Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video The legislation as amended, primarily following Shorten’s security briefing, hardly opens the door to the people smugglers, or for a fresh wave of boats arrivals. The focus of the legislation is to provide appropriate medical service and treatment to those who need it. A succession of doctors, both domestic and international, has drawn attention to the deteriorating physical and mental health of many of the refugees and detainees. The process to initiate their treatment is to be driven by doctors, with layers of “safeguards” and assessment, with the minister in the end given strengthened discretion, and a relaxed timetable for that decision, thereby able to block the process on national security grounds. The legislation attempts to reduce the significance of the so-called “pull factors” attracting more boats by being confined to only those presently on Manus and Nauru. Once treated, the refugees are to be returned. Illustration: Dionne Gain Credit: Yet the government has been claiming, again without any hard evidence, except the expression of an opinion by the departmental secretary, that within a very short time frame, almost all the 1000 or so refugees on Manus and Nauru will be transported to our shores, never to leave, heralding the end of offshore processing, and suggesting that people smugglers will be able to tell their clients that they can fake an illness on arrival, and they’ll get in.

On Wednesday, Morrison announced he was reopening the Christmas Island detention centre to deal with an expected influx of boat arrivals as a direct result of the government's defeat in Parliament on this bill. Even if that were true, and it patently is not, I thought John Howard had excised Christmas Island from the mainland, and thereby from access to our legal and other processes? This is surely a stunt to rival Morrison’s knee-jerk announcement in the throes of the Wentworth byelection that he planned to move our Israeli embassy. Moreover, won’t it be counterproductive to announce to the people smugglers that we are “open for business again” before there is any evidence that the legislation provides them incentive to relaunch their boats? Morrison will also need to justify the anticipated $1.4 billion cost of reopening Christmas Island. Loading Of course, nobody wants a return to the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd era, which reopened the floodgates after Howard had virtually removed all from detention, and resulted in more than 1000 drowning at sea, and billions of dollars of expenditure. Nor do we want a return to the extremely acrimonious parliamentary and community debates about the issue.

However, in mounting its scare campaign, the government ironically downplays the success of its strategy that “stopped the boats”, which I heard Jim Molan, formerly in charge of that operation, claim recently was reasonably “easy” to do, needing only a couple of ships and a plane. I imagine this capacity still exists, and has probably been enhanced with experience. Of course, in crude political terms, many have argued that Shorten, backed by the crossbench, is taking a significant “political risk”, especially given the government’s success through the Howard and Abbott era in elevating border security to an election-winning issue. Loading The government’s strategy in recent days was, of course, to wedge Shorten, specifically against the threat of a resumption of people smuggling. Shorten was also “wedged” within his party, between those who wanted to capture the recent more humanitarian electoral support, and those with vivid memories of the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd debacle. Shorten could also see the considerable advantage of inflicting a historical parliamentary defeat on Morrison, hoping to further widen his lead in the polls.

So there are serious political risks for both sides. However, over and above all this, voters are sick and tired of our short-term, opportunistic, mostly negative, point-scoring and blame-shifting, day-in-day-out politics. They crave authenticity. They crave results. They want to be heard. Mostly, they want honest and transparent leadership on the bigger, important issues. The downward drift in support for the two major parties has been sustained in recent byelections and even in the recent Victorian state election, with a significant move towards independents in the hope of improved government. The very constructive role played by Kerryn Phelps and the other independents and minor parties on this medevac debate will be well received by many voters, and increasingly it will be an important factor in the coming federal election.