As Madeline Gleeson reminds us in her devastating and comprehensive account of the offshore policy, Gillard's decision to re-open detention centres on Manus and Nauru was intended as a circuit breaker that would interrupt the flow of boat arrivals to create space for 'accelerating the development of a regional cooperation framework'. Gillard was acting on the advice of an expert panel led by Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston that stressed the urgency of working with neighbouring countries and international agencies to offer refugees meaningful protection at earlier points in their journeys. This mix of penalty and reward would, it was hoped, 'shift the balance of risk, predictability and incentive in favour of the use of regular pathways of international protection and migration, and against the need to resort to irregular and dangerous boat voyages to Australia for those purposes'.

It was a laudable aim, though many would argue that the panel's thinking was flawed because it introduced the punishment (it used the term 'disincentive') of offshore detention before putting in place the reward ('incentive') of an alternative route to protection. In any case, the panel's full suite of recommendations was never given a chance, since all refugees got was the big stick of offshore processing, without the carrot of a regular migration pathway. Labor and Coalition governments have spent billions of dollars vigorously pursuing deterrence through offshore detention; neither has shown any inclination to devote a fraction of the same energy and resources to building a regional protection framework.

Offshore detention failed to be the circuit breaker Gillard wanted. Asylum seekers were transferred to Manus and Nauru, but the boats kept coming. Eleven months later, recycled Prime Minister Kevin Rudd upped the ante, declaring that asylum seekers arriving by boat in future would have 'no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees'. Previously, under the so called 'no advantage' principle applied by Gillard, refugees on Manus and Nauru had the prospect of coming to Australia after spending a period offshore 'comparable' to the time it might have taken for their claims to be assessed through regional processing arrangements. (How this principle would operate in practice was unclear, Gleeson notes, since 'no such arrangements existed'.) Rudd removed this option: refugees could settle in Papua New Guinea (or perhaps somewhere else), but not Australia. Boat arrivals fell sharply after Rudd's announcement; Labor claims this as evidence his policy was 'working'. We cannot assess the truth of this claim, or know whether arrivals might have picked up again, because several weeks later, a newly elected Abbott government began returning maritime asylum seekers directly to Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

Since Labor subsequently added boat returns to its own policy armoury, our two major parties now march in lockstep and it is time to admit that offshore processing and turn backs are not the exception, but the rule. This harsh regime has been in place for eleven of the past fifteen years. It is not something well-meaning Australians do in extremis; it is a standard response to global upheavals and inequalities that might otherwise impinge on comfortable lives.

Asylum seekers from various conflict zones (UNHCR UN Refugee Agency, Flickr)

As citizens, we have a duty to face up to the full reality of what our nation does, and Gleeson has ensured that we cannot claim ignorance. As one of the many disaffected security guards quoted in Offshore says: 'This is Australia. We did this.'

Gleeson links a sequential account of events in Manus and Nauru with the narrative of Australian politics. Anyone who has taken an interest in refugee issues will find many of the stories familiar, since Gleeson largely draws on public sources such as media articles, government reports, and evidence to Senate committees and independent inquiries. It is the collation of these stories, in page-after-damning-page of carefully documented testimony that reveals the monstrous impact of the policy.

This well-written book is hard to read, because it provokes such anger and horror. Gleeson assembles a wealth of detail that shows how 'reality has been flipped on its head'. What is abnormal becomes normal, what is immoral becomes moral. Staff deployed offshore talk about entering 'a parallel universe'. It is a universe in which mouldy, leaking tents that afford no privacy are called 'marquees'. It is a universe in which a young person with experience managing a fast-food outlet provides care to traumatised people. It is a universe of extreme tropical heat where children are given long-sleeved flannel shirts. It is a universe in which Australia pays Nauru a visa fee of $1,000 per person per month for more than 500 refugees granted temporary residence, yet cannot muster the resources to provide adequate supplies of toilet paper and underpants. It is a universe in which members of Burma's Rohinghya minority and people who have fled conflicts in Syria and Somalia are pressured to return home voluntarily, even though the International Organisation for Migration says that it cannot repatriate them in current conditions. It is a universe in which gay refugees are offered resettlement in Papua New Guinea, where homosexuality is illegal. It is a universe where health facilities are supposedly equivalent to those in rural Australia, yet diarrhoea, gastroenteritis, conjunctivitis, ear complaints, and urinary tract infections rage unchecked. It is a universe in which children swallow detergent and cut their wrists, where suicide attempts are a regular occurrence, and where no individual – whether man or woman, boy or girl – can be considered safe from the risk of sexual abuse. In this universe, the prime minister declares the situation normal. Tony Abbott's response to a report that upheld allegations of sexual abuse in Nauru: 'Occasionally, I dare say, things happen'.

Manus Island regional processing facility (DIAC images, Wikimedia Commons)

Gleeson shows Labor and Coalition governments attempting to evade moral and legal accountability for their actions, hiding behind the convenient fiction that events offshore are the responsibility of the sovereign governments of Nauru and Papua New Guinea. When this fails, they shift the blame to contractors and service providers. If someone shipped offshore proves mentally or physically unfit for detention in Nauru and Manus, the government blames the medical firm IHMS for giving them a clean bill of health prior to departure; yet when IHMS doctors call for a sick detainee to be urgently evacuated for medical treatment in Australia, Canberra delays, arguing that the clinician does not always determine the best location for appropriate care.

When neither of these strategies works, politicians obfuscate or deny. The lack of transparency in offshore processing leaves them ample room to hide. Formal inquiries have failed to establish the truth of irreconcilable reports about what goes on, from apparently straightforward matters such as whether women on Nauru have adequate access to sanitary pads, to deeply shocking claims of torture in the notorious 'Chauka' isolation section of the Manus detention centre.

This is a story of self-serving opportunism, moral bankruptcy, and breathtaking hypocrisy on the part of our politicians. Eventually, the evasions of both major parties will have to stop. The Manus Island detention centre is unconstitutional and must close; Papua New Guinea has said it will resettle refugees who want to stay, but most do not. Nauru says it can only offer temporary protection and refugees must eventually go elsewhere. Yet in the 2016 federal election campaign, neither the Coalition nor Labor could answer the simple question: 'What happens next?'