Refugees are going to come or try to, no matter where. The current govt and opposition are fake humanitarians saying they are doing this to stop encouraging people to take risky journeys. Then they lock them up in places where they get raped or tortured, or send them back to countries like Iran who were apparently part of the axis of evil only 12 scant years ago.
If they're coming and they're refugees fleeing war/police states etc, break the business model of people smugglers by transporting them instead. Stop them coming in shit boats, and take them across in seaworthy vessels flying our flag. In a practical sense, you can't fit *all* of them here, but making a genuine effort to take as many as possible gives us a stronger position to get other countries on board and maybe then countries like various pacific island nations, SE Asian countries, NZ, maybe even further afield will help out.
If they are economic migrants, the inference is they are people prepared to work. So perhaps if you accept them (assuming they can't demonstrate a persecution in their homeland) then you can tie social service support to them working in rural towns. They get support in transitioning into the country, they get to do work/training in places with skills shortages like inland WA and Queensland, and smaller shrinking towns get access to more support services as a consequence of hosting people who are functional and capable of working without requiring trauma counselling in the same way a war refugee would. That means they don't have to spend $2500 for a plumber to come from the next town to unblock a drain because the towns get big enough for plumbers to live there instead.
In the end they are all people like you or I or anyone else in this country, and I'd much rather we give them a go first before packing them off to be raped and tortured by former soldiers acting as hired thugs on islands with no oversight.
