It is a place where the usual rules do not apply. Inmates can be held indefinitely, their fate decided without recourse to the accepted legal and administrative processes. No, not the American prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, but Nauru under Australia's revised detention regime for asylum seekers. Even a Government-dominated Senate committee has had no option but to condemn it.

In recent years, the stream of boat people which prompted the Government's hard line against asylum seekers has shrunk to less than a trickle, and the Government felt safe in smoothing the sharp edges of the detention regime.

It was following not only its better instincts – as articulated by the likes of the Victorian Liberal MP Petro Georgiou – but the recommendations of recent inquiries. But that softer approach changed when immigration officials granted temporary protection visas to 42 Papuan asylum seekers who had arrived by boat in northern Australia. Indonesia was enraged and, ever since, Australia has been trying to placate it.

Australia decided that asylum seekers arriving by sea – no matter where in Australia they landed – would be processed offshore, in Nauru, and resettled in third countries. The Senate's Legal and Constitutional Committee has now found serious shortcomings in the proposed legislation. There is no time limit on detention. Asylum seekers have no right to settle in Australia, even if they can't go anywhere else. Detainees do not have access to independent legal advice or a right to an independent review of their case. The committee is also very concerned at the detention of women and children on a remote Pacific island nation, and at the lack of an independent authority – such as the Commonwealth Ombudsman – to oversee the whole exercise. Unsurprisingly, the committee's first choice is to scrap the legislation rather than try to fix it.

The Government's hard line reflects what it takes to be the realpolitik of relations with Indonesia. It believes that accepting Papuan asylum seekers will inevitably be read as support for Papua's independence movement and as criticism of Indonesia's administration in the province.

However, in its concern for the sensitivities of Indonesia, the Australian Government has been too ready to disregard the rights of asylum seekers. The Government should be ready to accept those seeking refugee status, and to assess their claims in Australia. Asylum seekers should be treated with proper regard for their self-respect – and Australia's. There is no credit in a supine return to the Pacific Solution.