From the moment they stepped off the boats, Iranians have been the toughest cohort of people to manage in immigration detention.

When the Pacific solution was revived in 2012, Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum seekers would pitch in and help set up the tents and dig pits and trenches on Manus Island and Nauru. The Iranians, according to sources at the time, would refuse, arguing hard yakka was beneath them, and that they had not paid thousands of dollars to people smugglers to become labourers.