On Saturday Scott Morrison's border asylum meter registered the arrival of the 150th boat and 8700th asylum seeker since Julia Gillard's announcement of the Pacific Solution Mark II in August.
On Monday the three members of the Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers appeared before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. The panel members remained fairly upbeat that their suite of measures were still kicking in. They remain hopeful their recommendations provide the surest way forward for Australia decently to protect its borders and to arrest the risk of desperate people making perilous journeys on leaky boats.
This inquiry is a litmus test for the new Committee on Human Rights as it listens to evidence from lawyers scrutinising a raft of new migration legislation for compliance with key international human rights instruments, trying to avoid the toxic policy debate about border protection which has so paralysed the Parliament.
The flood of boat arrivals since the Government's adoption of the expert panel's recommendations vindicates the 2011 observation by Andrew Metcalfe, then Secretary of the Department of Immigration, who told Parliament:
Our view is not simply that the Nauru option would not work but that the combination of circumstances that existed at the end of 2001 could not be repeated with success. That is a view that we held for some time ... it is the collective view of agencies involved in providing advice in this area.
The committee heard that the new Pacific Solution is being rolled out at a cost of billions of dollars.
Richard Towle, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' regional representative, expressed concern about the so-called 'no advantage test' and whether the detention of asylum seekers on Nauru or Papua New Guinea is arbitrary, and thus a breach of international law.
The UNHCR has put the Government on notice that 'the practical implications of the no advantage test are not fully clear to us' and UNHCR is 'concerned about any negative impact on recognised refugees who might be required to wait for long periods in remote island locations'.
Angus Houston, the chair of the expert panel, insisted that his panel had never formulated a no advantage test. They simply recommended 'the application of a no advantage principle to ensure that no benefit