With the introduction of temporary protection visas, the Tampa incident and the excision of Australian territory from our migration zone, refugees were treated increasingly inhumanely. They were demonised by policies and practices that were largely - and shamefully - supported by both sides of parliament.

Less than a quarter of respondents (24%) in the Essential Research poll said the Howard Government’s policy on asylum seekers had been too tough, while 62% said it had been right or not tough enough.

The reform of detention testifies to the transformed political climate since 2001, with few boat arrivals in recent years. But Immigration Minister Chris Evans knows that more boats will come and this is Australia’s permanent challenge. In an interview with The Australian, he argued the new detention policy is geared to this reality.

The Howard government’s policy of mandatory detention had essentially stopped the flow of thousands of people illegally entering Australia from Indonesia, Philip Ruddock, a former immigration minister during the Howard years, said today.

The Government has not scrapped mandatory detention, but it has made fundamental changes in the processing of asylum seekers that switches the premise of the system from adversarial to humanitarian. As the Immigration Minister quite rightly says, “Desperate people are not deterred by the threat of harsh detention — they are often fleeing much worse circumstances.”