refugees from Cuba and Haiti has real potential. The key is to determine an opportune swap rate for refugees: if Australia can get, say, four Cubans for every five Afghans, then a net loss will result and therefore reduce the overall number of refugees under Australian control.

Even better still would be if Cubans could be persuaded to go home for a lesser sum of, say, $1500; then the swap rate would be irrelevant - for every Afghan swapped there would be a saving of $500.

Indeed, this could be a new market, with Australia being a major international player and an innovator in new areas of globalisation.

Refugee policy is finally making sense - or is that cents?