MEMO to Julie Bishop: Go back to where you came from. The sooner the better.

Go back to Perth and the world of commercial litigation and spare us your mean-spirited dog-whistling about immigration.

The Deputy Opposition Leader said over the weekend that Australia should sign a deal with Sri Lanka allowing us to deport all asylum seekers from there back to their homeland without even first assessing their claims for refugee status.

This is because, she argues, Sri Lankan asylum seekers are "economic migrants" not real refugees and, as the civil war there is now over, they are no longer in any danger.

On this logic, as soon as the guns fall silent - and in this case it was only after the Sri Lankan army, according to the United Nations, killed an estimated 40,000 civilians in its final, bloody advance - everything is hunky-dory after 26 years of fighting. No hard feelings and all that.

On this logic, Australia would not have accepted thousands of migrants from war-ravaged Europe post World War II because once Berlin had fallen everybody could go back home and live happily ever after.

And this is before even allowing for the fact that such a policy would likely breach our obligations to assess asylum claims under the United Nations Refugee Convention.

Further, Bishop contends that "if the Government grants people from Sri Lanka refugee status, the Australian Government is accusing Sri Lanka of persecuting their own citizens".

There is a lot of assumption in that claim, not the least of which is that it ignores ongoing ethnic tensions between Tamils and the majority Sinhalese, regardless of how benevolent the administration in Colombo might be.

Even if you accept it at face value, the claim is bizarre given Australia's recent history of accepting asylum claims from citizens of countries that are not only not at war, but also considered rather close and important friends.

How, for example, does Bishop's suggestion that we would offend Sri Lanka by accusing it of "persecuting" its own citizens sit with the Howard government's decision in 2005 to grant asylum to former Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin?

Or is that just yet another inconvenient truth for an Opposition which never lets the facts (or some hypocrisy) get in the way of whipping up fear and anger?

&lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=c719983b40" &gt;Where's the compassion and humanity in the asylum seeker debate? Discuss with Paul Syvret&lt;/a&gt;

As it stands, I fear both sides of politics are competing in a race to the bottom in terms of who can promulgate the harshest, most punitive policies to deal with asylum-seeker boat arrivals.

In fact, much of this high-minded rhetoric about needing to deter the boats to reduce the loss of life at sea seems to be just teary-eyed doublespeak aimed at placating the "eff off we're full" brigade.

If there had not been one death at sea and the boats arriving were all seaworthy, can anyone honestly tell me we wouldn't still be having the mandatory offshore detention debate?

No, I thought not. It is more about keeping refugees out than keeping them safe.

If there were any honesty in the debate, we would not only be dramatically lifting our refugee intake, we would be proactive in terms of offering safe passage and resettlement - not waving the threat of being locked up for years on a desolate lump of rock such as Nauru.

If there were any intellectual honesty, we wouldn't see the likes of Foreign Minister Bob Carr - who really should know better - resorting to inflated hyperbole about Australia being at risk of being swamped by more than 180,000 unauthorised arrivals via boat a year (the equivalent of our entire annual immigration intake).

The only thing that lifted my spirits amid this tawdry public debate over the weekend was a joint statement from all of Australia's Christian leaders condemning offshore processing.

"As long as our world is broken and countries are ravaged by war, then people will flee violence and persecution," the statement said.

"As Christians, we are called to cross the road to help, to not turn away those in need."

Well said. Go the churches.

But then we are dealing with politicians like Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, who argues: "I don't think it's a very Christian thing to come in by the back door rather than the front door."

Putting aside the obvious dog-whistle message aimed at stirring up anti-Muslim feelings in that line, we'll give the last word this week to human rights advocate Julian Burnside: "Perhaps Mr Abbott needs to watch The Sound of Music again: the von Trapp family were refugees; the nuns were people smugglers; they did what they could to help the von Trapps through the back door."

Email Paul Syvret

Originally published as Where's the humanity in asylum debate?