Today we saw the tragic sad and obscene loss of life on the coast of Christmas Island. I felt sick watching images of the desperate Australians do their best to rescue the dozens of poor refugees being smashed onto the rocks by the rough seas.

In my adult life I have always criticised Australia's inability to stem the tide of refugees coming to Australia without due process. These 'queue jumpers' in my opinion destroy our ability to have proper settlement and assimilation abilities for our immigrants. They also send signals back to others to join them in their illegal entry methods.

But no one deserves what has happened to these people today and the many more before them that have received the same perils. Our coastline is littered with shipwrecks from the days of mass migration to Australia's Freedoms and Opportunities so although this is not at all new to our narrative it is totally avoidable in this day and age.

I am sure that thanks to me being me, that is someone who stands up for my beliefs I would without question be persecuted if I were from Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan and I too would get the hell out of there if I wanted to live. However there is a big difference between getting out of a Nation that persecutes you and travelling past dozens of countries to get to one that offers economic incentives to get there rather than just maintaining life. Me being stubborn and actually having conviction I'd probably go next door and do my best to bring about change in my homeland. However the incentives Australia gives to desperate people are just too high, clearly as people are dying enroute to this country. The Howard government did take away the economic incentives of Australia as a destination for migrants, he did however send clear messages that there was a process to go through to be part of the economic benefits and it worked.

I can only hope that this tragedy to befall refugees being smuggled by human traffickers into Australia will finally galvanise Governments to do everything in their power to deter such fruitless journeys into the unknown