Scott Morrison has no choice but to call Jacqui Lambie’s bluff on medivac

Crossbench Senator Jacqui Lambie in the Senate chamber on Thursday. Picture: AAP

Scott Morrison now has little choice but to call Jacqui Lambie’s bluff and set the government up for possible defeat on its pledge to repeal the Medivac laws.

Whatever Jacqui Lambie’s conditions are, there are strong voices inside the Prime Minister’s Cabinet who believe that this is a no compromise issue.

It’s either repeal or nothing. Given the Tasmanian Senator’s mercurial approach to any policy the government puts up there is an equal chance the bluff may work.

Morrison isn’t for turning on this issue. To do so would be a humiliation, a victory for Labor and a betrayal of a totemic issue for the Morrison government’s national security election agenda.

READ MORE: Medivac transferees don’t need to see a doctor | PoliticsNow: live from Canberra | Lambie makes medivac ultimatum

The government still has a week left before Parliament rises for Christmas. If the repeal doesn’t happen before then, it is unlikely that there will be many if any people left on Manus and Nauru come the new-year at the rate of medical transfers currently underway.

In the meantime, and on the surface, the Morrison team appear to be having their worst week in Parliament since the election.

Pauline Hanson has delivered Morrison a fatal blow by siding with Labor and the Greens against the ensuring integrity bill designed to dust up the unions and dodgy Labour hire companies. This was a core election promise and one that the Coalition was unable to get through in the last parliament.

PM Scott Morrison and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton in a division in the House of Representatives Chamber on Thursday. Picture: Kym Smith

Losing the vote on a bill it believed was secure, left the government stunned. It had been briefing media most of the day that they believed that One Nation was on side.

But on Hanson’s part, it appears to have been a case of premeditated deception. Hanson had negotiated amendments and voted against Greens amendments and had given written assurances she would support the bill as late as yesterday.

The view within government is that Hanson must have stitched up a deal with the unions for support, primarily the CFMEU, as One Nation starts to build a campaign for the Queensland State election.

Morrison now finds himself suffering an unexpected defeat and battling two unpredictable and politically dishonest Senators in Lambie and Hanson who are now also competing with each other.

What should have been the easiest two weeks of the year for Morrison heading into Christmas is fast becoming his worst.

The Angus Taylor fiasco has sucked the life out of the government’s political combat this week.

As far as scandals go, it hardly tips the scale in favour of a sacking or anything close to it. And as a political disaster for the government?

In the final sitting fortnight of 2018, a government staffer pointed out, the once and short lived Liberal MP Julia Banks quit at the same time as the PM was doing a presser without telling him first.

Peter Dutton also narrowly escaped being referred to the High Court over his wife’s child care centres while Craig Kelly threatened to blow up Parliament if he lost his preselection.

All this while the government was about 10 points behind in the polls.

The Taylor distraction however has now just fed into a government which appears to have thought it could coast into Christmas with a couple of significant legislative victories.

The first and largely unnoticed victory was the ratification of the Indonesian Free Trade Agreement earlier in the week.

The second was meant to be the union bill.

Morrison has been delivered his first real lesson in politics as Prime Minister by taking the word of One Nation and thinking that Harold Macmillan’s maxim no longer applied.