He said he'd seen "reports" outlining these misconduct allegations, and requested 10 Save the Children staff be suspended and removed from the island. He commissioned an independent inquiry into both the abuse claims and the alleged staff misconduct. No one at Save the Children was given any details of the allegations, or shown the report. But the Daily Telegraph was – and was only too happy to run the scurrilous claims. The headlines were no longer about sexual abuse and self-harm but shadowy plots to undermine the government and train kids to self-harm. This "intelligence report" had come from Transfield, the very outfit whose employees were accused of molestation. These 3½ pages of evidence-less assertions were the basis upon which the minister and the Daily Telegraph effectively defamed the welfare workers. Save the Children has denied all wrongdoing. But how can it defend itself? What were the workers even alleged to have done? Exactly why these particular 10 were suspended remains, even now, a mystery. declared them prohibited immigrants and expelled them

Former integrity commissioner Philip Moss is carrying out his independent inquiry, but it'll take supernatural abilities to get to the bottom of the allegations without letting the workers know what they actually are. Why did the minister seek to pursue these workers? It was plainly to intimidate anyone speaking the truth about conditions on Nauru. Reports of child abuse in detention are not implausible or even unusual. Witness statements, from doctors and NGOs, even immigration department documents, have been emerging for years. Save the Children workers had previously submitted a report to a Human Rights Commission Inquiry documenting instances on Nauru of self-harm, sexual abuse and harassment, mental breakdowns and physical abuse, all involving children. Save the Children employees on Nauru are forbidden from defending themselves or detailing their claims. Most are too scared to speak out, and the organisation itself is ever-fearful that it will lose its contract, leaving the children entirely without protection. It bears repeating: these are trained, professional child welfare workers too scared to speak about the abuse of children. Their fears are well-placed: Morrison has referred the alleged secrecy breaches to the federal police. To use an analogy: Would the government, if presented with evidence by welfare workers of persistent child sexual abuse by a paedophile priest, use a statement provided by his church to remove the workers from the scene, then accuse them of manufacturing the children's claims and training them to lie? This situation is not dissimilar. It is abhorrent.

What Morrison didn't mention was that he had just ordered from detention 29 unaccompanied minors, to live in the community on Nauru. They were officially refugees, reportedly released because of the escalating danger to them in detention – a devastating irony. Did Morrison think they would be safer out of Australia's "protection"? Aged between 15 and 17, these children lived by themselves. Many stopped attending school because of persistent threats of violence. A month after their release, four of these children were severely beaten, some ending up in hospital. It's the most recent in a series of attacks. When the assaults came to light, Morrison told Fairfax Media the incident was "wholly a matter for Nauru". There's an element of theatre, of the absurd or cruel kind, to this approach. In a study published by the Medical Journal of Australia recently, more than 80 per cent of 150 paediatricians surveyed thought that mandatory detention of children itself is abusive. The Australian government placed the asylum seekers on Nauru. Now it takes no legal responsibility for crimes committed either in or outside its detention centre: "The security provider and the management of the centre including the care and welfare of persons residing in the centre remains the responsibility of the sovereign government of Nauru," the minister says.

The Nauru police and justice system, for their part, have The danger is not just upon the poor souls imprisoned in this netherworld. The sort of impunity and absence of morality that underpins this system is a threat to us all. When lazy government rationales remain unchallenged it steadily weakens our capacity to judge government at all. It's rarely noted, for example, that virtually none of the arguments that politicians toss out to justify this abusive regime even apply to children. Did the children in detention choose to make the trip? Did they understand what the risks were? Are they a threat to the Australian community? Can they choose to go home? To punish children for their parents' actions is unusual, to say the least, in a civilised society. Legislation before the Senate seeks to enshrine the immigration minister's discretionary power by taking asylum seeker operations out of the jurisdiction of the High Court. New citizenship laws are also on the cards, and they won't just affect refugees. The removal of rights has a corollary: it's unencumbered power by the executive. If any of this seems hyperbolic, take a close look at the new national security laws. Civil rights, the law and international treaties are only as strong as those upholding them. Once their application becomes arbitrary, they are useless. "Stopping the boats" is scant consolation.

Nick Feik is the editor of The Monthly. Twitter @nickfeik.