Activists have launched a campaign that aims to change how many voters feel about asylum seekers before the September election.
They say it's been prompted by what they call the myths and misinformation that have shaped the recent policy debate.
Santilla Chingaipe reports.
The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre says it will be taking its campaign through Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland presenting facts to cool what's become a highly-politicised debate.
It's called the project 'The Hot Potato', a symbol of the politicisation of the asylum seeker debate in Australia.
The non-government organisation provides advice and resources for refugees, but its director Jana Favero, says there's a real need for it to speak out, too.
Jana Favero says the move to keep asylum seekers out of Australia would not be an election issue if politicians didn't keep telling voters it was.
She says the debate has deteriorated from a bipartisan issue in the Whitlam-Fraser eras to become an issue full of lies and fear-mongering.
"You've got our Immigration Minister talking about asylum seekers and saying they'll never be resettled here. You've got our Foreign Affairs Minister saying they're economic migrants. They're called illegals. They're called queue jumpers. So the attitudes have been shaped and formed with this sort of rhetoric over the last 30 to 40 years and so no wonder the public are demanding a hard line because they've only heard of the myths and misperceptions from our politicians and our media as well."
Jana Favero says the Hot Potato campaign will aim to take the heat out of the debate, enabling people to have a conversation based on facts, not fears.
She says the Resource Centre will be stressing its view that the major parties' policies are inhumane and not in line with their stated aim of saving lives.
"The government, and supported by the Opposition as well, are very much putting forward a punitive approach and an approach based on deterrence, which is not we agree with. So it's really hard on the one side they're saying ' we are so compassionate we want to avoid deaths at sea but we will put people in prisons, in detention centres including children, we will send them overseas, they'll never have a chance of being resettled in Australia'. So it is quite a contradictory message that's coming from them. I've no doubt that people want to stop deaths at sea. I absolutely agree with that. But the way that the government has chosen to go about it is in a completely inhumane way."
Imogen Bailey, who appeared on the SBS Television program "Go Back to Where You Came From" is working with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre on their campaign.
She says while making program she was exposed to the rawest side of the asylum seeker issue and now can't turn her back on it.
Ms Bailey says she's concerned that public is being told that asylum seekers are criminals and in competition for jobs and resources with Australians.
"But what I am positive about is that Australians are starting to wake up to the disgusting politics that's going in in this country. The first thing is that we are rejecting the current leaders. And the second thing is that we will begin and we are beginning to reject what is being sold to us about asylum seekers and refugees. I have never had more people, since I've become involved in this cause, come up to me and say 'you know what? I want to know what's the truth? What's really going on?' And I think that's because Australians know they're being lied to."
The Hot Potato campaign launch at Federation Square in Melbourne included a panel of asylum seeker activists and others interested in the issue.
The crowd heard from singer Mark Seymour, who told of how performing an immigration detention centre led to him raising asylum seeker issues at his regular gigs across the country.
"The consequences of me saying that I had played in a detention centre, I have had nothing but positives responses. People just can't believe I've mentioned the 'A' word, asylum seekers, and they come up to me after the show, they're really keen to talk, they're really thankful that someone is actually bringing it home in that environment that's normally associated with consuming fairly large sums of alcohol and leaping around the room in excitement. So I think that this conversation has huge amount of potential to change people's attitude to asylum seekers."
Barrister Julian Burnside, a high profile critic of successive government policies towards asylum seekers, was also part of the panel that launched the Hot Potato campaign.
"It's the way you feel changed when you actually meet some refugees, when you come face to face with people who have been demonise by the politicians and suddenly you're there in front of them and you realise that they are frightened human beings just like yourself. It's much harder to be cruel to someone when you've looked them in the eye. And our governments and the opposition are trying to prevent us from looking them in the eye so that they can keep on being popular by being horrible to them. It's a great thing. I guess a lot of people here have met refugees. If you haven't, suspend judgement about the whole issue until you meet some."
