To disestablish these camps anywhere, we need to oppose them everywhere

Australia’s economy is increasingly in the doldrums, but our leaders can point to a successful export of their own devising. In the US, the Trump administration is bedding down and expanding its network of punitive refugee camps. Like Australia’s, they have a dual function: as a deterrent to pursuing the right of political asylum, and as a political weapon.

Australia’s nightmare, like the USA’s, has been long in the making. It is a bipartisan creation. Labor, under Paul Keating, instituted the policy of mandatory detention. John Howard did much of the work of shaping it into permanent nightmare, and of turning the issue of refugees into a cudgel with which to smite political opponents.