Congratulations, New Zealand. It's official; we look like mean-spirited, isolationist chickens on the world stage. Strike that. Maybe with the announcement of our blithely miniscule new refugee quota this week, we've now proved it.
What is our government's big, fat moral response to the worst refugee crisis since WWII? Pretend. Raise the quota the very smallest number possible without looking like a typo, dress it like a dead turkey in a Richard Simmons leotard and truss it up as our new commitment to - what, dead poultry? Might as well be. Because there was no human imperative anywhere near our government's crosshairs with this announcement.
After waiting almost three decades, after endorsements from every other political party, all of the nation's major newspapers, religious groups across many faiths, even entire communities holding up their hand to say 'bring them here', this Government has announced it will take - turkey drumstick roll please - 250 more refugees annually.
This, despite a shiny, new, bigger capacity refugee resettlement centre opening in Mangere this week. This, despite the Red Cross saying we can take more.
Then, to add a grand hat tip to the concept that there is absolutely no rush when human lives are at stake, the blink-and-you-missed-it increase won't start until 2018. What's a few more years watching more children dying in Aleppo or drowning on their way to Lampedusa? As long as they don't start washing up in Wellington harbour, we're sweet.