[AVT]

personally bribing/forcing one of poor neighbours to accept people we don't want, just does not strike me as ethical behaviour.
The major parties are competing in a policy of being harsh on this people. I'm pretty uncomfortable with this.

The definition of Refugee is board and depends on your values and where you stand, the line between those fleeing real persecution and those seeking a better economic life is rather blurry at best. There is a real problem (it isnt just created by the hysteria of the major parties and the press, though I don't think it helps).

Simply put their are plenty of real refugees and vast numbers of those who will rick a lot to improve their situation and Australia is pretty desirable compared with much of the world.

There should be a real limit of how many we accept. We should process the people quickly and treat them well. But what to do with those in excess of reasonable numbers? I dont have a solution, forcible repatriation is pretty much very hard to work, (dumping people somewhere is pretty hard work and authorities there generally are not going to help, why should they take our 'rejects' (for what of a better term) ) . Indefinite detention seems harsh, expensive and unworkable. Creating a deterent by shipping them off to places around the region we bribe to take them hardly seems workable in the long run.

Labor never intend it to be a long term solution, rather they calculate that the numbers of people entering by boat will reduce significantly once permanent settlement is taken off the table.

[GandalfTheGrey]

Labor never intend it to be a long term solution, rather they calculate that the numbers of people entering by boat will reduce significantly once permanent settlement is taken off the table.

That may be true for the PM and cabinet, but there seems to be a significant dissatisfaction amongst labor backbenchers (and liberal too interestingly enough) with the way asylum policy has been moving the last few years. Its because of this that the PM always feels the need to dress up each policy they come up with in nice fluffy "regional cooperation" rhetoric. Gillard and probably Rudd would almost certainly have been more than happy with readopting Howards "we will decide who comes to our borders..." dog whistling policies, and simply turned all the boats back. But they would most likely see a full scale revolt in the caucus if they did. Of course you are right, Rudd just wants to stop the boats and forget about it, but he is being strong-armed into committing to a long-term regional, multilateral policy - and the caucus will hold him to this (hopefully).

[AVT]

I think you may be getting your hopes up there Gandalf, many countries in the SE region see this as an Australian problem and have done very little to address it in the last few decades. Labor's back bench may want a regional solution but there is currently no chance of that happening without Australia either offering up huge sums of cash for our neighbours to 'process' refugees or virtually taking all arrivals. Either way no liberal party leader will ever allow them to make such a deal without paying a huge PR price.

[GandalfTheGrey]

I seriously doubt Indonesia doesn't see it as their problem - thousands of asylum seekers squatting in their country in complete limbo with no rights. They can't simply pretend to ignore them. As for Australia offering incentives to SE nations, well thats only fair isn't it? They bear the burden of all these people - who are really Australia's burden - of course its reasonable that we offer some compensation to help us process and resettle them.