I'm sure Bill Shorten could find out what's happening & I don't hear him banging on about it so my guess is it's working.
"Stop the boats" is a slogan by morons - for morons, so in that respect it's working great!
Unfortunately the issue is a tinsy bit more complex and I will try to explain in simple terms.
Many people want to come to Australia - it's a nice country with an excellent standard of living and lots of opportunities. And the way that capitalism works, Australia wants people to come to feed the growth engine. But of course you need the "right" people in the "right" amounts. This has been the bone of contention ever since the First Fleet arrived and unfortunately we haven't really moved on much since then (though we stopped using un-PC terms like "White Australia Policy" some years back).
The preferred method is for people to apply and for us to accept them - this goes for all categories, including refugees. Of course not everyone follows the rules (e.g. - Pommy cricket fans, scared diplomats, etc.) and this is where the ugly side of Australia comes to the fore. It's all down to HOW they arrive.
Let me be blunt here - I don't think anyone wants to see people drowning at sea, suffocating in shipping containers, or dropping out of the undercarriage of a 747. Even the Greens. The issue is how you deal with all categories of arrivals in a way that is fair and consistent and discourages unsafe methods of arrival. There's a very, very simple way to do this that is already in place, but that seems to have been forgotten in the hysteria.
All individuals without a visa (arrivals or over-stayers) should be processed in Australia and either immediately sent home or resettled in PNG, Malaysia, or any other country in the region that we can come to an agreement with. Once there they can apply through the usual channels (including UNHCR) to come to Australia.
Ideally we would fix the relationship with Indonesia and get cooperation from them, but that would rely upon good diplomacy.
This is really just a slightly tweaked version of what was put in place before Despicable T came into power and lowered the bar to sub-gutter levels, but I think including Pommy cricket fans is fair and balanced.
Oh - and if past corruption is irrelevant we would have to drop all charges against Ebeid, Macdonald, Thompson, etc. I think that would be a bad idea, don't you? It's bad enough that politicians can just pay back thousands of dollars in rorts with no questions asked (in most cases).
