Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's response to the latest reports of abuse against refugees on Nauru has been manifestly inadequate. Human rights group Amnesty International has compiled a damning report to show a deliberate regime of neglect and cruelty on the island nation paid-off by Australia to warehouse unwanted asylum seekers. This is Australia's doing, Australia's responsibility, Australia's shame.

Yet Mr Turnbull has disingenuously sought to deflect this responsibility from his government by again invoking the drownings at sea during the Labor years. The connection he draws stems from a fallacy. Leave aside for a moment the argument about whether Pacific camps are a necessary deterrent for people smugglers – and The Age does not agree with the policy of offshore processing – there is simply no justifiable reason why people need to be treated in such an appalling and callous fashion.

The conditions on Nauru that emerge from testimony and records in the Amnesty report, Island of Despair, are deeply disturbing, all the more so because they fit with a pattern of stories that has become depressingly familiar. People are suffering from acute psychological distress resulting from a life in limbo. Self-harm and attempted suicide rates are rife, while many children are living in despair, some subjected to threats or corporal punishment.

Amnesty stripped bare the obfuscation of Australia's policy, that would refer to asylum seekers in dehumanising language as "transferees" or their treatment as "deterrence", and in explicit terms captured the sinister consequences of what has actually been achieved.