One of the most passionate and enduring debates in this country has been built on a falsity, a false choice that is being carefully recrafted, repackaged and re-presented on SBS this week, at taxpayer expense.

A comment that sums up the falsity at the centre of this debate and the three-part series Go Back to where You Came From came from one of the six manipulated participants in the show, Darren Hassan, who complained that the group was being subjected to enforced empathy.

Adam Hartup stars in Go Back to Where You Came From. Credit:SBS

He had seen the loaded dice at the centre of the progressive argument about boat people: that if you believe in stopping the small number of asylum seekers who arrive by boat, you are lacking in empathy, lacking in compassion, and probably anti-Muslim.

The entire series is designed to enforce this maxim. The participants are lied to. The audience is lied to. This is an empathy forced march.