Australia has space for refugees.
Camera IconAustralia has space for refugees. Credit: Supplied/Getty Images

Opinion: Australia has space for refugees

Andrea Callaghan, HiltonFremantle Gazette

THE Australian population is 24 million at the moment.

And 51,637 refugees arrived by boat between 2009 – 2013 (before human trafficking to “concentration camps” on Manus and Nauru started in 2013). This is an average of 10,300 refugees per year arriving by boat.

If we accepted all boat arrivals as refugees (which we wouldn’t – historically we accepted about 93 per cent), this would have meant we accepted one refugee per 2330 Australians per year.

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These are people have lived though hell beyond belief in their homelands and then a further four years of another kind of hell – living in the community on bridging visas and on Manus and Nauru in a kind of purgatory, not knowing if they will be safe or sent back to their persecutors.

Not a big deal really for the land of boundless plains to share.

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