The boats have stopped, but Australia hasn't won. The "solution" has instead created festering problems that will keep getting worse. Our leaders surely know this, yet despite a looming election and the chance to debate sensible change, they seem determined to pretend the current policy can be sustained. Not forever, it can't.
It's only when you stand back, take stock, and look beyond the usual focus on people languishing in detention, that the full cost of Australia's present approach to asylum seekers becomes clear. 
The price is lost national influence, diminished stature and complicity in sour governance.
Some problems are blindingly obvious: the tap of crystal champagne flutes in Cambodia as then immigration minister Scott Morrison coddled the odious regime of Hun Sen, the region's longest-serving autocrat. Australia's $55 million promise saw a total of four refugees settled, and even Cambodia admits the deal was a failure (although the money probably softens the disappointment for Hun Sen).
How will the Cambodia deal be explained in what shapes as a difficult campaign for Australia to win a place on the United Nations Human Rights Committee? You can bet our two competitors, France and Spain, will also be quick to highlight Australia's eager embrace of Sri Lanka after the country's vicious civil war, and the refusal to support the US, Britain and other close partners in calls for an international war crimes investigation.
Tony Abbott's hollow talk of the importance of values in foreign policy was exposed after Sri Lanka's Mahinda Rajapaksa??? was thrown out of power amid persistent claims of abuse and corruption, only for his successor to concede Australia's silence on human rights was the price for co-operation to stop asylum-seeker boats.
Add to this Australia's beguiling attempt to win over Kyrgyzstan to offload refugees. Ditto extraordinary requests to the Philippines and Solomon Islands.
Of course, Europe has its own refugee crisis and resulting moral compromises. There is no doubt that Australia can make an clever argument about flawed ideals in the international system and the need to account for modern realities, such as reckless criminal syndicates of smugglers putting people's lives at risk. If only the issue stopped there.
But the real storm clouds around Australia's refugee policy are gathering closer to home. Last year, Australia's chief diplomat, Peter Varghese, made a sensible declaration, that "perhaps more than any other single relationship, the state of our relationship with PNG is seen as a barometer of Australian foreign policy success". It's our closest neighbour, and a fragile one at that.
But in desperation to stop the boats, Australia has hopelessly compromised this critical relationship. As long as the Manus Island detention centre is open, Australia is a beggar to PNG's good graces.
The latest example is the $400 million pay-off that was needed to win support from PNG to never settle refugees arriving by boat in Australia - a promise to go 50-50 in the cost to build a stunning new hospital in the country's second-largest city of Lae. It emerged last week PNG now can't afford its half, and has hinted Australia should pay extra.
If Port Moresby really put pressure on and threatened the Manus island operation, can you really imagine Australia not paying?
That's only money. The bigger concern is credibility. At a press conference in 2012, when Julia Gillard announced Labor would resurrect the Pacific solution, I asked her how Australia would be able to raise concern over dodgy practices in PNG if we relied on it to process people seeking asylum.
Only a few months earlier, Gillard had been vocal, expressing Australia's dismay over a constitutional crisis in Port Moresby that saw the country with two prime ministers and two police chiefs and the very real threat of chaos. But Gillard insisted nothing would change with Manus Island. "Look, we will always raise our voice appropriately about international matters," she assured.
Fast-forward to today, where PNG is transfixed by drama after anti-corruption police arrested the nation's attorney-general, only to be themselves suspended from duty by a police chief appointed by the prime minister - the same prime minister facing a warrant over fraud allegations. Rival police were in open confrontation on the street in Port Moresby.
And Australia's voice has barely been heard.
Look also at Nauru, the other nation roped into the so-called Pacific Solution. Facebook is banned and opposition MP are excluded from parliament. Now Westpac, one of Australia's big banks, has decided it wants nothing to do with the place. Westpac is not satisfied the tiny Pacific country complies with anti-money laundering obligations, and has given Nauru and any companies with ties to the government until the end of   April to find another bank.
How is this for an exquisite pickle for the Turnbull government - should Nauru not find a bank willing to take its business in the next week, will Australia guarantee the country's finances to keep the refugee processing centre running? How is gainsaying Westpac's concern about money laundering on Nauru going to be explained amid all the complaints over bank behaviour and calls for a royal commission?
The boats have stopped, and without them, so too has the chest beating, dog whistling and community convulsions. This offers a chance to do better. The need to save lives at sea is an often-invoked defence of Australia's policy. But no lives are put at risk by acknowledging the deficiencies of the present approach - and thinking hard about how to fix them.
Daniel Flitton is senior correspondent. @danielflitton