But after a week in which two refugees on Nauru set themselves alight – one fatally – and Papua New Guinea opted to close its detention centre on Manus Island, it’s clear the government’s success has been illusory when it comes to asylum seekers.

Yes, boats are no longer arriving on Australian shores. But the country’s effort to keep the problem at arm’s length is showing cracks. 

It always will for as long as refugees flee war in the Middle East and Asia, and make their way inevitably through South-East Asia.

This is a regional and global problem requiring solutions that do more than hide its symptoms, such as boat arrivals.

Yet Australia’s approach does only that – hide symptoms, by directing asylum seekers elsewhere.

At huge financial cost too. Last year the detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru cost Australia $1.2 billion.

It relies heavily on the capability and willingness of developing countries to lock up and process refugees.

There will be times when those countries show themselves to be unwilling, as Papua New Guinea has.

Its prime minister announced it would shut Manus Island’s detention centre after the country’s Supreme Court found detaining asylum seekers there to be illegal.

And at all times the trauma visited on refugees by Australia’s offshore processing regime will manifest in cases of self-harm or protest, which will become public and will sometimes be fatal.

When this happens, and when countries like Papua New Guinea close detention centres, asylum seeker arrivals show themselves to be Australia’s problem still, despite efforts to shunt it elsewhere. 

Even when they are sent to Nauru for processing, Australia is responsible for the fates of asylum seekers. Its policies have landed them there, in a situation harmful to mental health.

Omid Masoumali’s death after setting himself alight is a reminder of this. 

The federal government doesn’t deserve the points it will try to get with the electorate by claiming it has solved the asylum seeker issue.

To put it simply: It has stopped the boats, but it hasn’t solved the problem.

Protecting the integrity of Australia’s borders is about more than deterring asylum seeker arrivals. It’s about fixing a problematic refugee resettlement arrangement.

A real solution will start with a regional agreement involving South-East Asian countries to quickly process refugees for resettlement in new countries.

The trauma of prolonged offshore detention is unnecessary in this scenario. A more humane way to resettle refugees is within the country’s grasp.

This is a realistic proposal and the likes of it has happened before.

In 1979 an agreement was struck in Geneva to deal with 260,000 refugees per year after refugee numbers grew following South-East Asian conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia. ASEAN countries processed people in camps for resettling in developed nations. Millions found safety.

Asylum seeker deaths and cases of self harm on Nauru will continue to remind us that Australia’s border protection policies are nothing like the success its government says it is. 

It’s a costly and brutal exercise in denial.