It seems ridiculous but when Malcolm Turnbull and Peter Dutton proposed a life-time visa ban on anyone who had reached Australia by boat since July 2013, the bitter reaction was all part of the plan.
Livid at Bill Shorten's 2015 switch to me-tooism over turn backs, the government had eyed a political dividend on the way to achieving a policy hardening it actually believes in and which relies on opposition support.
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The Immigration Minister has put the blame for the grandchildren of Australian migrants travelling to fight in overseas conflict zones on former Liberal PM Malcolm Fraser's immigration policies.
Once again, a government had put politics before policy. Once again, the saccharine lure of a cheap boast had trumped the enduring nutrition of problem solving.
It took the opposition a few days to formalise its rejection, but by then, Shorten, and a host of commentators, had behaved as predicted, branding the measure Abbottesque, ludicrous, gratuitously punitive.
"Vindictive" and "unjustified" fumed one national commentator, incredulous at how far Turnbull had drifted from his compassionate billing.
Dutton, who was simultaneously hinting and withholding details of a third-country resettlement deal, laid out Labor's options: doleful compliance, or a full throated attack in which it would be cast as soft on borders and a threat to national security.
A week later, the government announced its US breakthrough. A year in the making, this was the first decisive step away from an intractable, dehumanising regime of deprivation and punishment through indefinite detention.
Finally, Turnbull had a good news story to tell. Finally, a solution to a puzzle of diabolical moral and practical complexity. And slowly, the first outlines of the case for a visa ban would also be visible. The order of announcements had been "arse-about" conceded one official, who nonetheless supported the visa ban.
The government had been warned that the one-off US agreement carried grave risks. Its experts said the transfer would amount to a new pull factor – "sugar on the table" for people smugglers who excel at marketing the thinnest of hopes to their despairing clientele.
Resettlement in the US was now possible, albeit via Australia. Even the policy change itself would be seized on as proof that you need only to wait-out Australian resolve. Eventually, you'll get in.
This is particularly relevant to those non-refugees in Nauru and Manus Island currently, who will not be covered by the American deal. Many of these are Iranians. Tehran does not accept returnees unless they are voluntary. These people are holding on, for any change in Canberra, any weakening.
The answer, Turnbull and Dutton were told, was to dispel all illusions – to buttress the massive increase in the physical assets of Operation Sovereign Borders, with a new and deliberately aggressive statement of the clearest possible intent. "There would be no resettlement, no entry, not even to visit. Not now. Not ever."
To be convincing, bipartisanship was also critical, notwithstanding that Turnbull and Dutton had pretty much engineered things to ensure this was unlikely.
Based on what it had been told, Labor had recoiled at the capricious absurdity of a law that would refuse a tourist visa to an ex-refugee in 40 years time simply because she/he had once sought protection in this country. A lawful act by the way, and one which carries legal responsibilities for Australia, let's not forget.
Yet on sober inspection, now that the US deal is confirmed, there might be grounds for Labor to reconsider.
Those grounds would not be on the merits of the life-time visa ban itself – which would be unfair and absurd in practice – but on the policy impact of declaring the ban in the first place, and of legislating it.
Harsh as it seems, when viewed within the overall architecture of the one-off US deal, and against the agreed metric of not restarting the people smuggling trade, the ban's strident exclamation could convince non-refugee detainees to go home and could dissuade new asylum seeker boats.
The imperative all agree on is to clear the camps, and to do so without inviting new boat arrivals. To empty Manus and Nauru. That would be a win, and one worth pursuing.
Dutton has even acknowledged publicly that the life-time ban could be repealed by a subsequent Labor government – a clear signal that this policy is 99 per cent message, 1 per cent delivery, maybe less.
Had Turnbull and Dutton proposed the visa ban at the same time as announcing the US deal – and had they tried to get Labor's support first, the ban might have been broadly supported, based on a nod-and-wink that it would never be implemented in practice.
Would Labor have co-operated on those terms? It is difficult to imagine, though not impossible. Should it reconsider its opposition now? Probably. Will it do so? No.
BTW, that national commentator mentioned above was this correspondent. Evidence perhaps that reasoned arguments and reference to the larger moral imperative can persuade people more effectively than point-scoring politics ever will.
Wasn't that Turnbull's promise?
Mark Kenny is chief political correspondent.
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