Kids Talk Refugees is a project that brought together 18 kids from different social and cultural backgrounds and asked them about asylum seekers.
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Heidi Pett, a producer on the project, told BuzzFeed News that one of the main reasons the project was created was to reach people who aren't into long form analysis or reporting.
"We wanted to break out of the silos of Australian media and politics... There are people who will watch a couple short videos with kids learning and talking about asylum seekers who won't read long form analysis or investigative reporting, and we really wanted to reach those people."
The kids are asked why they think asylum seekers come to Australia:
And if they even know what an "asylum seeker" is:
Kids Talk Refugees asks questions to a range of kids , including some who had an idea of what Australia's detention centres are like.
"It's all well and good to talk to cute Aussie kids in an abstract way about whether this is good or bad," says Pett. "But this shit is happening to kids their own age who are just as ~cute~ and deserving of rights, and I think we forget that sometimes."
The term "boat people" was understood by quite a few of the kids, including those that didn't know what an asylum seeker was.
"Quite a few of the kids hadn't heard of asylum seekers, but had heard of boat people which really says something I think... What really came home to us while making these videos was that kids really shouldn't have to know anything about our immigration policies, least of all have an intimate knowledge of the inside of our detention centres..." says Pett.
Pett describes the empathy from the children as "overwhelming":
"There are a couple of scenes where the kids say that people shouldn't be allowed to come if they were 'being a punk' in the wars or whatever, and a few who thought we should screen people for diseases and to make sure they wouldn't do anything bad, but on the whole there was an overwhelming empathy. "