I have only read the first page, was gladdened to read some sensible posts.
There is a reason that asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat cost us so much. Hysteria! If everyone calmed TF down they could be accepted and processed without shipping or flying them thousands of kilometres to expensive facilities erected in the highest cost locations.
I don't for a minute advocate that we simply "open the door", but the globally reality is that there are millions of refugees or people under persecution and those that have the capacity to attempt to escape will. And they need to go somewhere. I'm pretty sure others have highlighted the fact that asylum seekers coming by boat are a minority of refugees or illegal immigrants* who come to Australia. Countries like Italy face a far greater number of arrivals than Australia, by virtue of being closer to North Africa where there are some horrific wars going on.
Stop being afraid; these poor b4stards won't take our jobs and rape our women. There might be some bad apples in there, as there are in any group of people, and so our laws will take care of them.
People keep bringing up the fact that asylum seekers pay, so they have money so how bad could it have been for them. If my kids, my family were living in fear I'd do whatever I could to change that too. Those millions of poor people living under a sheet of plastic in a refugee camp for the rest of their lives didn't have the resources to do more than they did. In truth it would probably be harder to integrate those folks into a society like ours just because they have absolutely nothing.
I am an avid listener to the ABC, and was very surprised when I first heard the reports of abuse by Navy on asylum seekers. I felt then that the report had asserted as fact something that was clearly only an allegation, and was almost certainly not true. They made a mistake. Last week the boss of the ABC admitted this and apologised. I also believe the Govt has taken this as a convenient opportunity to attack the ABC and asylum seekers. There is almost certainly Navy video that clears the sailors, but it seems the Govt won't release anything because that would end the debate. The Indon Govt has never been a bastion of morality and this continues. It is the 19th largest country in the world by landmass but the 4th biggest by population. They've got their own issues.
I implore those who feel boat arrivals are a huge problem to seek some independent facts, not those spouts by Alan Jones or Ray Hadley or even our current Govt (whose primary goal was election, not stopping the boats). We don't have to accept them (all) but we don't need to hate them either.
Also, apart from some racist crap on Facebook have you ever heard of any credible evidence that anyone wants to:
Stop Australians celebrating Xmas or Easter?
Rename Australia Day?
fundamentally alter our national being?
It is easy to create a meme that looks like it has facts etc, but most of it is simply untrue. Worse, most of it is copied and altered from some hillbilly US crackpot post and then made to look Australian.