Giving substance to wind

The Coalition is also planning to remove government-funded legal assistance to asylum seekers who have arrived by boat, which would inevitably result in people being returned to persecution and grave danger.

RCOA chief executive officer Paul Power notes: "Australia's asylum process deals with serious matters where lives are often in the balance. For the system to work, to protect the lives which are most at risk, it is essential that claims for asylum are put clearly and soundly."

Moreover, such policies are a clear breach of Art.31(1) of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, which Australia has signed and ratified:

"The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened . . . provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence."

Essentially, an unauthorised entry does not prevent an individual from gaining protection. The very act of seeking asylum is an indispensable element of the human condition. More than a thousand refugees have died trying to reach Christmas Island. But faced with intolerable circumstances at home, they keep coming. Asylum seekers who go in search of protection, in particular, outside their region of origin, should not be discredited for doing so.

So why is Australia acting in such a protectionist way? Why is Australia insistent on trying to stop the small but inevitable flow of refugees into this country? Why is there such sensationalist scaremongering when it comes to boat people? What are we afraid of?

The Tampa affair in August 2001, coupled with the events of September 11, pushed the issue of asylum seekers into the forefront of Australian politics and media. This is when the general view of asylum seekers and refugees around the world, and particularly here in Australia, changed.

From that moment all boat people were considered suspected terrorists – Australia's worst nightmare. Afghan and Iraqi Refugees account for half of all refugees. Australia has been, and still is, active in both these wars, yet we struggle to take responsibility for our role in the conflicts. For those who cannot see through the political opportunism, boat people have become strangers to be feared rather than vulnerable people trying to escape the same fundamentalists that we abhor and are so terrified of.

The recent 2013 Federal election saw the major political parties compete to outshine each other in their promises to mistreat boat people. They wanted to create a hostile reception so that it would appear more attractive for asylum seekers to stay in their homelands and face tyranny rather than flee for protection.

Promising to treat innocent people badly doesn't usually win votes and is often considered a sign of a degenerative society. Such a tactic won votes because the debate begins at the wrong place. It starts with the Coalition's statement that boat people are "illegal." It is premised with the language of "border protection" and "queue-jumping," jargon intended to make the average Aussie think that boat people are to be feared, people we need to be protected from.

We forget that boat people who come here to ask for protection are not illegal – they are exercising the right, which every person has in international law, to seek asylum in any country they can access. Over the past 15 years, 90% of boat people have been determined as refugees, entitled to our protection.

The arrival rate over the last 12 months has been higher than the historic average, but this has more to do with the fluctuation of violence around the world, rather than policy. Even now the rate of boat people represents only four weeks' ordinary population growth. Boat people do not present a demographic problem for Australia.