When the Abbott government was elected last September, one of the most intractable problems it faced was the flow of boat arrivals on Christmas Island, just off the coast of Java, by people from the Middle East seeking refugee status in Australia. During the period of the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments, the trickle had become a flood. Following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in the late 1990s and sectarian conflict on the Indian sub-continent, the number of asylum-seekers heading to A…
