Last year, Australia received only 1.6 per cent of the asylum applications made across 44 industrialised nations. This is no surprise, as the vast majority of refugees remain in their region of origin. There is no reason to suspect that significant numbers of refugees will make their way here.

There is also an assumption that asylum seekers pose some ill-defined risk independent of their numbers. They do not constitute a threat to Australia's health or security. Humane refugee policies adopted by both parties throughout the 1970s and early '80s facilitated, without crisis or fanfare, the successful integration of refugees, many of whom have come to make a valuable contribution to Australian life.

Albert Einstein was a refugee. Bob Marley was a refugee. The Von Trapp family were refugees. And, today, at least 7 per cent of Australians have been, or have a parent or grandparent who has been, a refugee.

Since 2001, the number of asylum seekers arriving by boat has never exceeded 4 per cent. Most asylum seekers arrive by plane on tourist or student visas and their claims for protection are assessed while they live in the community. If there is an additional or extraordinary risk associated with boat arrivals that requires special treatment, the public has not seen any evidence of it.

Immigration policy is also driven by the assumption that boat arrivals are queue-jumping rule-breakers. It's no surprise that this misconception has lodged itself in popular belief. The Coalition's nine-page border-control policy directions statement uses the word ''illegal'' 25 times - yet there is no rule of international or domestic law that prohibits seeking asylum by boat. The irony here is that while much of the rhetoric casts boat arrivals as lawbreakers, it's Australian governments of both persuasions that violate international law (and, in some cases, domestic law) through their immigration detention policies.