Can we rescue refugee politics — and redefine who belongs in Australia, while we’re at it?

“There’s nothing this government can do that is going to be as terrifying as the journeys that these people are going through every day.” This is refugee advocate Louise Calvey’s response to the UK government’s efforts to deploy the same “Stop the Boats!” slogan and strategies that Tony Abbott used a decade ago. Calvey speaks of desperation — the desperation of asylum seekers fleeing their homelands and of the liberal democracies so desperate to stop them.

This desperation is echoed by comedian Hung Le who escaped from Vietnam with his family in 1975. After their boat was ransacked by pirates and left floating without food or water, nine-year-old Le saw “the most amazing thing”:

Old people standing around in a circle. Peeing into a polystyrene cup. And they were sharing it … This is what it came to. People drinking their own piss. That’s the will. That’s the…