the 1951 Un Refugee Convention has fostered simplistic and unfortunate characterisations of asylum seekers as either political and thus 'genuine' and deserving, or economic and thus 'abusive' and undeserving.

re the “global people movement”, mass refugee outflows or migratory movements, or “forced migration”.

The UN has estimated that 125 million people are, at any given time, outside their homeland in search of a more secure political environment or better economic future.

the 1951 Convention has institutionalised the notion of exile as a solution to refugee problems. Exile is an inappropriate solution to modern refugee problems in an age of globalisation and regionalisation.

Obligations under the Convention fall squarely onto the receiving state, and come into effect after the asylum seeker has entered its territory and made a claim for refugee status. The most basic principle, or core obligation, of signatory states is that of 'non-refoulement', i.e. not sending someone back to a situation where there they might face persecution. Another important obligation (and source of increasing tension with the rise of people smuggling) is not to penalise asylum seekers for entering a signatory country 'illegally'.

Western signatory states like Australia have, under the guidance of the UNHCR, established refugee determination processes. While administrative and legal systems vary, the central features are the same. Claims are assessed, on an individual basis, according to whether there is a 'real' possibility the claimant would face persecution, on a Convention ground, if returned. Decisions are made on a credibility of story basis, assisted by 'country information' gleaned from such sources as foreign affairs officials, Amnesty International etc.

The core criticism of the 1951 UN refugee Convention is that it is anachronistic. The treaty was developed in and for a different era--post WW2 Europe. While Western countries' asylum systems might have coped well enough until the end of the Cold War, they were not designed with today's mass refugee outflows and migratory movements in mind.

Therein lies the problem.

The Gillard Government is tacitly acknowledging that the asylum system under the 1951 Refugee Convention is 'broken'.

It is moving towards the lodging of asylum applications from abroad (Malaysia) to stop asylum seekers from purchasing organised illegal entry into Australia.

George I think you'll find the current global situation is nothing unusual compared to the mass migrations of the 19th and 20th centuries. The difference is that countries like the USA and Australia welcomed migrants in those days whereas these days everybody wants to pick and choose who is allowed to immigrate. The rest get consigned to camps in the third world, where they can be ignored. It reflects our national obsession with materialism, whereby nothing can be done unless it can be shown to please the great god economic growth.

The truly quaint thing is that the people who rail against asylum seekers and rant about turning back the boats are usually the same ones who cheer on endless war, which creates a lot of the problem in the first place. The Coalition of the Willing's refusal to accept responsibility for the refugee crisis it unleashed in Iraq was and remains disgraceful.

Sweden by the way leads the world in its per capita willingness to take in asylum-seekers. If they can manage it, why not Australia? All those godless socialists can't be more compassionate than us, surely.

Ken... Do you sometimes wonder how Robinson Crusoe must have felt? It can get lonely on this little island.

It seems there are very, very, very few of us who DON'T see a handful of scruffy asylum seekers, multiculturalism or the hijab as an overwhelming, unacceptable threat to ALL we hold dear. I sometimes wonder if I'm missing something.... because, clearly, I am not sufficiently hysterical about the whole thing.

The Liberals on this issue are making a crude win-at-any-cost calculation that makes little attempt to promote conservative ideals -- focusing instead on fear, smear, hate and attack to keep the party viable.

They've tossed away their Menzies conservatism in favour of embracing the politics of corporate-front groups that are run on a toxic blend of smear and vitriol. You can see this on other issues, such as the NBN.

The xenophobia in contemporary Australia is named conservative populism that encourages violent attitudes and hate speech towards ‘outsiders’.

The xenophobia is diverse or multiple--- feelings of hatred such as islamophobia; the hostility towards migrants; fears of an invasion by ‘foreign bodies’ ---and it is underpinned by fantasies about a Christian Australia.

There is a significant resurgence of xenophobia and the politics of fear in Australia based on the shifting boundaries between “us” and “them”.

For many politicians, immigration has become the ultimate resource for connecting with an electorate that is increasingly alienated from ‘politics as usual’.

Immigration is presented as part of a three-pronged argument: “immigrants are the cause of delinquency”, “immigrants threaten our welfare and reduce our opportunities for finding work” and “many immigrants are religious fundamentalists and potentially dangerous”.

The Liberal's leaders are playing on a fear of ‘the other’, with ‘the outsiders’ as a core element in their political manifesto.

The conservative populist position is to defend ‘Fortress Australia’ against ‘hordes of illegal immigrants’. The conservative press contribute to creating a climate of fear of migrants.

Their talking point is that ‘migrants “steal jobs”’, that migrants are mostly ‘illegal’, that they are ‘flooding into the country to find work’ and that ‘foreigners are unacceptably encroaching on the livelihoods of our huge number of Australian people’. The foreigners are her to take and not to give.

The conservative press has yet to explicitly link illegal immigration to the high rate of crime and violence – eg., gun-running, drug trafficking and armed robbery--- they say is destroying our cities.

I suppose another symptom would be the pittance we offer as humanitarian aid, or any aid (machine guns to guard detention centres?) to the unwashed billions- point zero something of a percent, as I understand it.
We haven't had starvation and tragedy here for generations; how would one expect us to understand the miseries of people living in shredded tents in dustholes, on a bowl of rice a day.
Having said this, I'll still query one line of thinking here and that's the one impugning the suspicions of ordinary working Australians to employer efforts to import cheap offshore labour.
Never forget the working classes ability to sniff out employer bullshit, even tho it's a long time from the Depression and 'forties "austerity" and lock outs.
Ordinary people still know well enough oral and written histories, what employers are capable of when it comes to playing off different elements of the working class against itself.
Howard handled this by widening the scope for offshore labour to be imported through visas, but played the race card also, winning both ways.
In the meantime, many Australians lived in actual dread of the horror budget we were told was coming from the government, after Cameron of once-great Britain.
After all, so many of us will never have a job again, also. What defence do we have to the systems attempts to "discipline" us?
Ideally, if we could see the "other" as working class, like ourselves, as we see our neighbours and other folk inthe street, we would begin to move to alleviating the horrors of the real Third World, that fill us with such dread and for good reason.
I personally don't "get" rudeness to muslims on buses, etc and am as happy to give up my seat to a pregnant muslim woman as an anglo saxon one. Both sets of smiles in return are equally phenomenal compensation for a moment's consideration, I've found.
But let's not be naive about employers and labour, just the same.
They'd have us all living like dogs.