Scott Morrison suffers historic defeat over asylum seeker medivac bill (Oz government could fall)

news.com.au ^ | 12th February 2019 | Claire Bickers

[naturalman1975]

Scott Morrison has suffered a historic defeat over medical transfers for asylum seekers — despite 11th hour legal advice that it could be “unconstitutional”.

It makes the Morrison Government the first to lose a vote on a substantive piece of legislation in the lower house since 1929.

Labor and crossbench MPs voted to pass the legislation just before 6.15pm AEDT.

All amendments passed 75 votes to 74.

Constitutional law expert Anne Twomey told News Corp the government would be under pressure to resign or hold an election if it lost the vote after it warned the bill could be “unconstitutional”.

[naturalman1975]

This is a very big deal for Australian government. The nature of this bill and this defeat means it could be viewed as an implicit Vote of No Confidence in the government.

There has to be an election by May anyway, but this could conceivably force an immediate dissolution of Parliament and a general election as soon as possible.

On current polling, the Labor opposition would easily defeat the incumbent conservative Liberal/National coalition government and put trade unionist Bill Shorten into office as Australia's next Prime Minister.

[Moonman62]

A little background from another article:

The government is looking to block a bid, led by an independent, to allow asylum seekers in offshore camps to come to Australia for medical treatment, saying migrants could exploit it as a way into the country.

Both major parties have long backed tight border protection, looking to keep asylum seekers that arrive by boat out of the country, but Labor has indicated it might back the “Medivac” bill, which would land an embarrassing defeat of the government in parliament.