After the surprise defeat of its industrial relations bill last week, the Coalition government is desperately looking to finish the year with a win by repealing the so-called "medevac" legislation.

Passed in February – during the period of minority government before the election – the medevac bill showed compassion to hundreds of asylum seekers stuck in limbo in offshore processing centres and denied medical care as part of the government’s policy to “stop the boats”.

The law made it much more difficult for the Home Affairs Minister to block the transfer of sick detainees from offshore processing camps on Manus Island and Nauru to Australia for treatment. If doctors approved a transfer, it gave the minister only 72 hours to object and only on clear national security grounds.

When the bill first passed, the government's leader in the Senate, Mathias Cormann, claimed it would give a green light to people smugglers. It would, he said, render adequate scrutiny of arrivals impossible, allowing in "rapists and paedophiles." At a cost of millions of dollars, Prime Minister Scott Morrison reopened Christmas Island's mothballed detention centre to manage what he predicted would be an influx of transfers.

It is true that in its first 10 months the law has allowed for 179 people to be brought here from Nauru and Manus and many of them are still here, largely because they can now access the courts to press claims for asylum and delay their departure.