But how, too, could Mr Abbott fail to be moved by the stories of abuse and despair endured by children in detention centres courtesy of successive Labor and Coalition governments? HRC president Gillian Triggs has implored all Australians to read the commission's report, The Forgotten Children. Sadly, the moral price of deterring boat people has been to turn a blind eye to the harming of children. The Herald believes one child being exposed to danger in Australia's care is one too many. Yet Mr Abbott's response to the report was to accuse Professor Triggs of "a blatantly partisan politicised exercise and the human rights commission ought to be ashamed of itself". Later, he accused the HRC of a "transparent stitch-up". Such vitriol is unbecoming of a prime minister and belittles the importance of protecting children.

Given the boat people issue has been divisive for at least 15 years, the HRC report was always going to be politically sensitive. Nonetheless, the Herald believes Professor Triggs could have been more restrained as well. Her approach and language will hardly help attempts at a bipartisan solution. The number of children in detention has dropped sharply under the Abbott government and it deserves credit for that. What's more, the commission should have acted sooner to investigate fully Labor's policy. To deflect criticism of his government, Mr Abbott claims the timing of the HRC report was politically motivated. But Professor Triggs noted that children began to be held longer in detention when the Coalition came to power. What's more, the HRC has a legal duty to monitor how Australia meets its international human rights commitments. The Abbott government politicised the report by waiting three months to table it in any case. The Immigration Department has had the report even longer. The critiques by the department and the government tend to question the reliability of qualified medical professionals who contributed to the HRC investigations. In addition, the government argues the report is history, given the success of the stop-the-boats policy. The Herald disagrees. Mental health issues remain for years after children are released from detention. And don't forget that 330 children remain locked up. Having suffered so long, their incarceration remains open-ended in appalling conditions.

The Coalition justifies detention of children on the basis that its suite of harsh immigration policies has stopped people dying on boats. True, the policies have worked. The questions are at what cost and whether harming children is required for the policies to keep working. The Herald has seen no evidence to show that intentionally exposing children to harm deters asylum seekers. Professor Triggs' explanation is partly right: "The number of boats have declined because we have used military force and patrols to send boats back." Offshore processing and settlement have helped too. As such, the Herald believes treating children humanely would hardly reduce deterrence. Rather, it would fulfil Australia's legal and moral obligations. The Herald believes Australia must release all children in detention as quickly as practicable and not detain any more. Where security and family obstacles arise, there must be a bipartisan pursuit of alternative options to detention. At the same time, the Immigration Minister should cede his conflicted role as guardian of unaccompanied asylum-seeker children to an independent person. As for the HRC's recommendation for a royal commission, neither the Coalition nor Labor will support one because both share the blame for this sad chapter in Australian history. A workable alternative is to refer abuse allegations to the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Abuse. In the meantime, Australians should consider this: What if the government locked up your children?