Repeated attempts to lance this boil, including the American solution, the 2014 refugee deal with Cambodia and the recent, explosive, forced relocation of refugees from one place to another on Manus Island, have all fallen far short of success.

Cambodia, which pocketed $40 million in aid plus an additional $15 million towards costs, only accepted seven refugees from Nauru. Of these, three are believed to have already left that country.

Only about 100 of the 1250 offshore detainees originally proposed to have been relocated to America under an arrangement slammed by US President Donald Trump as "the worst deal ever" have made that trip.

Last year's forced relocation of refugees on Manus Island was a public relations disaster and an administrative farce.

This litany of failure and woe, the fallout of a policy whose avowed purpose is to treat those who arrive by boat so cruelly others will be reluctant to follow, must be weighed against growing voices of dissent within Labor and the Coalition and recent statements by the United Nations Human Rights office.

While the Turnbull government has been happy to make much of calls by a handful of courageous Labor MPs for their party to revisit its support for the existing policy, it had far less to say about last year's tacit support by Canberra Liberals for an ACT Legislative Assembly motion calling for an end to off-shore detention.

Canberra Liberals leader Alistaire Coe said while immigration "was clearly a federal issue" he and his team "[did] sympathise with the plight of those in detention".

Recent, and extremely strongly worded, statements from the United Nations Human Rights Office have added an additional degree of urgency to finding ways to move away from the current policy settings.

The UN, along with hundreds of thousands of people around the world, has been horrified and disgusted by America's forced separation of Central American asylum-seeking children from their parents under a "zero tolerance policy" on illegal immigration.

UN spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said the "zero tolerance" approach had resulted in "people being caught entering the country irregularly being subjected to criminal prosecution and having their children — including extremely young children — taken away from them as a result".

Ms Shamdasani, who reiterated that seeking asylum by arriving at the border without the appropriate documents, was not a crime, said several hundred children, including one under one, had been separated from their parents in the past six months.

"[This] is a serious violation of the rights of the child," she said. "The use of immigration detention and family separation as a deterrent runs counter to humans rights standards and principals ... the child's best interest should always come first."

Those words are as true here as they are on the US-Mexican border.

The mainstream elements of the Coalition and the ALP are now badly out of step with the growing number of people who say our country is better than this.

If Australia values its reputation for humanity and decency we need to move on.