Have you ever wondered what life is like as an asylum seeker? Award-winning novelist Mark Haddon wrote an article for The Observer on documenting just that.

I start by asking why she had to leave Uganda and I regret it immediately. It’s a horrible story and she has to stop several times because she is crying. I tell her we can talk about something else, but she insists.

I realise later what a stupid question it is. It’s the one every refugee gets asked when they apply for asylum. It’s the one asked in every newspaper article about the subject, every television report, every radio programme. Is this person’s claim justified? Did these things really happen to them?

You couldn’t spend five minutes with Sergey, or Mariam, or Margaret without believing their stories. But to ask whether they might be lying is to miss the point. The point is this… Imagine what it must be like to live this kind of life, to leave everything behind, your job, your family, your home. To travel to Stuttgart in the back of a truck. Or Oslo. Or Rotterdam. Any place where you don’t speak the language. You have no friends. You sleep in the street, or share a house with strangers who speak yet another language. Imagine living on £35 of Asda vouchers a week. Imagine not being able to see your family. Then ask yourself what kind of experience would make this kind of life preferable to going home?

It’s pretty sad to think that one of the things that Australia exports to the world is how to treat refugees like scum and shirk your responsibilities towards them.