Should doctors boycott working in Australia’s immigration detention centres?

Naturally, I disagree with James Lawler. This is not an 'abstract ethical debate' at all. Doctors working in these centres are in an impossibly conflicted ethical position. There is a point where the level of ethical conflict is too high for doctors to be able to continue to practice and I believe we have reached that point for all the reasons outlined in the main article.

In practical terms, as he says, many of the positions are already being filled with overseas doctors anyway and the operational impact of a boycott would be limited, but that was never my argument for a boycott. Of course, a boycott by medical professionals makes a clear moral statement and sends a message of abhorrence from the profession, by-products which are to be welcomed, but they are secondary to the fact that a boycott is an ethical necessity.