I have never written before about Australia's "Pacific Solution". Most people I know deplore it, on moral grounds. Innumerable commentators – most notably in these pages, the redoubtable Waleed Aly – have exposed the myths and secrets and lies we allow to shield us from the brutal reality of Nauru and Manus Island; what Aly calls "factories of mental illness".

When you've got the likes of Aly on the case, you don't need Jonathan Holmes. And besides, I have a problem. Though I agree with almost everything he and other refugee advocates have to say about the practical evils and the moral bankruptcy of "off-shore processing", I don't believe one should pontificate about a policy unless one has some vaguely practical alternative to propose.

I have never had one.

Perhaps that's not surprising. After all, a succession of Australian governments, backed by the policy brainpower of one of the world's finest public services, has been gnawing fruitlessly on this bone for nigh on 25 years. The Pacific solution was John Howard's desperate resort in the wake of the Tampa incident. Kevin Rudd shared the moral abhorrence of those who opposed it, but reality defeated him. The boats started landing again. A trickle soon turned into a flood. The East Timor solution, the Malaysian solution, came and went. It was the Pacific Solution that stopped the boats the second time, as it had the first.