Given the lengths the government has gone to in order to conceal the human cost of its refugee detention program since 2014, it seems probable a major motivation for its agreeing to pay at least $70 million in compensation to Manus detainees is to avoid an embarrassing court case.
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If this is the case then it must come close to setting a new high water mark for political cynicism.
Attempts by Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, to portray the outcome as a win for all concerned are doomed to failure. His claim it was a "prudent outcome" is risibly reminiscent of lipsticking a pig.
Equally farcical is the official line the decision to settle does not, in any way, "represent an admission of wrongdoing" from the Australian Government.
This is little more than convenient legalese.
Critics of the refugee detention programs are well aware of the numerous reports of alleged abuses, negligence and at times apparent indifference to welfare that have emerged over many years.
It was only last September Australian Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs was appealing directly to Malcolm Turnbull to bring asylum seekers being held on Manus and Nauru to Australia in the wake of a damning UNICEF and Save the Children report.
A separate investigation, by Auditor General Grant Hehir, was scathing about how the $3 billion it had cost to build and run the two centres had been spent.
The silence of the Opposition on this latest act of self-serving hypocrisy from a government that has raised pragmatism to the level of an Olympic sport is as disappointing as it is predictable.
The Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government deserves to be viewed in no better light than the Abbott-Turnbull government which inherited Manus from them.
Neither Labor nor the Coalition would have gained any mileage from a hard fought court case which would almost certainly have attracted international media interest and over which they would have had no effective control.
It is ironic, given the obvious fear our politicians have of being thrust into the forensic atmosphere of the court arena where questions must be answered, that three senior Liberals volunteered themselves for guest appearances in the Victorian Supreme Court this week.
While they will not be turning up in the flesh on Friday, the solicitor general is handling their affairs, Greg Hunt, Alan Tudge and Michael Sukkar apparently crossed the line when they suggested the court had gone soft on terrorism.
This is a timely reminder to all politicians that under our system the judiciary has trumped the parliament on matters of law for almost a millennia. The law is king, and politicians would do well to remember the importance of separating legislature from legal system.
