The worse it is, the more effective it is destined to be, and the more it fulfils the philosophical intentions of the policy. This tragedy is not any kind of evidence of policy failure. It is, in fact, the very best form of deterrence. This is what it looks like when the policy works.

For now, we're busily piecing together exactly what happened. Hence the immediate calls for an inquiry. We assemble the facts as a necessary ritual, but it's ultimately an irrelevance. If it turns out that these asylum seekers were set upon by the PNG police or by locals, what difference will it really make? It will merely have demonstrated what we have long known: that PNG is a highly dangerous, deeply unliveable country, racked by lawlessness and violence. The capital, Port Moresby, is routinely listed among the least liveable cities on the planet. Last year, The Economist had it third-worst, besting only Damascus and Dhaka, and therefore ranking below most of the cities these detainees have fled. And that's the reason the policy of transferring boat people to PNG is meant to work: because we're pointedly not offering these people protection if they're found to be refugees.

And if the detainees are found to have triggered the violence? No doubt such a finding would be useful fodder for those determined to present them as villains, undeserving of our sympathy or protection. That, after all, is the narrative that surrounds asylum seekers whenever this sort of thing happens. But that only highlights an essential fact: this sort of thing keeps happening.

Labor, unable to criticise the policy that has delivered us this death because it is theirs, can only present this as some kind of managerial problem; as evidence that the Abbott government is mismanaging the centre. But riotous violence happened repeatedly on its watch, in Nauru and Villawood, as in Baxter and Woomera previously. Onshore, offshore, it didn't matter. Labor's objections - even in this utterly lame, limp form - are political and disingenuous.

When social behaviour repeats itself like this, we have two explanations open to us. One is that this is a coincidence of sorts: that it is nothing more than the misbehaviour of immoral individuals gaming the system, and that these individuals merely happen to pop up repeatedly.