“Offshore processing failed to achieve its stated objectives of ‘stopping the boats’ or ‘saving lives at sea’,” Madeline Gleeson (senior research fellow at the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW) says. “During the height of this policy, more asylum seekers were trying to reach Australia by boat than at any previous time. What it was effective at doing was dehumanising people who came here in search of safety, and scoring political points.”