Here we are at the outermost extreme of “least worst” policymaking, at least in the form a civilised state can practice it.

There’s much to the Houston panel package, including a long-overdue lift in our humanitarian intake to 20,000, which the government has accepted in principle (it should have accepted the five-year 27,000 target as well). But let’s concentrate for now on one aspect.

In its efforts to rebalance the incentives for asylum seekers to come to Australia via “regular” means versus arrival by “irregular” means — by boat — the panel recommended, and the government has accepted, that maritime arrivals, even if they successfully apply for asylum, won’t be granted a visa to remain in Australia until such time has elapsed as would have elapsed if they had tried to come via “regular” means. Or until they are resettled outside Australia, or decide to return home.

Otherwise, resettlement in Australia will be at a time comparable to what would have been made available had their claims been assessed through regional processing arrangements.

That’s the “no advantage” test that is the basis for the panel’s report. We will hold men, women and children who have succeeded in making their case that they face persecution in their homeland, in detention for what will presumably be a period of years, to replicate the wait they would have experienced if they had not sought to reach Australia by boat. The intention is that such a wait, and a lack of any advantage, would deter people from taking to boats, along with a restriction on family reunion other than through the standard (though expanded) Family Migration category.

Before we discuss the practicality of this, what about the morality? The Malaysian Solution, which was based on similar “no advantage” logic, would have left asylum seekers free in Malaysia, including with the right to work; many maritime asylum seekers actually come through Malaysia on their way to Indonesia before getting on a boat.

But under the panel’s proposal, we will be keeping people in detention on Nauru and in PNG, free only to return to their homeland or, if they are deemed to be in some way “at risk”, to move to Australia temporarily; otherwise they will remain in confinement for a currently undetermined, but presumably very long, period. They will have committed no crime, and will have been accepted as having a legitimate claim to asylum, but will be kept locked up purely in order to deter others: exemplary detention.

Under the Malaysian Solution, we would have committed no actively harmful act beyond sending (or returning) maritime asylum seekers to that country. Detaining people for several years on Nauru for no crime — indeed, based on a recognition that they have a claim to asylum — is an actively harmful act, justified by its advocates as deterring an even worse outcome, that more people die.

In terms of the strict moral calculus that of policies designed to stop people from dying in Australian waters, this makes sense. But it comes with a far higher moral weight than the Malaysian Solution; we have moved from simply sending people to another country where harm may or may not befall them, to actively harming them, to deter others.

Some argue that this will merely mean asylum seekers will drown elsewhere rather than on the way to Australia. That entirely misses the point; Australia can’t solve the global refugee problem by itself, but it can make sure its own actions don’t create incentives for people to risk their lives. Others argue this approach is inconsistent with our international obligations. That consideration is irrelevant to the moral calculation involved here. Our moral responsibility for people dying trying to reach Australia is not somehow lessened if we are acting in accordance with a treaty.

The “ends justifies the means” tension here was best encapsulated at yesterday’s press conference when a journalist asked Paris Aristotle about the mental health impacts of long-term detention. Aristotle readily admitted them, indeed, noted that people who had been detained in Nauru under the Howard government were still recovering from it, but also noted that there are appalling mental health impacts from knowing your family has drowned.

Then there’s the practical deterrence value: because, ultimately, a successful asylum seeker who is not accepted for resettlement elsewhere and who does not decide to return home will eventually come to Australia for permanent resettlement, this version of the Pacific Solution becomes a waiting game: how long will Australia detain successful maritime asylum seekers in an effort to deter others and match the time they would have waited in the “queue” in a refugee camp? One year? Two? Four?

And yet, there remains the guarantee that they will be resettled in Australia at the end of that detention.

So, the choice the panel seeks to create is, wait in a refugee camp in Malaysia, Indonesia or Pakistan, with no certainty about where you will be resettled or how long it will take, with no control, in poor conditions, with no education for your children, or detention on Nauru under carefully managed conditions, overseen by NGOs, with education and medical care for your children, skills training for you, with the guarantee of coming to Australia at the end of that time.

Many asylum seekers may figure that’s a straightforward choice, with the only change being that they need to bring their families with them, given it will be harder to be reunited with them if only one family member gets on a boat.

This approach, bizarrely, appears both harsher and less effective than the Malaysian Solution (which, admittedly, the panel sees as the basis for a long-term resolution), which would have dumped maritime asylum seekers back offshore with no prospects for resettlement. Australia would wash its hands of those subject to the Malaysian Solution, in effect replicating the uncertainty that maritime asylum seekers tried to escape. The panel’s approach can’t replicate that uncertainty; no civilised government could replicate the conditions and circumstances of refugee camps.

It’s also hideously expensive: $1.2-1.4 billion for Nauru over four years, with a capital cost of $300 million, the panel suggested, and $900 million over four years for Manus Island, versus $80 million over four years for the Malaysian Solution. So much for the Liberals being the party of small government and ending waste and mismanagement. Recall, too, the ever-innumerate Scott Morrison, after ducking the question for more than a year, eventually used a catering firm to claim Nauru would cost a maximum of $203 million a year with a capital cost of $95 million.

Still, there’s plenty of cover here for Labor to find a way out of the asylum seeker impasse, even if it means embracing an even more draconian version of the reviled Pacific Solution that the Howard government established. It will also deprive Tony Abbott of the long-running political gift of watching Labor squirm on the subject; no matter how asylum seekers died, the opposition was content to sit and watch Labor thrash helplessly about. The panel removes the last excuse for that; instead, Abbott can claim vindication, even if turning the boats back and TPVs were rejected.

As for the Greens, it’s a bonus for them that the panel ended up so nearly endorsing Coalition policy, thereby removing any possible reason it should in the slightest bit be tempted to compromise.

So there’s something for everyone here. But it looks less likely to stop asylum seeker deaths than the Malaysian Solution policy rejected by the Coalition and the Greens. And with a higher moral cost.