If you judge political success by delivering on a three-word slogan at any cost, then Tony Abbott’s asylum policy has succeeded. He has for now, as he promised, “stopped the boats”.



But if you judge success as delivering on the intent of a policy in a responsible way, while trying to minimise soaring collateral damage, then his asylum policy has been a dismal failure.

Many disagree that “stopping the boats” was ever a necessary or pressing aim in the first place. But given the position of both major parties at the last election, it was widely supported in the electorate. However, even if “stopping the boats” is the starting point, the government never spelled out these consequences.

There wasn’t a voiceover at the end of the election ads, low and quickly spoken like the health side-effect warnings at the end of pharmaceutical adverts, saying: “May require 3,000 people to lose their minds while waiting for years in tropical prisons, may require stretching to breaking point Australia’s compliance with international law, may require sending people back to possible persecution, may involve ridiculous attempt to assess asylum claims with four questions via video conference on the high seas, may require riding roughshod over the high court and the parliament, may require refusing to answer any legitimate question put to the minister by the press, may require treating the voting public like imbeciles.” There was no asterisk in the print advertisements directing voters to that kind of fine print.

On Thursday Scott Morrison stood in front of what seems to be the new logo for “Border Force” – an ominous blank face in a helmet looking like a cross between Darth Vader and Daft Punk – and once again declared that Operation Sovereign Borders had been a raging success and that the government would not “budge” or “roll over” or “be intimidated”. No actual answers to questions of course. No information about what the government is doing with 153 Tamils somewhere on the seas. Just patronising assurances that there would be no signs of weakness in the “protection” of Australia’s borders.

Determined to tick a box and claim political victory and vindication – the government’s benchmark for success remains to make sure not a single asylum seeker arrives by boat, whatever the cost and whatever the policy chaos. And the cost and chaos are increasing.

Altogether the lives of tens of thousands of human beings are collateral damage in the Coalition’s determination to take the hardest possible line to prove a political point.

There are the 1,202 on Manus Island and 1,191 on Nauru. Health and mental health problems are endemic. They are now being slowly processed but have no idea how or where they will be resettled. Contrary to the original rushed agreement with the former Labor government, Papua New Guinea may not be willing to resettle all of those on Manus who are found to be genuine refugees.

Its immigration minister, Rimbink Pato, has said he will choose which asylum seekers are resettled on the basis of their skills, which raises obvious questions about what will happen to the ones he does not select. Those found to be refugees on Nauru will be temporarily settled in that country (unemployment rate 90%) before possibly being sent to Cambodia, a impoverished country with which there is also no finalised resettlement agreement.

Amnesty International and the UNHCR have criticised the centres for having inadequate health services, water and sanitation. Stuck in these places and on Christmas Island with no idea what the future holds some asylum seekers have attempted suicide and self-harm. No one has been charged over the killing on Manus Island of the Iranian asylum seeker Reza Barati.

Then there are the 20,000 or more asylum seekers living in sanity-sapping limbo in Australia, refused permanent protection, without the right to work, subsisting on a payment of 89% of unemployment benefits, also with no idea what will happen to them, or when.

The government is also fiercely determined to show no “weakness” when it comes to the cases of these poor souls.

After the Senate struck down the government’s attempts at reintroducing temporary protection visas, the high court ruled the government was obliged to process them under the existing law. But the government is now reaching for truly extraordinary measures to circumvent the court ruling as well as the Senate and put itself above both.

It will now argue that it is against the “national interest” for any asylum seeker arriving by boat or plane to ever be given a permanent visa – upending every previous understanding of a government’s obligation to protection – to make sure protection is only ever temporary for people they insist on referring to as “illegals”. When TPVs were used under the Howard government they had serious mental health consequences for the refugees, and the deterrence impact is surely minimal since all the other “border protection” measures have stopped the boats anyway.

And new legislation will make it much more difficult for even those TPVs to be awarded – including changing the definition to assess their risk of persecution from one that effectively says they cannot be sent back if there’s a 10% chance they will suffer persecution or significant harm, to one that requires a greater than 50% chance.

“This is an acceptable position which is open to Australia under international law and reflects the government’s interpretation of Australia’s obligations,” Morrison said when he introduced the changes. The Senate, thankfully, appears likely to take a different view and decide we are in fact not a country that thinks it is acceptable to take an each-way bet on returning someone to possible torture or persecution.

The cost to Australia’s international reputation could also be high. If the government is in fact doing a four-question rapid assessment of Tamil asylum seekers on the high seas before returning them to the Sri Lankan navy, the UNHCR seems pretty clear this is in breach of our obligations.

“UNHCR considers that individuals who seek asylum must be properly and individually screened for protection needs, in a process which they understand and in which they are able to explain their needs,” it said on Thursday night in a statement. “If protection issues are raised, they should be properly determined through a substantive and fair refugee status determination procedure to establish whether any one of them may be at risk of persecution or other serious human rights violations …

“Anything short of such a screening, referral and assessment may risk putting already vulnerable individuals at grave risk of danger.”

And Abbott’s assurances that Sri Lanka is not at war any more do not actually address the very real human rights concerns about that country raised by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, nor remove the possibility that a Tamil sent back after four questions on a videolink could be returned to persecution.

The breach of Australians’ normal understanding of a government’s obligation to tell citizens what it is doing is also extreme. We have reached a situation where the government is accused of breaking international law, using the Australian navy, off the Australian coast, and the relevant minister says he will answer questions when he decides an incident is significant, and in his view, this one is not.

And despite refusing to provide its citizens with basic facts, the government is happy to shower them with inflammatory rhetoric that with ever-decreasing subtlety links “border security” with “national security” and the arrival of asylum seekers with some kind of undefined threat to public safety.

The diplomatic cost is also high. Boats, of course, did not stop setting off on the journey to Australia – with the real risk of drowning at sea – as Guardian Australia documents in this data blog. They were just not allowed to arrive, with eight known boatloads of asylum seekers returned to Indonesia, one return resulting in the Australian navy violating Indonesia’s territorial waters. The government’s silence was in part about allowing the current president, Bambang Susilo Yudhoyono, to save some face on the highly sensitive issue of maritime sovereignty. In recent weeks there has been a public thawing, underlined by the meeting between Yudhoyono and Abbott. Both candidates in the Indonesian presidential election may well take a different view.

The turnbacks, the hardline rhetoric and the determined use of offshore processing have largely achieved the government’s myopic aim.

And Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison remain jubilantly confident voters will reward a promise kept through unwavering resolve and will disregard the mounting costs and side-effects. They just aren’t confident enough to openly explain those costs, apparently believing the electorate won’t care, or won’t notice.