The connection between good intentions and the road to hell is a semi-permeable membrane. We want to 'stop the boats' — ostensibly, so desperate people stop drowning en route — so the Rudd Labor government decided to 'deter' those yet to come by punishing those who had already got here.
When it set up Manus and Nauru Islands to house the camps necessary to warehouse that next wave, off-shore, that government no doubt meant to capitalise on the Salvation Army's reputation for humble charitable interventions to soften any abreaction to its harsh decision, when it contracted them to provide 'humanitarian activities' to ease the suffering of the detained.
That reputation did not match the skills or expected achievements of the Army's workforce. It seems that the maligned, perhaps unfairly, security guards did a better job of communication and community-building than those temporary staff expected to achieve the impossible goal of keeping the peace.
It was tragic and avoidable that some of those whose refugee claims have still not even begun to be processed, would protest and damage property which was meant to improve their living conditions. If we deprive a man of hope, he often goes mad.
On Manus Island, local men, police and security guards have apparently been involved in a terrifying melee, in and out of the 'campus'. The asylum seekers were not armed, yet one is dead, one has been shot in the back, and 77 have (mostly head) injuries. They say that they fled for their lives when PNG police and locals came to 'teach them a lesson' after a few of them fled the wire fence between them and their local neighbours.
We cannot say precisely what happened, but an open inquiry is required. Manus Island is what it has to be: a warehouse for the unwanted. A concentration camp, in fact, but one in which, despite the Morrison wall of soundlessness, unlike its 19th and 20th century counterparts, atrocities cannot occur. Or so we believe, because they, their purpose, and their activities, cannot be entirely hid, thanks to journalism, activism, social media and mobile phones. 'Decent people' cannot do nothing about a wrong they witness.
That is why the Nauruan camp should be closed down — locals have decided to scrap the rule of law and deal with the criminal trials of last year's rioters by exiling the Supreme Court, expelling the Chief Magistrate and forcing the Attorney General to resign, because they want to punish privately within the camp and not in the courts. And that is why we should remove the Manus Island would-be refugees: they are at great risk of death and disability because we put them at risk in a desperately poor and struggling country.
I have a painting in my home called 'Looking at What' (pictures). It portrays the horrified faces of townspeople near an extermination camp who 'did not know' the people in the cattle trucks were also the atoms in the chimneys. The allies brought them in and made them see and smell it. Their eyes and faces can't be forgotten.
What makes human life bearable is our imagination and empathy. Love one another is a pretty simple concept. Dismayingly so. We are not far from our simian cousins who are affronted and become belligerent when people who look, smell and act differently from us encroach upon our personal space. We have, over thousands of years, developed symbols and rituals, protocols and palliatives to reduce what can be a state of constant warfare, to a resilient and thriving interactive 'federation' or commonwealth of self-sufficient communities.
We are bound to thrive when our social capital is high. But it cannot be, when times are tough and resources are few, as for the tribal groups and families living on tribal lands near Manus Island. Tensions build and the threat of violence is at hand.
We created the Manus Island danger. We absolutely know that when a different cultural group encroaches on the space of a people which defines itself by location, religion or visible similarities such as language, dress and attitude, tension is an inevitable result.
We cannot pretend we did not notice. Nor can we be apologists for the 'necessary' peril we created with these concentration camps, as Shadow Minister for Immigration Richard Marles did on the ABC on Wednesday.
We created this risk, intending it to 'deter' both boat people and people smugglers. As a consequence, we have created racial conflict in PNG, and the collapse of the rule of law in Nauru. Now we know, it is surely a duty to re-evaluate a policy that leads to mental illness, destruction of property, hope, imagination and civil society, and death. I think we have a duty to refugees, because we are descended from refugees and may be refugees ourselves, one day. This is a moral responsibility of thinking persons. Spiritual leaders have a duty to act.
What then should we do?
I think we already know the answer to that question.
Moira Rayner is a barrister and writer.