The High Court’s lack of political nous, Peter Dutton’s political opportunism, and Labor’s political fumbling have all played a role in the past month’s chaos in Canberra over the wicked problem of what to do about non-citizens with no legal right to remain in the country but who can’t be deported anywhere else.

The High Court’s November 8 decision to overturn a near 20-year precedent, rule that indefinite detention of non-citizens with no realistic prospect of repatriation or being sent to another country is illegal, and order the immediate release of a Rohingya man convicted of child sex offences, all without publishing its detailed reasons, was naively unhelpful on such politically sensitive questions of immigration and community safety.