Australia has the benefit of being an island. They only have to police the seas and airports. Of course, we too are an island and we too only have a few entry points to police, which we do. Arguably, the ferry and EuroTunnel crossings are not policed well enough, but for us, solving that problem still won't solve the problem as a whole.
Being part of the EU, we have a responsibility to help deal with the immigration problem faced by all other EU countries. For instance, do you think it's right that Italy or Greece should face the immigration "burden" on its own? I don't.
Finally, this rose-tinted view of the Australian immigration policy is laughable. Australia has almost twice the net migration rate (5.76 migrants per 1,000 population) of the UK (2.56). Or in real terms, 212,000 net migration into Australia in 2014, compared to 320,000 for the UK (where most of the migrants are from the EU). The Australian system would only work if we were outside the EU and even then, wouldn't actually make much difference.
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