We can brag about our multiculturalism and our charity but in this matter our behaviour has been - and continues to be -disgraceful.

In  September 2014, with this issue searing my conscience, I quit my Labor Party membership after more than 40 years, writing to its head office:

“The inability of Federal leader Shorten and his colleagues to make a distinction between a moral approach to major issues - with asylum seeker policy pre-eminent - and short-term political manoeuvring is inconsistent with my membership of what was once a decent, reformist, community-based political party.”

I received no reply because the ALP, like the Coalition, finds it easier to ignore its critics than examine its own conscience. Both parties have placed political positioning ahead of taking a principled and moral stand and in doing so have wrecked the lives of hundreds refugees and very many Manusians.

This is what our politicians have become and that is why so many Australians regard them with such contempt.

Now the UNHCR has documented the outcomes of this selfishness in two published papers which evidence the excesses of Australia’s inhumane policy on Manus which has shocked many Australians and lowered the opinion of our country around the world.

We have been shackled to this global dishonour as a result of our nation’s cruelty to people who fled extraordinary danger and sought asylum in our country and have had their lives further trashed as a result.

In publishing its documents, UNHCR says that “there is an apparent culpable absence of a transitional strategy for people of concern who were moved into the Manus Island community, which has made the need for risk mitigation strategies urgent and compelling.”

The agency calls on the governments of Australia and PNG to a road map to address this continuing disaster, especially in relation to accommodation and health services.

It also asks the two countries to find a mutually trusted and credible intermediary able to establish lines of communication between the refugees and Manusian communities, because in excoriating the asylum seekers we have also despoiled the lives of the people of Manus in the most disgraceful way.

Finally UNHCR calls upon the two governments to find viable long-term solutions outside PNG for all refugees in addition to the placements in the United States.

You can read both documents here: a paper on an expert medical mission to Manus and also a fact sheet prepared by UNHCR on issues of protection, health, shelter and water and sanitation facing the refugees on Manus this day.