Hot spot: The Manus Island centre. Credit:Getty Images More than two centuries later the same question of responsibility is being played out in Australia's controversial border protection policy. Where does the responsibility lie for asylum seekers who have been sent to Papua New Guinea by the Australian government? Whose fault is it that a 23-year-old asylum seeker died in the midst of a violent incident nearly two weeks ago? And why has not one of the claims of the 1332 asylum seekers on Manus Island been processed since the centre opened in November 2012? Responsibility for Australia's processing centre on Manus has been blurry in practice, but in theory at least, it's clear. In a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday, the secretary of Immigration and Border Protection, Martin Bowles, was blunt: "We will assist PNG wherever we can, and we do, but PNG are responsible for dealing with the assessment of refugee claims in that case, and Nauru is for Nauru claims."

The details of the deal were spelt out in the September 2013 Memorandum of Understanding, signed by then prime minister Kevin Rudd, which states that the PNG government will make the sole assessment of whether an asylum seeker is considered a refugee. According to Professor Jane McAdam from the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the University of NSW, this means PNG can do what it likes. "We can't force PNG to do anything," she said. "Whereas we have a migration act, there's not a domestic law [in PNG] that provides a framework for this. The whole policy is around outsourcing.'' The agreement provides no timeframe for processing the asylum seekers transferred by Australia to PNG, no instructions in how those found to be genuine refugees are to be resettled, nor how they should be supported financially. "It's deliberately very vague," Professor McAdam said.

No PNG authorities responded to questions from Fairfax, including on the cause of the processing delay. Australia's travel advice on PNG warns visitors to exercise caution when travelling to the country, advising tourists to be aware of possible risks including violence in large crowds, gang rape, ethnic tensions and carjacking. PNG is one of the worst countries in the world for sexual abuse, according to a 2012 World Health Organisation report. And yet, according to the terms of the agreement with Australia, this is the country where asylum seekers who are found be genuine must resettle. Yet even if the processing was to be accelerated, things are likely to get worse for the asylum seekers resettled in PNG, warns Professor Stephen Howes, director of the Development Policy Centre at the Australian National University. "The tension or the conflict will get worse," he said. "The potential for things to go wrong will increase. It's not a credible deal.''

In the absence of processing of their claims, it is unclear how many of the asylum seekers on Manus Island are genuine refugees. But between 2010-11 and 2012-13, 80 per cent to 90.3 per cent of people who arrived in Australia by boat were later found to be refugees and to have the right to Australia's protection. Former immigration ministers have spoken out against the current policy. "This is brutal behaviour from the Australian government and opposition," Stewart West, the former Hawke government immigration minister, wrote for Fairfax on Thursday. "We have reneged on our responsibilities." The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is also highly critical. A report published in November said Australia could not outsource its legal obligations. "The physical transfer of asylum seekers from Australia to PNG, as an arrangement agreed by two 1951 Refugee Convention states, does not extinguish the legal responsibility of Australia for the protection of the asylum seekers affected by the transfer arrangements,'' it said.

The report, completed after visiting the site in October, stated there are significant problems on the island. There is no fair, efficient and expeditious system for assessing claims; nor does PNG provide humane conditions of treatment in detention, it said. Less than two weeks ago, those warnings were borne out when an Iranian asylum seeker was killed and scores were injured after an outbreak of violence at the centre. G4S, the security guards hired to protect the detainees, are implicated in the violence, as are local PNG authorities. On Wednesday night, the department released its terms of reference for an independent inquiry by former secretary of the attorney-general's department Robert Cornall into the incident. There is no mention of the Minister's actions, nor the conduct of his department. The Greens have launched their own senate inquiry due next week into the conduct of the PNG police, subcontractors, and the behaviour of the Minister in an attempt to answer questions about the line of responsibility. Loading

"The Department's review simply isn't good enough," Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said. The Immigration Department has confirmed that no claims have been processed to date.