Stoutly defending his immigration minister, Scott Morrison, the prime minister insists we “don’t want a wimp” running border protection, effectively casting asylum policy as a kind of macho duel, Scott v Smugglers.

But this “goodies and baddies” style analysis (smugglers = bad, Scott = good because stopping the boats will stop drownings) leaves out the 2,400 men, women and children who have been sent to offshore detention camps on Nauru and Manus Island. They are effectively collateral damage, the human cost of the bipartisan policy at the time of the last election to “stop the boats”, the people whose misery was precisely the message politicians wanted to deter others from coming.



I can understand that information from a wild night-time riot is going to be sketchy, that it will take time to assemble a full picture.



What I cannot understand, with one man dead and scores more injured, is how the government can continue to assure us that Australia is able to carry out its legal and moral duty of care for the safety of asylum seekers in the centre.



Last week Morrison said: “I can guarantee their safety when they remain in the centre and act co-operatively with those who are trying to provide them with support and accommodation. When people engage in violent acts and in disorderly behaviour and breach fences and get involved in that sort of behaviour and go to the other side of the fence, well they will be subject to law enforcement as applies in Papua New Guinea.”



Even if he genuinely believed at that time that the death of 23-year-old Reza Barati had occurred outside the centre, there had already been many reports of asylum seekers being hurt inside the centre, including men who had done nothing violent or disorderly at all, who were hiding under beds and in cupboards when they were attacked.



Now he says “in a situation where transferees engage in riotous and aggressive behaviour within the centre, this will escalate the risk to everyone in the centre” – in other words if some asylum seekers are violent, we can’t guarantee the safety of any of them.

And we are now also preparing to transfer asylum seekers found to be genuine refugees into unsecured accommodation on Manus Island.

The “deal” with PNG struck by the former Labor government was, as Morrison rightly points out, not much more than a blank sheet of paper, and there is still no agreement on how and where in PNG refugees will be resettled from Manus. With several cases now, finally, at the “draft decision” level, Australia is urgently finishing more permanent accommodation, closer to the township of East Lorengau, with the intention of resettling people there for the forseeable future.

When I asked the minister last week whether he was still sure about these arrangements, he said: “There is nothing before me that would cause me to reconsider that plan for post-assessment accommodation for people outside of the facility at East Lorengau, that’s what it’s designed for and it’s our intention to continue with the resettlement plans that we have.

“I wouldn’t be making the assumption you have Lenore, in the question, which is that somehow people would not be as safe living on Manus Island as anywhere else in Papua New Guinea.”

I wasn’t actually making any assumptions. But on the basis of available information, and without prejudging what happened or apportioning blame, it seems pretty likely that tensions, misconceptions and anger between the asylum seekers and the locals on Manus Island would be high. Likely enough to at least reassess the idea of sending people to the new accommodation.

If the minister can’t guarantee people will be safe inside the detention centre, and if he still doesn’t know what happened, how can he possibly be so sure refugees could live safely and harmoniously in the community?

A truly courageous, non “wimpy”, truthful minister would admit the whole offshore processing policy is still full of blanks, that we don’t know what will happen to the 2,400 we have assigned to be collateral damage, that we can’t assure their safety, and that the human cost of “stopping the boats” is going to be very, very high.