This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Scott Morrison has boasted that Labor’s attempt to destabilise the government over refugees “failed” as Bill Shorten concluded the parliamentary year by declaring his team was “emerging as an alternative government”.

After a torrid final sitting day in which a push by opposition parties to mandate medical transfers from offshore detention became intertwined with bipartisan encryption legislation, Morrison claimed victory after avoiding what would have been the first government defeat on a substantive vote in the lower house in 90 years.

Morrison told Channel Nine’s Today program on Friday that the “cocky” Labor party had claimed “all sorts of bills and all sorts of motions … were going to pass but none of it happened”.

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“The government was able to confidently maintain its position in the House of Representatives as we have for the last three months,” he said. “So all the doomsday scenarios that were put about by the Labor party to undermine confidence, they were all proven to be false and Labor failed on every occasion and the government prevailed.”

Despite heightened expectations in Labor that Morrison may call an early election to avoid losing a vote on refugees and to accommodate Coalition concerns about the fate of the Berejiklian government in New South Wales, the prime minister promised that the government “will continue” to manage the parliament in the new year.

On Thursday a Senate filibuster by Cory Bernardi, Pauline Hanson and the Coalition helped prevent Kerryn Phelps’s bill for medical transfers passing in time to test Morrison in the lower house.

The delay forced Labor to withdraw amendments to the Coalition’s legislation to give law enforcement agencies access to encrypted messages, fearing that a failure to pass it would politicise national security over Christmas.

On Friday, Shorten told reporters in Canberra it was a “sensible compromise” to return to Labor’s amendments in the new year, accusing the government of “[running] away from the parliament” by refusing to extend sitting in the lower house.

Shorten accused the government of attempting to “use these national security laws to try and get an angle or an argument with Labor”.

Asked about the Phelps medical transfer bill, Shorten said Morrison had “deferred the issues” and “hasn’t solved anything”. Morrison’s problems “will still be there in February”, he said.

But Shorten played down the significance of the bill, saying it would be a “serious matter” for the government to lose a vote on the bill, but, as “it’s not a matter of confidence or supply”, it would not bring the government down.

Channelling Michelle Obama, Shorten said his strategy was: “When they go low, we’ll go high. My strategy is when they go negative, we will talk about the issues which are affecting Australian people.

“We have been a strong opposition but I believe we’re emerging as an alternative government.”

Play Video 0:59 ‘I will fight them on this’: PM fires up over border protection – video

Earlier, Morrison repeated his opinion that Shorten “is a threat when it comes to our national security”, claiming that on crucial legislation “he has to be dragged kicking and screaming every single time you try and get these things done”.

“I was very determined that I wasn’t going to let the Labor party undermine our border protection laws and play politics with national security and not pass a bill that will give police the powers to ensure paedophiles and terrorists and organised criminals could get away with using encrypted communications.”

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Morrison said that all children with medical issues had already been transferred from detention, with 100 coming off Nauru in the last three months.

“There is less than 10 there and there will be only about six in the weeks ahead,” he said.

The Law Council of Australia president, Morry Bailes, said the last minute encryption legislation had created “a situation where unprecedented powers to access encrypted communications are now law, even though parliament knows serious problems exist”.

“This is what happens when you compromise an established committee process and allow the work of parliament to be rushed and politicised,” he said.

“Next year, as well as passing the remaining amendments, the intelligence and security committee needs to be brought back into the frame to get these laws right.”