Labor says it is prepared to consider government amendments to medical evacuation laws if necessary, but sees “no evidence” to suggest the laws are not working as intended.

As the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, ramps up pressure on Labor to side with the government to scrap the so-called medevac laws passed against its will in February, Labor’s shadow home affairs minister, Kristina Keneally, said the party was standing firm in support.

“The government has not put forward any compelling evidence as to why this legislation should be repealed,” Keneally told Sky News. “Labor supports the medevac laws for two reasons. It ensures when people are sick they are able to get the healthcare that they need that they cannot get on Manus and Nauru … [And] that the legislation provides for the minister to be able to determine who comes into the country.

“We are not open to repealing the law in absence of any actual evidence. What I would be open to doing is, if the government has amendments that they want to put forward, [looking at them] but they have’t done that.”

Following a federal court ruling that allows asylum seekers to be assessed by doctors remotely, Dutton said the government was seeking advice about potentially challenging the ruling by either an appeal to the full federal court, or in the high court.

Following the ruling, Dutton said it would diminish the government’s authority to prevent people being transferred to Australia, and called on the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, to take control of an “unravelling situation”.

Keneally, however, pointed to government tender documents that were seeking clinical advisers to undertake desktop assessments and suggested the government was already using remote assessment.

Dutton called the attack a “red herring”.

“The debate today is about whether or not the Labor party is going to support our repealing of this dangerous law, which is a law of Labor’s making,” Dutton said. “Mr Albanese needs to take control of what is an unravelling situation for the Labor party at the moment, and he needs to come out and say whether or not they will support the government and repeal that law in parliament.”

He said the transferees could include people who were of bad character but did not meet the threshold outlined in the legislation.

“People of bad character can come, are able to come, and, in fact, are required to come under Labor’s laws that they passed – that’s the reality,” he said. “There are some people of bad character who have come to our country.”