(Its actually all to do with us being in the Antipodes. gravity is pulling them down so we should just accept it as part of our destiny. )

What appears to be at stake is the matter of cultural confidence. Some Australians have come to terms with our history and are confident of our capacity to live in an equalitarian social democracy based on principles of recognition and respect. Others cling to the fantasy of a ‘white nation’ and, put simply, are so far incapable of living by the sorts of principles above. They showed this incapacity by voting for Howard and his ilk.

It is a split. Right down the middle. All of the facts of the matter of refugees suggest that boat arrivals are not a significant problem except in so far as they allow reactionary exit-orifices like Turnbull to attempt to manipulate people’s fears. He won’t succeed like Howard because, unlike Howard, he is no traumatiser.

I am going to bugger off to Catallaxy and pick a fight with Graeme Bird. Or maybe a creationist blog if I really feel like wasting my time.

It’s interesting that once left-wingers we’re the angry ones, but now most of the rage seems to be on the other side.

My grandfather found safe-haven without the 1951 convention but you know full well why the convention was established, and about the boat-load of Jewish refugees that were turned back from ports around the world leading to their deaths. It’s blind luck my grandfather wasn’t on one of those boats. If you so ardently favour a return to pre-1951 days, why don’t you ask the families of thoseboat people what they think of your proposal? As for my grandfather’s papers, the family is still not 100% certain to this day whether he was German or Austrian-born. And he wasn’t 100km from his home nation because if he’d stopped there, he’d have been exterminated.

ID papers are the answer, huh? To what end? Crime prevention? ID papers are the rhythm method of crime prevention. Last I heard, all the rogues, gang-members, hustlers, spivs, shysters, pimps and dealers who have ever done business in Australia, whether born here or elsewhere, had ID papers.

The fetish for quotas is also touchingly quixotic. I’m put in mind of a guy trying to catch in a bucket the raindrops that are drip-drip-dripping through the ceiling, when there’s a swimming-pool’s worth of water in the roof ready to burst through.

Can’t even agree on that point, Student T. The information we have suggests that most of those coming here that way don’t have the readies to spend: most of it is raised by selling up any assets, borrowing on the black market, even allowing other relatives to be held in hostage. Most are not intentionally risking their lives: it is the only option open to them in the circumstances and probably not subject to rational argument. In any event, given the political persecution many face in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the desire to find a safe haven and a future takes priority.

We get a similar situation when the occasional sex slave scene with young female Thais is encountered. (They mostly came out here with papers, even if they were dodgy and held by the sponsor.) While a few were probably told all sorts of lies to induce their agreement, a large number had at least some idea what they were in for. Still they came and went into huge debt to do so. It suggests that the desperation of their situation for them and their families at home was the main driving factor.

As Joe2 says, I don’t think we can afford the resources to try and ferret out whatever wrongdoers there may be in the mix. All the grandstanding of Howard’s Pacific Solution achieved sweet FA and cost us a fortune. He would argue that it was worth it because it bought him one, maybe two elections but this should not be the measure.

What ‘papers’ are you referring to? Passports or something?

If so, I’m still confused. I can’t see that passports provide any evidence whether someone has a legitimate claim for refugee status or not. I can think of a number of examples of countries which would actually deny passports to people seeking refugee status.

Regardless of whether someone arrives by plane or boat, their claims for refugee status is processed in the same way, right?

So my question remains. Why the hysteria about people on boats? There’s not very many of them (compared to plane arrivals) and it’s not as if anyone gets a ‘free pass’ when they arrive on a boat – if their claims for refugee status are denied, then they get shipped back home.

So what would drive you to do something like that?

Mercurius: You provide no evidence for the “visceral, fight-or-flight anxiety” of those who argue against boat arrivals. This is pure left wing myth making. And by the way – since you mentioned your grandfather fleeing the holocaust, I should point out that he managed to find safe haven without the 1951 convention, that he probably had papers and that he was not 100km by boat from his ethnically original nation.

Don, thanks for addressing my point about the rules hamstringing the assessors and some unworthy applicants getting through. Please note though that he thinks that most of the applicants are lying, not some of them. Anyway, true to my blog name, let’s think about type 1 and type 2 errors. In criminal trials it is appropriate to minimise the number of false convictions because of the relative costs of such compared to acquitting a guilty person. Refugee policy is quite different. Why? Because there is an effectively infinite number of refugees, both legitimate and not, who would come to this country. So our “problem”, if you like to think of it this way, is to make sure that 13500 of the 13500 intake are genuine and as worthy as possible. From a potential pool of millions. By as worthy as possible I mean facing execution or starvation rather than non-lethal forms of persecutions. Can we at least agree that this would be the ideal outcome?

These conditions mean we should not worry about rejecting a small number of legitimate refugees at all (type 1 errors) so long as we end up getting 13500 legitimate refugees. It may be terrible for those who are refused but those who take there place will be just as thrilled. The cost of this error is basically zero – offset by the one who gets entry instead. This is all too cold and academic for LPers though.

A related issue is to minimise the number of people who spend k$10 and risk drowning. There is no reason in principle why someone should pay so much and risk death to get here, right? We agree on this as well surely.

The way to achieve this is to say “nobody who arrives here without papers will even be considered. Don’t bother starting the journey.” There will be some legitimate refugees who will not have papers and they will miss out. But I would prefer them miss out than waste k$10 and then miss out. And there will be plenty of refugees with papers and proof of persecution who can fill our quota.

The left love the humanizing photos of the people on SIEV36 but we need to balance them against photos of people starving in camps, who will look a whole lot less well fed.

Does this sound like visceral, fight-or-flight anxiety to you, or does it sound more like someone thinking things through rather than to the succumbing to a knee-jerk illusion of compassion?