That’s been true for at least 15 years, when former Prime Minister John Howard prospered so handsomely from his asylum-seeker policies, from which the current program is derived. Repeated polling since 2013 shows that whatever those policies seem to be, somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of Australians think they should be even more severe. Around another 35 to 40 percent think the policy is about right. The view that our policy is too harsh tops out at around 27 percent.

These figures scarcely change, no matter how many reports come out from Human Rights Watch, the United Nations or Australia’s own Human Rights Commission.

You see, we’ve “stopped the boats.” That quote doesn’t come from anyone in particular. It’s everyone’s. Mr. Turnbull’s predecessor, Tony Abbott, most relentlessly repeated it, but it’s on high rotation in every government official’s playlist. Whatever the scandal, whatever the latest account of refugee children attempting suicide or detainees setting themselves on fire, it’s all anyone need say.

This is the great sedative of Australian politics: dulling our attention, rendering all else some indecipherable white noise we only vaguely register before we fall asleep. Then we can snooze through any bombshell. Even Amnesty’s language isn’t arresting anymore. Merely a year and a half ago a United Nations special rapporteur found systematic violations of the Convention Against Torture. None of it registers because as long as boats carrying asylum seekers aren’t making it to Australia, all is justified.

So Australia’s detention regime becomes virtuous, brutality repackaged as compassion. Those languishing in detention centers, even the people who die there thanks to violence or woefully inadequate medical care for simple afflictions, they’re just a warning to others who might be tempted onto a boat. It’s true the journey is deadly, but it’s also true that Australia is using the more than 1,200 other people stuck in limbo in Nauru and Papua New Guinea as a deterrent. These are the starkly utilitarian terms of the policy: We sacrifice the lives of innocent people to dissuade others from risking theirs.