William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, Prince of Denmark between 1599-1601, over 400 years ago.

One of the most famous lines, an idiom, was "I must be cruel only to be kind" - where the young Prince scolds his mother, Gertrude, instructing her not to sleep with her new husband to save the honour of his late father.

The Prince of Denmark was attempting to be compassionate to his mother and loyal to his father after regretfully killing the father of his love instead of his new stepfather.

His cruelty was misplaced. It is important to reiterate, Hamlet was penned more than 400 years ago.

For those old enough, cast your mind back more than 30 years to Canberra on June 9, 1989, when Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke wept during a speech acknowledging the horror of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

It was just a year after the bicentenary when we celebrated British colonisation in a manner that would be questioned by the community and struggle for relevance today.

Mr Hawke was a deeply flawed individual, yet a leader who epitomised compassion as a strength and far from the Achilles' heel depicted in modern day politics.

He began: "For more than a month now, the eyes of the world have been on China. We witnessed a massive rallying of people in Beijing and Shanghai and heard the powerful expression of their will in the cause of democratic reform".

Midway through the speech, Mr Hawke paused and read from a diplomatic cable that was now being shared with the world for the first time.

"The troops who first arrived attempted to drive the people away, and to separate the students from the ordinary citizens," he said.

"They had expected to be given an hour. But within five minutes the anti-personnel carriers of the 27th entered the square, firing their machine guns as they came. When all those who had not managed to get away were either dead or wounded, foot soldiers went through the square, bayonetting or shooting anybody who was still alive.

"They had orders that nobody in the square be spared, and children ... young girls were slaughtered as mercilessly as the many wounded soldiers from other units there."

The final paragraph of the cable is too gruesome, horrifying, and inhumane to share. In response Prime Minister Hawke, without consulting cabinet, opened his arms to more than 42,000 Chinese nationals in Australia, offering humanitarian visas.

He reacted to a major world power's cruelty with an act of kindness, compassion, and empathy. The students never forgot.

Similar could be said of Mr Hawke's predecessor, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, who after the fall of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) during the Vietnam War in 1975 accepted 70,000 Vietnamese over the next seven years of his government.

Although, it should be noted that the demonised term "queue jumpers" found a narrative during this time from the lips of successive federal Immigration Ministers.

To his credit, Mr Fraser's government removed the final remnants of the 1901 White Australia Policy, pushed back against immigration officials keen to legislate for mandatory detention of "unauthorized arrivals" in "reception centres", and famously stated: "The solution to people coming in the backdoor was to open the front door wider".

In 2021 can you imagine a speech of such compassion and power welcoming Afghans fleeing the return of the tyrannical Taliban regime? Can you imagine a "front door policy" and standing up to immigration departments and officials determined to be racist in policy settings and legislative instruments?

A regularly highlighted and perhaps lauded "I stopped these [boats]" trophy on the mantelpiece of our Prime Minister's office is cruel symbolism perversely wrapped in the false sincerity and compassion of stopping leaky boats at sea.

The trophy is a slap in the face of Prime Ministerial giants who have come before him. And like Mr Morrison's Prime Ministership, it should be a trophy employed as a bookend.

The second coming of the Taliban in Afghanistan is no different to the fall of Saigon or the brutality of the communist regime in China.

Again, we have a moral obligation to be generous, recognising the dedication and support that many Afghans gave to our heroic defence force personnel.

Our government's response? Accept the bare minimum and watch desperate people jump from planes instead.

"On the ground events have overtaken many efforts, we wish it were different," the PM lamented. No PM, you were late to the final act.

History tells us that this is not a moment for the Prime Minister to quote Shakespeare's Hamlet, rather, he should turn the idiom on its head and lead a modern take: "I don't have to be cruel to be kind"