While I know many of the reasons for this practice (lack of space in prisons -> use of prison hulks; getting rid of criminals), I would be interested to know who supported and opposed it. I tried googling it, but could find very little about it.

Since it was finally abolished in 1868, there had to be some strong opponents of transportation as a form of punishment, right?

Who got the idea to just send convicts off to Australia in the first place? What were their arguments?

What about the church? Did they 'care' about this as they probably would today? Or did they just blindly agree to whatever the gvt thought was right?