WE are not being flooded by refugees. Australia's borders are not under threat. There is no armada of boats preparing to sail our way.
And despite everything Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull and Wilson Tuckey claim in the present hysterical fuss about asylum-seekers, there is one very important truth to remember. This issue is pure politics and both sides are fudging the truth.
No matter how much our politicans fret and fight, there is no reason for Australians to panic about refugees, asylum-seekers, or immigration.
As The Sunday Telegraph reports today, a close analysis of statistics yields several important facts about the real refugee situation in Australia.
The Government and Opposition don't want you to focus on these statistics because they undermine the parties' opportunities to exploit fear and misunderstanding for their own gain.
But the truth is this: the vast majority of the 13,500 asylum-seekers who come to Australia this year will be processed through the formal structures of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.
A little more than a third of them (about 4700 last year) will arrive through our airports on legitimate tourist and business visas and then make claims for asylum while they are on Australian soil.
And a fraction - only 161 people last year, and likely to be closer to 2000 this year - will arrive by boat.
If Australia has any refugee ``problem'', it is plane-people, not boat-people. What's more, the people who arrive by boat are far more likely to be genuine refugees than those people who arrive by plane.
Immigration Department figures show between 85 and 90 per cent of boat people are found to be genuine, compared with between 40 and 60 per cent of plane people.
It's important to remember why these people come to Australia. We are the only country in this region to have promised to protect refugees; we signed the United Nations 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol.
We have accepted that as a stable, safe, peaceful nation, we have a duty to help the world solve the problem of 42 million people who have fled their homes because of war, gross violation of human rights, political persecution, torture and tyranny.
That is a serious obligation and it means that some of those displaced people will take us at our word. They will come here, seeking protection. And we have a duty to treat them _ perhaps for the first time in their lives _ with dignity and humanity.
All that is happening, quietly and smoothly. The boats arriving in Australia's waters are diverted to Christmas Island.
The asylum-seekers are processed (not as quickly as the Government has promised, but within 90 days in 75 per cent of cases) and then either released to live in the Australian community if they are genuine, or deported if they are not.
In regard to plane people, they are granted bridging visas, and allowed to live in the community and work to feed themselves while their claims are processed.
In about half of cases, they are found to be non-genuine, and are deported. So what is all this fuss about? Why is Kevin Rudd beating his chest about being tough on people-smuggling? Why is he rushing to shower Indonesia with money?
Because he thinks you, the voters, are fearful about asylum-seekers and he wants to exploit that fear.
He is performing for your benefit and the benefit of all those Labor Party members who remember what happened in 2001, when Kim Beazley found himself wedged into a very uncomfortable corner.
Mr Beazley was panicked by John Howard's "tough'' rhetoric on boat people, and lost the respect of conservative Australians, who thought he was too weak, and liberal Australians, who thought he was too cowardly to articulate an alternative to Howard's.
Mr Rudd has chosen Howard's way, confirming - if there were any doubt - that our PM learnt well the lessons of Mr Howard's victory and Mr Beazley's demise: populism always trumps principle.
