The problem is even those of us who object to these actions are ultimately affected by them. We are the ones staring into the abyss of the horrible things done in our name: the detention centres, the deaths, the sexual, mental and physical abuse, the lives scarred and hopes ruined by successive governments’ inability to ignore the votes of the least among us ­– the narrow-minded, fearful, compassionless and xenophobic. The abyss is staring back at us. It has been for some time. Each lurch toward a crueller policy response normalises something that was once horrible in the past. And something in us changes too. We might still disagree with the policies, but we are becoming desensitised.

The current focus on border protection as a matter of security is a fairly recent development. As Tad Tietze discusses, even during the twentieth century there were periods in which large numbers of people were able to freely migrate to Europe, the US and Australia. The US ignored the flow of Mexicans crossing the border after the Second World War.