The government has succeeded in stopping the boats arising from Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard's disastrous meddling with John Howard's successful immigration containment, and now it is time to sort out those waiting on our shores in limbo. It has been decided to issue Temporary Protection Visas ( TPV's ) to the 30,000 who have been waiting to have their immigration status decided and this seems to be at least the first step in a decision to allow them permanent residency.
A different fate awaits those who defied the warning that arriving by boat will result in them never being allowed to permanently settle in Australia - and saw them moved offshore to detention camps on Nauru and Manus Island. A deal has been struck with Cambodia and we will pay the Cambodian government $ 40 million to settle these people and accept them as permanent residents. Predictably, there are howls of rage from the political left and the charge that Cambodia is a third world country totally unfit to integrate those that this country has rejected.
The present turmoil in the Middle East is being cited to garner sympathy for refugees. Television pictures showing women and children scrambling over the border into Turkey in fear of being raped or beheaded by a fanatical army of religious zealots is harrowing, but there is a very big difference. These refugees want nothing more than the fighting to stop to allow them to return to their home country. They have left behind their homes and way of earning a living and this is a temporary displacement - to save lives.
The "Boat People " had a very different objective. They were not scrambling over Australia's border in dire fear for their lives. They probably had fled their original country in fear, but they had refused to register and accept political asylum in the first country they entered, as is the rule imposed by the United Nations. They travelled through various countries in their stated aim to "force themselves on Australia " and along the way they seemed to find extraordinary sums of money to pay "People Smugglers "to bring them from Indonesia or Malaysia - to Christmas island.
Now their journey is coming full circle. Cambodia can not deliver the rich life they expected here, but it offers safety. It is also a developing country and industrious new arrivals can ride the tide of progress that is sweeping through Asia - or move on and develop new aspirations. For them, the door to Australia is firmly closed.
Hopefully, once the mess of people arriving unannounced in leaky boats is cleaned up the doorway for legal immigration to this country will revert to the former orderly flow. We are a nation of immigrants - right from that time in 1788 when the first settlers came ashore in Sydney Cove. We have still to make lasting peace with this country's Indigenous inhabitants but old wrongs are being righted and all seem assured of a prosperous future.
We need - and we accept a steady flow of new immigrants to this country and a badly stressed world has many waiting. The queues are long, but it is essential that new arrivals come in the numbers we can assimilate and we are fortunate that we do not share a common border - as is the case in many other parts of the world. It is within our capacity to control our borders - as we are now showing the world.
Our good wishes go with those destined to become citizens of Cambodia and hope that they achieve a happy and successful life. Their arrival here was simply a matter of "unfortunate timing "! They were the " Bunnies "left standing in the game of "Musical Chairs " - when the music stopped !
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