''Would I have been happier if I'd had more money to be able to do it sooner and earlier and to put in place alternative detention arrangements for kids? Yes, of course, I would have been,'' Mr Ruddock told The Australian.

Really? A ministerial minute prepared by Mr Ruddock's staff, signed and annotated by him, recommended Shayan Badraie, a child suffering acute post-traumatic stress, be released with his family into the community. Next to the advice was a handwritten ''Bucklies'' (sic), in writing which appears to his. This was used in a later court case, with no objections from counsel for the government, and he has refused to deny to journalists that the word was his.

Instead, Shayan was sent to a foster family against the advice of every medical expert and the NSW Department of Community Services. Is this the action of a man who wanted to do something for the damaged child of refugees? He was not reunited with his family until his mother and sister were released four months later. His father remained in detention for a further eight months.

How much did the three Badraies cost the government while they lived in the community awaiting the release of their husband and father? Nothing. In fact, their release was a net gain for the Commonwealth which no longer had to pay the private-sector prison company. The cost of their keep was borne first by the Supreme Islamic Council, then by the Catholic Church.

Shayan was a bright five-year-old boy when he arrived with his parents in March 2000 from Iran. Less than two years later he had been taken to hospital nine times for rehydration after witnessing incidents and violence in the camps no child in Australia should ever have seen. He had suffered periods of mutism and self-induced starvation including refusal to take liquids.

Specialist doctors and psychologists warned that if he were returned to detention or separated from his parents he was at risk of irreparable harm, yet both occurred. Philip Ruddock was kept fully apprised of all these reports and signed a number of documents detailing them, but failed to use his discretionary powers under Australian law to release the family.

Although Ruddock's dominance may now be neutralised by his position on the opposition's back bench, he will not easily be forgotten. Shayan was not the only victim of his unswerving devotion to the mandatory detention policy introduced originally by the Keating Labor Government in 1992.

An unknown number of adult and child refugees now living in Australia remain traumatised, suffering psychiatric illnesses and living on Centrelink benefits while they try to recover from their experiences in Australian camps. A sprinkling, deported back to war-torn countries in the Middle East survive underground in a state of mental illness, while others are back in refugee camps on the fringes of their home countries with memories of the Australian detention camps to haunt their nightmares.

There is no defence for a government policy which allowed Shayan's mental and physical health to be destroyed because his parents' asylum application was rejected initially and Ruddock failed to use his discretionary power to release the family.

Ultimately the Badraie family's refugee claim succeeded, but the family lives still with the price it paid for its freedom.

The final irony is that the people in positions of power at the apex of the Immigration Department who colluded with Ruddock, have been rewarded. After the Palmer inquiry, which looked into the department's workings following the Cornelia Rau affair, departmental secretary Bill Farmer was elevated to a most important diplomatic position as ambassador to Indonesia.

Philippa Godwin, the deputy-secretary who had carriage of Shayan's case, was moved to Medicare as deputy chief executive officer. Jane Halton, a lead player in the now discredited children-overboard allegations and the so-called Pacific Solution, has had her contract as head of the Department of Health renewed for a further five years by the Rudd Government.

Ann Duffield, Ruddock's chief of staff, who filtered the information that reached her boss and is reported in departmental emails as appearing to believe Shayan's illness was fabricated by his father, now sits as a permanent member on the Refugee Review Tribunal. Without legal training, she adjudicates on the merits of refugee claims and is paid more than $163,000 a year to do so.

Philip Ruddock was right when he said repeatedly that Australia could not take all the world's refugees. We do not have the capacity, nor have we been asked to do so, but there is no excuse for the destruction we meted out to those who came to our shores seeking asylum. Every one of them did so legally under the Australian Migration Act and the International Convention on Refugees.

Father of the House indeed.

Jacquie Everitt is a journalist and writer, whose book The Bitter Shore: An Iranian family's escape to Australia and the hell they found at the border of paradise will be launched next week.