PNG Police defend their brutal treatment of assylum seekers released on Manus Island. There was a sub-plot, too, where Knight took aim at Behrouz Boochani, the Kurdish Iranian journalist who is one of around 1000 asylum seekers well into their fourth year of limbo in PNG. Boochani visited the two men at the police station on New Year's Day, posted photographs of their battered faces and bodies and reported their emphatic denial that they were drunk or abusive before they were beaten. Knight responded on Twitter, claiming Boochani was wrong about the innocence of the two men, had his own agenda and faced arrest for lying and insulting police. Their fates are now in the hands of the magistrate. His tone became even more provocative when three more asylum seekers were charged with being drunk and disorderly and resisting arrest the next day. The Manus court system, Knight declared, was now being flooded with these cases.

Iranian refugees Mehdi and Mohammad claim they were bashed by police and immigration officials on Manus Island on New Year's Eve. Boochani was non-plussed. "I deeply understand the local people and know why they are angry and upset with the refugees," he said. "Their society does not have capacity for accepting 1000 men. They are victims, like the refugees." What the furore did was lift the lid on tensions that have been building since the detention centre was declared unconstitutional by PNG's highest court last April, forcing authorities to allow detainees to come and go during daylight hours and have access to mobile phones. Dismissed from office: Former Manus Island MP Ronny Knight appeared on Radio National on Monday. Credit:Facebook It also underscored the danger of stereotyping the detainees, those whose job it is to guard and protect them and the locals who subsist on what they grow, catch and trade and speak almost 100 languages.

Just as there are compassionate security guards and dedicated health professionals, there are asylum seekers who have misbehaved since the gates were opened and the temptations of marijuana, home brew and local women presented themselves. Boochani recently took issue with one angle in a feature by New York Times writer Roger Cohen that appeared under the headline, "Broken men in paradise: The world's refugee crisis knows no more sinister exercise in cruelty than Australia's island prisons". "The danger of representing the men incarcerated on Manus as broken is that the more nuanced truths of life and self are lost," he co-wrote with writer and trauma worker Janet Galbraith, who is on Manus Island. The truth is the Manus detainees are a mixed bunch, including writers, artists and professionals; men so traumatised they still refuse to leave their rooms after the violence that engulfed the centre in 2014; and some who drink too much and chase women; those who consider themselves the walking dead and those who retain the capacity to dream and hope. What was remarkable was the furore attracted not one word of commentary from Australian politicians, Coalition and Labor, who assert the indefinite detention of asylum seekers on Manus and Nauru has been a critical factor in stopping the boats.

It was almost the same the previous week, when Faysal Ishak Ahmed died on Christmas Eve, days after being turned away from the detention centre's medical facility and, he reported to his friends, told there was nothing wrong with him. When the issue was broached fleetingly with Malcolm Turnbull on Christmas Day, it was in another context altogether. The Prime Minister was asked to comment about reports of a disturbance in the centre after Ahmed's death. Turnbull responded with the familiar lines about making no apology for protecting Australia's borders. Manus, you see, is Australia's dirty little secret, perhaps the ultimate and most morally reprehensible example of the end justifying the means when it comes to public policy. It is easy for politicians to avert their eyes because it is so very far away, so removed from notions of scrutiny and accountability, and so distant from the everyday concerns of Australians who, in any case, overwhelmingly support a hard line when it comes to border protection. It is also easy for them to deflect responsibility for the situation we have today, where most of the asylum seekers are suffering from mental illness and less equipped to rebuild their lives than they were when they sought protection from Australia.

One early failure was to foster a positive relationship between the detainees and the local population. Instead, the asylum seekers were told stories of cannibals and deadly diseases, while the locals were warned about dangerous criminals lurking behind the detention centre gates. But the biggest failure has been not to offer a scintilla of hope to men who, in the majority of cases, have been found to have a well-founded fear of persecution in their home countries. On the contrary, the unrelenting focus has been to pressure them to return, regardless of their refugee status. The official inquiry into the violence of February 2014 identified several causes of unrest, including frustration about delays in processing, uncertainty about how long detainees would be kept in the centre, and the lack of information about when they might be reunited with immediate family members. All still apply. Now, the expectation of those on Manus, refugees and locals alike, is that this sad chapter is coming to a climax, though deep uncertainty about what sort of climax it will be. The Manusians want their island back; the refugees want their freedom. It is almost two months since Turnbull announced an agreement had been reached to resettle refugees on Nauru Manus in the United States, with an initial focus on women, children and families on Nauru.

The Prime Minister also announced that the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, would administer the process, which is the only reason the increasingly anxious Manus detainees have to be optimistic. Loading As Knight replied to those attacking him on Twitter: "I don't have the solution. Your leaders and PNG also don't. UNHCR is the ONLY mob I can see who can sort this out." The sooner the better. Michael Gordon is political editor.