It is surely extraordinary that Australian politics has become obsessed by a relatively small number of people seeking asylum. In 2001, for the first time in Australian history, the issue was central to a federal election campaign. It was so again in 2010 and 2013. Competition between the major parties has amounted to a shameful race to the bottom in Australia’s treatment of asylum-seekers. In this chapter we attempt to explain why the issue emerged when it did and the ways in which political contestation, mass popular concern with immigration and multiculturalism and the requirements of Australian business have interacted to produce, in asylum seekers, an object of political attention out of all proportion to their numbers.