Bartering on refugees: the Costa Rica solution

Turnbull was also in the sweetening mood, promising to add $130 million over the course of three years towards "peace building and assistance to refugees, forcibly displaced communities and host countries." This is additional to the $220 million in assistance to Syria and countries in its proximity.

Playing this electoral game of pick and choose comes with its risks. Polls held in various countries show certain fears about that great phantom known as Muslim migration. An Essential opinion poll fanned a few flames in that regard, revealing that one in two Australians favoured a ban on Muslim immigration.

The consequence of this is potentially retarding, with Australian politicians reluctant to acquiesce to the country's receiving of refugees from some of the more traumatised areas of the planet. Far better, then, to receive more desirable types, if only on paper.

The Australian proposal has another disruptive point. It creates a Costa Rica exception in the bargaining house, suggesting that the Obama administration has been lending its ear to Canberra. As the Sydney Morning Herald (Sep 22) observed, the US program "echoes Australia's use of Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea."

Refugees warehoused like disreputable goods on Manus Island and Nauru face interminable periods of detention and the promise that they will never be allowed to settle in Australia. But they were the silent figures in a debate that has degraded them. Their plight is effectively being globalised.