Just before Scott Morrison won the 2019 election, Labor and independents used the government’s complicated numbers in the house to pass the Medevac legislation, which allowed for the medical evacuation of detained asylum seekers on Nauru and Papua New Guinea to be transferred to Australia for medical treatment, on the advice of doctors.

When Morrison came back to government one of the first things he did was repeal it. Greens senator David Shoebridge is re-introducing the law and says close to 100 people held in detention by Australia for more than a decade “are in desperate conditions”.

Given Labor supported the law in 2019 he says, should clear the way for Labor to support it again, now.

Shoebridge:

Offshore detention is the result of long-standing toxic politics in the Australian Parliament. 

These are people who have been separated from their families, many forced to watch their friends die in cruel detention facilities, and who are denied the basic dignity we all should have. We need to remember that these are people who came to Australia seeking safety.

When Medevac was last passed in early 2019, the Labor Party supported it. Now that they are in government, they seem to have forgotten this humane policy. It is needed now more than ever. I was in PNG late last year and met with dozens of refugees who were forced to PNG from Australia. 

The people I met in PNG were all in urgent need of medical care, they are denied critical care and the Albanese Government cannot pretend they don’t just don’t exist. This Parliament did the right thing in early 2019, we can do it again now and show Australians how politics can be better than the anger and division offered by the likes of Peter Dutton.“