AUSTRALIA'S asylum-seeker policy is the stuff of a rogue state. At its core it deploys innocent people, many of them children, as human shields.
These are the men, women and children - many of them already deeply traumatised - who we lock up indefinitely in detention camps as a "deterrent" to others looking to our shores as a safe haven.
These are the 267 asylum-seekers currently in Australia who the High Court recently ruled can now be shipped back to the Nauru detention centre. 
The public face of this diaspora of the dispossessed is 12-month-old baby Asha, now recovering in Brisbane's Lady Cilento Children's Hospital after being flown from Nauru for treatment for severe burns.
Asha is reportedly the daughter of refugees from Nepal - where Christian minorities are routinely persecuted - although her name is a pseudonym and the identity of her parents remains unknown lest we humanise the collateral damage of our hard-line immigration policies.
Doctors at Lady Cilento are refusing to release the child, "until a suitable home environment is identified", which sparked a spontaneous show of support at the hospital from protesters seeking to unwind the more inhumane aspects of current policy.
As the #LetThemStay demonstration continues - as do similar shows of support; such as the offer of sanctuary from many of Australia's Anglican churches - it is worth recapping some key developments in the asylum-seeker debate so far this year.
Last week the Immigration Department's own chief medical officer, Dr John Bradley, had this to say to a Senate committee hearing: "The scientific evidence is that detention affects the mental state of children - it's deleterious - for that reason, wherever possible, children should not be in detention." Earlier this month a medical team operating under the auspices of the Australian Human Rights Commission also issued a damning report on the impact the detention in camps was having on children.
"These children, most of whom had spent months in Nauru, are among the most traumatised we have ever seen in our 50 years of combined professional experience," Professor Elizabeth Elliott said.
"Nauru is a totally inappropriate place for asylum-seeking children to live. The only appropriate management of this situation is to remove the children from the environment which is causing or exacerbating their mental ill-health." Prof Elliott's colleague, Dr Hasantha Gunasekera, added: "We were deeply disturbed by the numbers of young children who expressed intent to self-harm and talked openly about suicide and by those who had already self-harmed." The court decision clearing the way for asylum-seekers to be trafficked back to Nauru also drew condemnation from the United Nation's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
Committee chair Benyam Mezmur said: "This decision â€¦ greatly concerns us as these children and their families face a great risk in being sent to a place that cannot be considered safe nor adequate." The OHCHR also voiced its concern that "Australia's policy on the treatment of migrants and asylum-seekers arriving without prior authorisation, significantly contravenes the letter and spirit of international human rights law." Before you dismiss this as the bleeding-heart complaints of some faceless, leftist global body seeking to undermine our sovereignty, bear in mind that we help fund this very office.
The official line on the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade website states: "Australia is an active partner to UN efforts to promote and protect human rights ... welcoming the independence of the OHCHR and its standard-setting work to promote human rights and address crises." Unless of course they present us with some very inconvenient and unpalatable truths about our own maltreatment of people who have actually come to us seeking sanctuary.
This is an issue that has nothing to do with ideology or party politics, as both major parties in Australia are equally damnable when it comes to viewing asylum-seekers as a political problem (or, in the Liberals' case, an opportunity ripe for exploitation) rather than a humanitarian one.
It is what has led us to the point where we effectively sanction child abuse as a deterrence, while hiding behind the fig leaf of having "stopped the boats".
Not in my name Australia. Let them stay.paul.syvret@news.com.au