More 60 children are waiting for processing on Nauru.
They're unlikely ever to enter Australia and add to the 800-thousand refugees Australia has resettled since 1945.
Phil Glendenning from the Refugee Council of Australia says this is a country that does refugee resettlement well.
"You know, in one year 1949-50 Robert Menzies brought in 87-thousand refugees from Europe. Malcolm Fraser brought in some 37-thousand in one year from Asia. We've done better before we will have to do better again."
The federal government's hard-line approach to those who try to enter Australia by boat is no secret.
It's a policy, though, which once again has captured global interest.
Respected group Human Rights Watch has joined the long list of other bodies critical of Operation Sovereign Borders.
Professor Gillian Triggs is the president of the Australian Human Rights Commission and says conditions both onshore and off are appalling.
"Well they're prison-like conditions and in fact to be perfectly honest they're much worse than prison because they're crowded into single cells and most importantly I would of course say this from a human rights law point of view they have no real access to the courts."
The Federal Government is accused in the Human Rights Watch report of outsourcing its refugee obligations to poorer and less-equipped countries like PNG and Nauru.
As of October last year, more than 15-hundred asylum seekers were detained offshore.
The Refugee Council's Mr Glendenning says one day Australia will reflect.
"There will come a time 30 -20 - 15 years from now when a prime minister will rise in the parliament and will make a formal apology on behalf of the nation for the conditions in which these young people have been treated and the manner of their incarceration."
Offshore detention is a policy supported by both the Coalition and Labor.
Greens Leader Richard Di Natale says it's a tough policy area to navigate.
"We can never, never accept the systematic abuse of young kids and their families in the name of trying to send a message to other people. And this really is a test of the Prime Minister's leadership."
Professor Triggs was famously publicly attacked by senior Abbott government officials when a 2014 report criticised Operation Sovereign Borders.
"Really, only the most dysfunctional and non-democratic governments attack their Human Rights Commissions and president. It's not a phenomenon you see typically in democratic societies."
In a very measured and evidence-based way the report also raised other issues including new counter terrorism laws, Indigenous rights and the lack of progress made on same-sex marriage.
Australia's human rights standards confined to three pages.
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