​Australia Is Not Increasing its Refugee Intake Despite What Headlines Tell Us

If you glance at today's headlines as sadly most Australians only ever do, you will come away completely misinformed about the Government's latest reaction to the Syrian refugee crisis.

The Guardian tells us, "Australia To Take More Refugees." Fairfax informs us that "We Will Welcome More Syrians: PM" and the Herald Sun leads with "PM Rescue Mission."

Sounds great. If only it were true.

Let's be clear. We are not increasing our refugee intake. Australia currently takes 13,750 refugees per year. This number is reduced from the previous Government's 20,000 annual intake a figure that is, in the scheme of what is happening in the world right now, is appallingly low.

Sure, the Prime Minister Tony Abbott has agreed to take in more Syrians refugees—but only by reducing our intake of refugees from other countries. So while we are still only accepting a total of 13,750 refugees annually, the cleverly worded press release and incredibly lazy journalism would leave the average person on the street believing that we have increased our intake.

Just to be clear here is how it will work. Say the Prime Minister decides to take an additional 2,000 Syrian refugees, those refugees will come out of the existing 13,750 annual intake. That means 2,000 desperate people from somewhere else will miss out.

And if you think that sounds uncharitable you'd be right.

Here's how we rank worldwide in our intake of refugees: By total number of refugees we are 48th in the world. Compared to our population size we are 62nd. Compared to our national wealth/GDP we are 85th. Pretty unimpressive right?

Australia has the harshest asylum seeker policies in the western world. Since 2001, when we started sending asylum seekers arriving by boat to offshore detention camps on Nauru and Manus Island we have been breaking the Refugee Convention and committing human rights abuses. Australia runs camps on Nauru and Manus Island costing taxpayers over a billion dollars a year. Women and children are sexually abused there. 2 men have died on Manus in our camp. We have bribed the Cambodian government, paying them $AUD55 million to take 4 asylum seekers from Nauru. We tow back boats. All of this is fact. And we allegedly pay people smugglers.

Incredibly Tony Abbott sent Immigration Minister Peter Dutton on an emergency flight last night to Geneva to meet with the UNHCR to see how we can help. It's a little hard to swallow considering in March this year in response to UN condemnation of our refugee policy our PM had this to say, "Australians are sick of being lectured to by the United Nations."

Peter Dutton doesn't need to fly to Geneva to hear what the UN wants us to do. I can tell you what they want us to do. They want us to close offshore detention camps, stop torturing people and increase our overall intake.

We are not taking in more refugees. We are increasing the number of Syrians within our current intake. That is all. Lets be clear. And lets call for truth, or at the very least some proper rigour in our journalism.

Eva Orner is an Academy and Emmy Award winning Australian documentary filmmaker. Her latest film Asylum will be released in Australia in April, 2016.

Follow Eva on Twitter