I think nearly everyone will admit that Labor has totally lost control of Australia’s borders, with numerous boats chugging over the horizon from Indonesia on a daily basis.
The amount of traffic that is now enroute to Australia via the people smugglers is quite easily the highest ever recorded.
Don’t forget that under Howard the people smuggling trade had all but dried up with only FOUR people in detention in 2007.
While Australia should have a humanitarian program, illegal arrivals via the people smugglers in Indonesia is undermining our capacity to actually look after legitimate refugees by having an immense impact on our budget.
The fact that Labor has fundamentally lost control of our borders is one of the key reasons Labor has a $12 billion dollar black hole in its budget.
With boats seemingly lined up over the horizon to get into Australia before the election is held, it is worth analysing what Labor estimated in terms of numbers and the accompanying spend it would need to outlay to process the anticipated arrivals.
Labor budgeted $1.1 billion in the 2012/13 budget for processing asylum seekers.
This was based on the assumption we would get 450 arrivals per month.
That works out at a cost of $203,704 per person based on Labor’s own cost estimates.
Now the problem lies with the amount of people that are actually arriving because it has outstripped even the most horrendous estimates.
Just in April this year alone, 3,436 people arrived on illegal boats, most of whom identified as asylum seekers.
Not 450 a month but instead over 3,000!
So if we extrapolate this monthly figure out for the next 12 months we can expect to cater for 42,232 people arriving by boat in the next year.
So, how much can we be expected to pay to process these illegal entrants to Australia? Let’s go back to Labor’s own figures.
42,232 x $203,704 per person = $7.42 billion
That’s right kids, over SEVEN BILLION dollars just to process them.
This is not the final amount because many of these people will go into the community and be supported with free housing, free access to services and free money from the government to survive.
SEVEN BILLION DOLLARS of our money being used to look after people who decided unilaterally that Australia should be the place that should look after them.
Seven billion dollars is more than the required amount of funding for the full implementation of the NDIS or DisabilityCare as it is now known.
Don’t worry about slugging us taxpayers with yet another tax to pay for DisabilityCare, how about you just shut the doors to illegal boat people, save a boat load of money and put it to use looking after Australians first and foremost.
It’s not that hard surely to see the connection? At this rate we WILL fill the MCG quite quickly wont we Julian Burnside?
(H/T – Michael Smith News)
Dacka's Razor 