I wonder if the Liberal Party's number crunchers have looked into how many votes they'd actually lose* if Tony Abbott announced tomorrow that if elected, he would withdraw from the UN Refugee Convention?
(*i.e., how many of the latte-sipping voters, [I accept there'd obviously be quite a few], who would doubtlessly be outraged at such a move, would have voted for the Libs in the first place [if he did not take that radical course of action]? My guess would be close to zero.)
On the other hand, I suspect it would win him a large number of votes from the traditionally Labor-voting outer suburban electorates where many of the economic refugees are settled in (for others) hard to find government housing.
Now that the 'welcome all' mat has been well and truly put outside our front door, any bets on how long it will be before we see a larger ship (or multiple smaller boats travelling in company) with a far larger load of economic immigrants aboard than the 50 to 100 that's become the standard load? (It must have crossed the minds of both the people smugglers and their clients that 500 to 1000 arriving in one hit at Christmas Island would force the Australian government to move them elsewhere immediately, and now, 'elsewhere' is only one place - the Promised Land.)
To give an aviation analogy, does this High Court decision usher in the Jumbo era of irregular immigration?