ACCORDING to Opposition immigration spokeswoman Sharman Stone, there has been an "incredible spike" in boat people trying to get to Australia.

It is a comment that betrays a hankering for the good old days, when the Coalition was in office and the politics was easy: whip up a bit of fear about being swamped by refugees, demonise them as terrorists and watch the votes come in. Stone argued on radio on Monday that Immigration Minister Chris Evans had given "quite a bit of encouragement" to people smugglers, particularly with his announcement of the abolition of temporary protection visas and that is why the spike had occurred since August.

Kevin Rudd lent some perspective to this argument by telling parliament there had been four boatloads of people with 48 passengers this year, compared with 148 on five boats last year. That was before yesterday's announcement of another 35 passengers to be transferred to Christmas Island. That makes 83 people this year. Some spike.

The Liberals may be casting around for issues but surely they can do better than this. The parliamentary committee on migration tabled a report this week that put the present events in context. Stone happens to be a member of that committee, although she only joined it on November 10.

The report makes some points that often go missing in the Australian debate. One is that the number of asylum-seeker claims fluctuates in line with conflicts, natural disasters and the activities of people smugglers. Thus, the relatively large numbers of boat people, totalling 9500, coming to Australia between 1999 and 2001 "correlates historically with a global increase in demand for asylum from people from Iraq and the Middle East". In other words, they were mainly fleeing from death and persecution, which is reflected in most of them ultimately being assessed as refugees.

Second, the numbers seeking asylum in Australia are tiny: in 2007, there were 647,200 asylum claims in 154 countries, of which Australia received 3970, Canada 28,340, Britain 27,900 and the US 49,170. The overall numbers fell dramatically between 2003 and 2006 but the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says they rose by 9 per cent last year and it estimates that on present trends they will increase by another 10 per cent this year.

So although Stone blames the "incredible spike" of boat people on Evans encouraging people smugglers, it probably has more to do with international events.

The focus on boat people in Australia overlooks another point made in the committee report: in 2007-08 they comprised 0.6 per cent of people entering immigration detention. They were swamped by unauthorised arrivals by air, making up 9.4 per cent. Why don't we regard them as a threat? Because we don't know about them.

The same applies to the 80 per cent of people in detention centres who are overstayers or have otherwise breached their visa conditions. By the way, we are talking about a grand total of 279 people at present in immigration detention. The UNHCR's regional representative covering Australia, Richard Towle, said yesterday that our 83 boat people compared to the 43,500 people who have crossed the Gulf of Aden into Yemen this year and the 19,900 who arrived in Italy's islands or the mainland by boat from North Africa.

Whether they arrive by boat or otherwise, asylum seekers undergo health, identity and security checks. Despite the hysteria that John Howard and Philip Ruddock played on for such great political rewards in the wake of 9/11, the committee report says that of the 5986 security checks of boat people by ASIO between 2000 and 2002, none were assessed as security risks. Of the 72,688 visa security assessments across the whole of the migration program in 2007-08, two applicants were found to pose a direct or indirect risk.

The International Organisation for Migration Indonesian head Steve Cook told The Australian on Monday that people smugglers had noticed the change in Australian policy and were "testing the envelope". If so, they are acting on ignorance or exploiting it among asylum-seekers.

The changes announced by Evans in July change our border protection policy in only one substantial respect: it abandons the misnamed Pacific solution that shunted people off to Nauru and Manus Island. Instead, people will be taken to Christmas Island for processing. But the Howard government's policy of excising Christmas and other islands from Australia for the purposes of the migration law has been retained, meaning asylum-seekers, except those who arrive by air, will not have full access to the Australian legal system. Customs and the navy are continuing air and sea patrols and working with Indonesia to stop boats coming.

Apart from scrapping temporary protection visas, the main changes are a more humane approach to detention, based on locking up people only as long as required to undergo health, identity and security checks and requiring the Immigration Department to justify every three months why people continue to be held. The committee report suggests the Government go further, recommending specific time frames of five days for health checks, 90 days for identity and security clearances and 12 months for detention.

Stone says these changes should be seriously looked at, in line with ensuring detention is as short as possible. She has no objection to the Government's changes to detention practices but says that the Coalition is still looking at its approach to temporary protection visas. While assiduously non-committal, she at least is not suggesting reinstating the Coalition's cruel and wrong-headed approach of punishing people who flee from death and persecution as a deterrent to others.

But then that may come next if the Coalition thinks it can get some traction from scaremongering over boat people. Is it too much too hope that facts, such as those in the report from the committee of which Stone is a member, can be an antidote to the politics of fear? Perhaps not if combined with political leadership that refuses to go back to such a dark period.