From: Petros

...

In the absence of a clearly articulated and worked out alternate policy,

First, there must be a problem that requires drastic measurements as infinite detention and violation of International obligations?

Can you explain this problem to me first?

You may recall that Labour came to power in a blaze of moral righteousness, saying they would have a humane refugee policy. Numbers increased dramatically with no end in sight to exponential growth. [By the way, the Greens ridiculed the notion that the policy change would increase the numbers of boat people markedly. They were proven utterly wrong.] So they tightened policy. It seemed to me that they eventually muddled into an incompetently executed version of the Howard/Abbott policies. Now why would they do this? Some people argue that they listened to the polls and, being cynical uncaring fiends, decided to sacrifice the refugees in order to buy votes. Personally, while I was no fan of Rudd or Gullard, I do not think they are that heartless. I just think they were mugged by reality. What reality? That there are about *20,000,000* refugees around the world, many of whom would come to Australia if they could. There are *billions* of people who live in very poor countries, and polls suggest that a *third( or more of them would move to a rich country if they could. As one indication, in 2008 there were over 13,000,000 applicants for the green card lottery to get into the USA - even though the odds are very low. So the problem is that unrestricted immigration implies huge numbers of people coming to Australia. The implications can be enormous: housing shortages, unemployment, breakdown of our ability to fund the welfare state, etc. OK you may not accept this scenario. Fine, but where is a solid analysis that shows it is wrong. As far as I can see, all the evidence suggests it is basically correct. Or you may say that this is acceptable, because the need of these people is so great. The need of these people outweighs the harm to the locals. I think that is a very defensible view. Why should we in Australia have such a high standard of living while millions of people die of starvation and hunger each year? Should we not be prepared to accept a big cut in our standard of living to help those people? What I have been asking for is this: What is your specific policy proposal for immigration, including refugees? Where is your analysis of the implications of your policy? And a statement that the implications are X and I accept those implications for these reasons. I accept the cogency of the arguments that we should do far more for poor people (whether increasing immigration is the right way to do this I am unsure). But I find I am not prepared to drastically reduce my own standard of living to implement this insight. I find few people are. Anyone on the mailing list who donates more than say 40% of their income to such causes is welcome to speak up at this point, but there are very few such people. This is embarrassing. We know what we should do if we value other people's welfare as much as our own. But we don't do it. The obvious conclusion is that we don't value other people's welfare as much as our own. I would also suggest that anyone who wants to demand that the Australian people accept a large cut in their living standard, should demonstrate their bona fides by, for example, showing that they currently donate a large slab of their income to such causes. Otherwise people can rightly say that talk is cheap. When you look at other contentious issue, such as global warming, there are plenty of resources that analyze the issue and possible solutions in detail. This issue is different, which is very interesting. Google searches uncover much moral posturing, but little else.