The report is based on extensive research, and was written by three researchers with extensive expertise and experience in immigration policy and immigration law: John Menadue, Arja Keska-Nummi and Kate Gauthier.

The report seeks to place the arrival of asylum seekers by boat in its proper perspective, and emphasises the continued dimensions of international refugee population flows and the continued salience of the UN Refugee Convention. In doing so, the authors demolish a number of the egregious untruths which have distorted the domestic debate, and proffer suggestions about how fact could be communicated more effectively.

The thirteen recommendations made rest on principles for a policy approach which:

* Adheres to all international conventions which we have voluntarily signed
* Quickly and correctly identifies those who are refugees and grants them protection
consistent with UNHCR policies and guidelines
* Protects Australians from any health or security concerns
* Discourages dangerous journeys, but treats fairly those who have made those journeys
* Affords all people in Australia their human rights, as well as access to the legal systems which deliver them, and
* Rapidly returns home in safety and dignity those who are found not to be in need of Australia’s protection.

The recommendations, to be found on pages 7 and 8 of the report, make a number of eminently sensible and practical suggestions about how the debate could be refocused, an emphasis on true regional cooperation incorporated into policy and how we could increase our intake, restrict detention solely to health and identity checks, care for children, and better promote resettlement in the Australian community of refugees.

The question, of course, all this raises is whether, in the current political climate, this sort of approach is feasible.

Fact and value

To large degree the question of asylum seeker boat arrivals is one of heart and head, fact and value. It’s normally assumed that the dominance of the frame which drives current policy is near impossible to shift.

I’m not at all convinced that is the case.

Let’s consider the framing of the debate. This report, for instance, points out that – under both Australian and international law – it is not illegal to seek asylum even if so doing involves actions which might otherwise be illegal. A recognition of that, and fostering an understanding of why desperate people are driven to take actions they would not otherwise take, would be enormously effective.

Fact and empathy go hand in hand.

The questions the Essential Research poll recently asked about degree of concern regarding boat arrivals showed a full 10% less were “very concerned” about boat arrivals when presented with just one fact: that the number of arrivals this year is less than half that of last year.

So, we have just a single fact being able to move opinion substantially. The truth is a powerful weapon.

There have been too many counsels of despair among progressies about the asylum seeker question. The CPD Report provides not just reasoned analysis and substantive policy direction, but also immense resources for persuasion. Mobilising a campaign on such a basis would be a tremendous start.

A new approach from Labor?

As to whether the government will take heed of this report, I’d have to say I think they’d have nothing to lose if they did. It’s intriguing to see Fremantle Labor MP Melissa Parke among the signatories to a letter of support for the report’s findings and recommendations.

It didn’t look like it at the time, but the Gillard government’s approach during last year’s election campaign was actually moderately promising. The Prime Minister did give a speech putting the numbers of asylum seekers in accurate perspective, and underlining the reasons for Australia’s international obligations. There was a clear logic in attempting to separate out some of the concerns the proverbial Lindsay voter had from the issue itself – through launching a debate on sustainability and population.

Of course, this wasn’t unaccompanied by the expected dollop of ‘tough’ rhetoric and visual imagery.

Sadly, but predictably, we’re back in ‘Stop The Boats’ land with the supposed argument for the ‘Malaysian Solution’ reduced to a sound bite about “breaking the people smugglers’ business model”. Once again, the government has allowed its opponents to frame the debate, and its attempts to be proactive are in fact reactive.

There’s been some talk over recent weeks about how Julia Gillard and Labor can respond to an Opposition Leader who’s torn up the rule book. The answer is actually obvious; to get on the front foot and to carve out distinctive positions based on both rationality and values.

The report, and the letter of support, recommend a return to “constructive bipartisanship” on asylum seeker policy. That’s not going to happen. What the government needs to do is to be constructively partisan.

It wouldn’t be too hard to think of an opening – delays to the ‘Malaysian Solution’ and Manus, for instance. It would not be too hard to argue for a completely different path. It would take courage. But Labor has very little to lose, and potentially a lot to gain, by doing the right thing.

Elsewhere: Frank Brennan.

I’m boycotting Channel Nine tonight, because I fear that the Mark Latham “controversy”/60 Minutes cross-promotion will “overshadow” everything else, given that the marauding cub reporter gate crashed Tony Abbott’s veterans affairs announcement at the Penrith RSL this morning. [Video here if you are interested.]

Channel Seven’s not giving all that much prominence to the campaign either, leading with the gaoling of a Brisbane cat killer, a cancer-stricken pensioner’s house burning down in Inala, and more wild weather in Queensland – “an icy burst of Southern air”. Yep, folks, the Ekka winds have come with a vengeance this year. And then we had the beached barge at the Gold Coast. And continuing the nautical theme, 17 sailor folk (“the mates”) have been rescued and are back in town safely.

So on a rather unseasonably cold Brisneytown night, for which we blame “Southern states”, we heard that Julia Gillard’s “message” on Broadband was overshadowed by Mark Latham. Even though Latho gate crashed Mr Rabbit’s event. Seven took a side swipe at Nine, and suggested that the veterans “told him where to go”.

Then we got Mr Rabbit “down with the people” at Rooty Hill and he “spoke their language”, swearing about his mortgage. The opposition leader was said to be “buoyed by his victory”, and Seven borrowed LP’s line about Latham being an equal opportunity pest.

Bob Hawke was wandering around, and Julia Gillard was kissed by shoppers in Perth.

And so it goes…

There mustn’t be any Oakes/Latho self-referential “news” tonight, because wild weather and record rains meant that the weather became the top story (well, top three stories) tonight on Brisbane’s Channel Nine. Then, an elderly pensioner’s house burning down at Dutton Park featured, and then we finally got to election news.

The pick of the day was Julia eating a pie, and Mr Rabbit telling us “Australians need food to eat” – that was the water policy announcement, apparently. But the big story was a selected bit of Labor’s “welfare reform” – those bits to do with punitive stuff on attending interviews and having health checks. The $6000 labour mobility grant just barely slipped by, and then we got a fair dose of the PM slamming non-tech head Tony Abbott on Broadband, before Wayne Swan’s correct description of Andrew Robb’s call for a federal police inquiry into a Treasury leak on opposition costings.

So, tonight, we did get some actual political news, and what’s significant is the slant and the selection.

In part, this may be a response to the incapacity of the press pack to focus on anything much else other than the narrative, or “distractions”, demonstrated in spades on Saturday.

In Perth, Julia Gillard has just announced further education policy initiatives at Challis Primary School – principally, the expansion of NAPLAN testing to an online diagnostic tool for teachers and students, clearer pathways for trades training, the introduction of an Australian Baccalaureate for high-achieving secondary students, and financial rewards for both improved schools and teachers ($75-100 000 for primary and secondary schools, and $8 000 a year for teachers, to be introduced from 2013 when the budget returns to surplus).

Gillard took questions not from the travelling media, but from teachers, early childhood educators and children and parents.

The quality of the interchange was impressive, but ABC News 24 interrupted its coverage, which it wouldn’t have been doing had the question period been full of the usual journo stuff about polls.

Meanwhile, yesterday at Carindale shopping centre in the Brisbane marginal seat of Bonner, accompanied by local MP Kerry Rea, Kevin Rudd took a similar tack, highlighting the concrete benefits of the BER to local businesses and schools, something Labor candidates are doing all round the country. Gillard’s visits to regional Queensland centres have also been preceded by local announcements, ensuring favourable headlines and front pages in local print media, and coverage on local tv news. Labor’s communications and marginal seat strategy, then, has been reframed to short-circuit the circus while the Coalition continues to play a risk averse strategy.

It’s Ekka time, which means Brisbane Channel Nine is broadcasting from the Exhibition Ground, but this sign of local parochialism didn’t mean that Kevin Rudd’s return to the campaign trail led the bulletin. Instead, it was number six. The apprehension of a murder suspect, a woman upset because her ambulance call was not seen as priority, given that her baby’s condition wasn’t life threatening, and sundry other matters.

When we got to the election, it was heavily focused on Kevin Rudd’s press conference this afternoon, where the former Prime Minister gave a feisty and chipper performance, emphasising his desire to defend the government’s achievements against the prospect of an Abbott Prime Ministership. Julia Gillard was shown saying it wasn’t surprising that Labor people with Labor values would come together. Tony Abbott’s health policy was ‘overshadowed’, with his latest slip – “this government” getting more play than the actual detail of the announcement.

It’s pretty obvious that Labor requested Kevin Rudd to do a press conference for tv, so that the vision of his annnouncement made it to front and centre of the tv news.

What was also interesting to me was that Kevin emphasised the national hospitals network, of which not a lot has been made, and was able to convey effectively the message about the GFC.

The spin Channel Nine put on it was Kevin Rudd coming to Julia Gillard and Labor’s rescue.

“The new Julia changes her mind on debates, while the old Tony makes an appearance”, led tonight’s Channel Nine Brisbane bulletin.

Yep, it was that “sexist gaffe”. [Discussion on LP here and over at Hoyden]

Julia getting real apparently is demonstrated by her jumping on the press bus. She then addressed workers on the NSW Central Cost, intoning a few soundbites about jobs and a strong economy.

Tony’s changed his position on the funding of his parental leave. And Jenny Macklin says it’s “a big new tax” which would make all the stuff we buy at Coles and Woolies more expensive.

Tony Abbott said that his “gaffe” wasn’t intended to be offensive, and to say it was is a “Labor party smear”. For reasons unknown, Samantha Maiden, a journo at The Australian was shown saying that he didn’t intend to give offense, but some women had taken offense.

So it goes…

Interesting @PGarrettMP tries to get the strong economy line across but AAP journo just keeps asking about “real Julia” and debate #ausvotes

That’s Katina Curtis, on Twitter just now.

How much more meta can this campaign get? It poses real dilemmas for political communication, which I don’t think either the ALP or the Coalition have really got a grip on. The ‘narrative’ lurches with breathtaking speed, and everyone’s left trying to outrun a moving train.

Social media and 24/7 tv news are factors in all this.

Labor’s campaign was mapped out, in true Hawker Britton style, around a message of the day (announcement, photo op, tie in to broader campaign theme). That worked well at state level for many years. In the federal context, and with the political cycle running at light speed, by the time you get the theme out there, it’s already yesterday’s news.

All that persists is the meta.

So today everyone’s talking about ‘real Julia’ and ‘real Tony’ and the ‘debate on the debates’.

That’s out of both parties’ control. It’s pure momentum, running away from any attempt to corral it.

We really never have seen anything like this in Australian elections. To say that we’re in uncharted waters would be a considerable understatement. You can chuck all the psephological truisms like “no opposition leader has ever won with these ratings” and “no first term government has been defeated since WW2″.

These really are new times.

A slightly different version of this post has been published at The Drumroll.

Channel 9 Brisbane tonight got to the election after stories on the DJs sexual harassment suit, a car crash, a speeding cop driving a police vehicle at 200km/hr who’s been sacked.

The intro was “Julia Gillard threatens to unleash the real Julia on the electorate”, which sounds rather menacing, and then the rest of the story was narrated by Laurie Oakes. Barnaby Joyce, for some reason, got a grab. But Oakes, perhaps dissatisfied that his interview with Tony Abbott hadn’t been the main story, also questioned who the real Abbott was. He then pronounced that it was another day when the PM made herself and Labor’s campaign the story, rather than policy.

Policy did get a mention, but it was over in a few seconds, so I completely missed whatever the policy message of the day from both major party campaigns was.

And so it goes…

Channel Nine led today with a local protest by fisherfolk “venting their fury” about Labor’s plans for marine protection (and Bob Brown got a brief grab with his plans). Nine’s “fishing expert” said “no one is happy, all round this country of ours”, and we heard a lot about “protecting our Australian way of life”. National Party Senator Ron Boswell was there, but there was no attempt to give anyone from the government a chance to respond.

Anyway, that was the lead item on Channel Nine Brisbane. Story #2 was about a mix up where some old folks had been wrongly charged for using the Clem7 tunnel, because their motorised wheelchairs ‘pinged’ the system.

Then story #3 led with “the shadow of Kevin Rudd continued to dog the Labor campaign”, though at least Julia got a 3 second grab on MySuper. The rest of the story was almost entirely about Dolly Downer’s disputed allegations against Kevin Rudd, and it was noted that Rudd denied them and was considering legal action. Tony Abbott got to cuddle pensioners. We then got an update on Kevin Rudd’s health. Oh, and a claim from Nine’s reporter Karen Azzopardi that there was continuing uncertainty about whether Julia Gillard would “campaign alongside him”.

That was it, folks.