Yes, Dutton’s comments were insulting. But more inclusive language won’t change the brutal reality of the detention regime. Refugees don’t need an apology from the immigration minister and they don’t need verbal acknowledgements of their capabilities. They need release from the camps in which they’re languishing.

We live in an age of paradoxes: a time when Australia tries to conceal its mistreatment of refugees through various nefarious methods – for example, criminalising the disclosure of child abuse in the Nauruan detention system ­­– even as it trumpets its concern for violence against women, which is, according to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, ‘unAustralian’. Yet, in the case of ‘Abyan’ – the refugee on Nauru flown to Australia for a termination following a rape on the island and then deported before the procedure could even occur – violence is the direct result of Australian government policy.