The Morrison government has finally accepted New Zealand’s offer to resettle some of the refugees stuck in Australia’s torturous immigration system – nine long, cruel and pointless years after it was first made. Under the three-year agreement, announced by the two governments today, 450 refugees (150 per year) will be settled in New Zealand, with priority given to about 100 people still on Nauru. This deal is objectively good news (a “blessed, belated relief” as Greens immigration spokesperson Nick McKim put it), although, as Asylum Seeker Resource Centre advocacy director Jana Favero notes, there are still more than 500 other detainees left in limbo. But several questions must be asked here. Why did it take so many years for the government to take up this simple, humanitarian, moral option? Why is it happening now? And who will be held accountable for the needless suffering, the years lost, the lives destroyed, and the billions in wasted costs that occurred thanks to the government’s cynical delay? When it comes to Australia’s offshore detention regime, it’s long been difficult to shake the feeling that the cruelty is the point.