When it comes to Australia’s treatment of refugees who arrive by boat, there’s at least one thing everyone agrees on: the seriousness of the dilemma. Laborites, Liberals, Greens, advocates and rightwing columnists alike always preface their comments on the debate with a sombre acknowledgement of just how “complex”, “difficult”, “uneasy”, “uncomfortable” and “heartbreaking” it all is.

I’m tempted to use another term: a term that begins with the sixth letter of the alphabet and rhymes with “ducked”.

The situation is ducked. It’s ducked up and it’s been ducked up for a long time.

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We’ve never been overly fond of outsiders around these parts. We became a federation so we could defend ourselves against the “Chinese Pest” and boot out the Pacific Islander labourers we’d brought here to exploit.

After the second world war we viewed the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons in Europe as economic assets who could boost our population. They were welcomed here despite the fact they were refugees, not because of it.

Indeed, Australian representatives who travelled to DP (displaced persons) camps rejected some refugees for resettlement because they had the gall to be single mothers or amputees. Others were knocked back because they were obese, others for their drunkenness.

Personally, I think such drunken fatty boom-bas would have made great Australians.

The White Australia policy was ended and Malcolm Fraser did the decent thing after the Vietnam war, but the good times didn’t last. Hawkie had no time for the “queue-jumpers” and Paul Keating condemned all boat arrivals to indefinite mandatory detention (an “interim measure” that’s lasted for 24 years).

We declared all out war on the people smugglers and refused to show any sympathy for their desperate customers, caught in the crossfire. The story of “Ms Z” is chilling.

She arrived by boat in 1994, seeking asylum from the People’s Republic of China and its draconian one-child policy. Ms Z fell pregnant while in immigration detention. In 1997 all her legal appeals were exhausted and we deported her back to China. She was eight-and-a-half months pregnant. A week after her return, Ms Z was subjected to a coerced abortion.

Almost 20 years later, the horror stories keep coming: Abyan. Human teeth being found in the food on Manus Island. Claims of guards on Nauru sexually abusing refugee children. Kids in detention as young as seven attempting suicide. Footage of Wilson Security employees joking about shooting people seeking asylum.

Earlier this year we found out that suicide attempts are such a regular occurrence on Nauru that guards have been issued with special knives so they can “cut down a transferee who is hanging”.

As per above – ducked.

None of this really smells like hilarity. And yet, at this year’s Melbourne Comedy Festival, I’ve been performing Boundless Plains To Share: a comedy lecture about the history, cost and future of Australia and “border protection”.

Yes, I was very nervous about it, too.

Researching this show has been depressing. I have been wracked with guilt and shame and despaired for humanity, and that’s just from reading over my own jokes.

I have stood in Peter Reith’s living room, flabbergasted at his defence of the Border Force Act. I have looked into the eyes of people who have been broken by our detention system. I have cried. A lot.

And yet I have hope.

I haven’t found a big fat “solution” for all this. What I have found is that while the question of how to deal with people who come to us seeking our help often brings out the very worst in human nature, it can also bring out the very best.

German company Mutanox lost half a million euros last year when it refused to sell razor wire for a fence to keep out refugees.

When train drivers went on strike in September, Melbourne commuters channelled their frustration into raising over $40,000 for the Syrian refugee crisis.

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After seeing images of refugee children drowning in the Mediterranean, a British engineer spent months working for free to come up with a revolutionary piece of sea-rescue equipment called the Centifloat. “I can’t do anything about the bigger problems in the world,” he said, “but I can do this”.

Through the Bicycles for Asylum Seekers Project, a Melbourne man has helped repair and distribute 437 bikes to people on bridging visas. A surf-lifesaver from St Kilda volunteered to go to Greece to help save refugees from drowning. The prime minister of Finland offered to open up his own home to people seeking asylum. In Austria, Syrian refugees were greeted with food and toys and smiles. Tens of thousands people are demanding our government Let Them Stay.

My mum and dad welcomed a Sri Lankan refugee family into our home in Warrnambool.

And there are the stories of the people at the heart of all of this. Sam repaid the $18,000 he received from Centrelink when he first came to Australia. Najeeba has a degree in medical science. Mohammad was school captain in Shepparton and a few weeks ago he went to Geneva to address the UN Human Rights Council.

Yes, the status quo is ducked. But I believe a fundamental sense of decency lives in the hearts of my fellow citizens and that sense of decency compels us to recognise things cannot go on like this. We can’t change what has gone before but we can – and we must – change things now.

Boundless Plains to Share runs at the Melbourne Comedy Festival until 17 April