From: "Trent W. Buck"

[I'm not actually sure what position you were taking, Tim, so apologies if I'm violently agreeing with you ;-)]

As background I acknowledge that we have a moral obligation to help underprivileged people. I question whether policies that encourage refugee or quasi-refugee arrivals by boat are the best way to do this. I also claim that the demand for places in Australia exceeds our reasonable capacity to accept refugees without seriously impacting our own well-being. I noted that in this area there is a chronic lack of specificity in the proposals being put forward. And little or no analysis of the impact of the suggestions being made. Surely, I thought to myself, if people are serious they would have a specific proposal in mind? When you look at global warming, there are plenty of specific proposals about how to respond to the issue. So why not here? I asked for specific proposals and for an analysis of the impact of those policies. Or a link to them. In general the response has been far more heat than light. The list of questions I posted was an attempt to smoke out an actual policy proposal. It is not a rhetorical list of the problems with refugee intake, but a list of questions anyone who is actually serious about proposing a policy would need to answer. In fact, that they should have at hand already. I am not interested in another rant about the moral inferiority of the bogans in the western suburbs, John Howard, Tony Abbott or other politicians, and the moral superiority of the author of said rant. But by and large that - and some nit picking - is all I have gotten.

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1. What measures would you put in place to discourage people arriving by boat or plane, if any?

That seems to presuppose that immigration is undesirable.

No. That is why I said "if any". If you can't tell me if you will have any measures to discourage people from arriving, it becomes very hard to analyse the implications of your policy. Similarly with the other questions. Would you still have a refugee quota? How big? Etc. I am not presupposing answers here. Just asking "What is your policy?" and :"What are the implications?" My own view if anyone is interested: I am for increasing the refugee quota to about 100,000 (a massive increase from current numbers) at the expense of other categories of migration. I would overall reduce migration substantially and apart from refugees I would strongly focus on the benefits the proposed refugee brings to the table for people already here. I would continue strong measures to discourage unsolicited arrivals. I acknowledge that this falls short of many views of the moral imperative. If we value others' welfare as much as our own, we should do much more to help the poor and suffering. Foreign aid should be perhaps 30% of GDP rather than the current value of approximately zero. But it is evident that we vastly value our own welfare over that of others. I do not exclude myself from this. I enquired if anyone on the list donated such an amount (30%+ of income) to the betterment of the poor and to date no-one has come forward (though such people do exist). The suspicion arises that all the beating of chests, the long verbal rants, etc, are a cheap way to signal moral stature without actually paying a price.

Tim Josling wrote:

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In general except for underpopulated countries around 100% of the benefits of immigration go to the immigrants.

Citation needed.

I was basing this on an IAC report from some years back. I don't have the citation. Good research is rare in this area because of the influence of vested interests (such as the housing industry) and the politicisation of the area. As a matter of common sense, if there is no labour shortage then increasing the labour supply will have mainly distributional effects to the detriment of the existing labour force. This is of course one reason why employers like high immigration. There are also specific industries like housing that benefit from immigration. from As Kevin Rudd put it, the idea is to "reduce pressure on the labour market". Amazing to hear this from a Labor politician. Tim