Closing Manus Island's detention centre: the search for alternative cruelties

The Labor opposition has decided to monetise the issue, hoping that figures, rather than compassion, will win the day. Instead of focusing on the central premise of international refugee law, the government in waiting has found a different, noble alibi: the Australian tax payer.

"We'd like the minister," stated Shadow Immigration Minister Shayne Neumann, "to tell us how much is a substantial amount of money. We need to know and the Australian public need to know because these are tax payers' dollars."

Neumann, taking the low pragmatic ground, has also sought to speed up negotiations on finding another country willing to accept Australia's refugee and asylum seeker cargo while working more closely with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

On costing matters, he would be on even better ground suggesting something unthinkable to policy hacks within his party: closing the centres would achieve staggering savings for the commonwealth government, somewhere in the order of $3 billion. The figure comes straight from the Parliamentary Budget Office, though critics prefer to regard them as contingent at best.

Neither the Turnbull government, nor Labor opposition, accept that the offshore detention system is beginning to implode. The central premise to its existence is not one of facilitating, but detaining. The operating rationale is one of punishment, not processing.

Closing such centres would save billions and achieve something remarkable in Australian foreign policy: upholding international conventions it has long flouted with a sneer. It will also allow individuals kept in detention for over three years to taste something absent in their emotional diet for some time: the prospect of freedom.