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This is not a matter of holding the moral high ground but of remaining grounded. Refugee advocates should support campaigns to bring people to Australia from Nauru and Manus, but as part of a more universal and explicit commitment to respect people who seek asylum.
The link Manne makes between Australian treatment of people seeking protection and the abiding cultural demand to control outsiders is illuminating, and his description of the 'Canberra mindset' is persuasive. But the resistance from the sector to negotiation about Manus and Nauru has more complex roots than Manne allows.
The EU is facing the consequences of its own actions. It will not link political violence to migration, and wishes to maintain its humanitarian façade, so there is little opposition to what Salvini and his ilk are perpetrating against human rights. The web is now so tangled it is no longer a mere issue of racism.
'A year on, Paul would be well pleased. On seeing this full church, he would think, "I can still draw a crowd." On seeing the sanctuary, he would think, "They need one Jesuit and two diocesan priests to replace me."' Homily on the first anniversary of the death of Fr Paul Coleman SJ.
In the five years I worked in refugee law, some of the most complicated challenges I encountered were questions regarding the 'truthfulness' or 'credibility' of an asylum seeker's claims. These subjective findings of credibility can make the difference between a person being granted asylum or being turned away.
It's hard to reconcile the reality for children on Nauru with our comfortable lives, especially when politicians repeatedly tell us that there aren't kids on Nauru or that medical professionals are exaggerating the problem or asserting it's just behavioural issues with the children. Would our leaders really deceive us?
Some days I feel like a people trafficker, though I'm not making a zack out of the trafficking. Other days I see myself as a latter-day Oskar Schindler. But mostly I just feel trapped along with the 1000 refugees and asylum seekers I'm doing my not-very-successful best to get the hell out of an open prison called Bangkok.
Hopefully Australia will take stronger measures against what is effectively a one party state that ruthlessly crushes opposition at home and seeks to intimidate and threaten critics abroad. It is not surprising that after 25 years, I am again seeing Cambodian asylum seekers.
This remarkable policy of what Dr Eve Lester calls 'planned destitution' combines the most extreme instincts of neoliberal, nationalist and authoritarian thinking. Fundamentally, it derives from the Minister for Home Affairs' far reaching powers to determine the rights and entitlements of non-citizens such as people seeking asylum.
We had some books at home so I wasn't wholly deprived but I did have to discover reading without any real parental guidance; English wasn't even our home language. But when I started working at my local public library, it became clear that while I might have been the child of refugees, for many, libraries themselves were a refuge.
The adoption of the GCM should not be politicised as it is a non-binding framework that benefits our country, the international community and migrants. Migration is a global phenomenon, not a situation that single countries can deal with in isolation. Australia has nothing to lose and much to gain from adopting the Compact.
Indifference to human life is what made Australia, and it still permeates its approach to crises. As with many things, Indigenous experience provides the lens with which to see things clearly. First Nations people know the fatal measure of our indifference. It manifests in many other areas too.