Rebekha Sharkie to meet Scott Morrison over asylum seeker bill

Rebekha Sharkie will meet Scott Morrison within days after accepting an offer from the Prime Minister’s office for a “briefing” on the contentious legislation.

Centre Alliance member for Mayo Rebekha Sharkie has been offered a briefing from the Prime Minister. Picture: AAP

Key crossbencher Rebekha Sharkie will meet Scott Morrison within days after accepting an offer from the Prime Minister’s office for a “briefing” on contentious legislation to medically evacuate asylum-seekers in offshore detention.

Ms Sharkie received the offer late today after she earlier confirmed her intention to support the legislation while remaining open to discussing possible amendments with the government, a spokeswoman told The Australian.

In addition to the offer of a briefing, the letter outlined why the government opposed crossbencher Kerryn Phelps’s proposal to put two doctors in charge of advising whether asylum-seekers should be transferred off Manus Island and Nauru on medical grounds.

“We don’t know what the government is going to propose, that’s up to them,” the spokeswoman for Ms Sharkie said.

“Sometimes you go to these briefing meetings and they don’t move at all, they just use it as another opportunity to tell you what they’re thinking.

“In terms of what the Prime Minister may or may not be willing to bend on, we don’t know, because she hasn’t spoken to him. He’s just offered her a briefing and she’s accepted.”

The Prime Minister’s office declined to comment on what the briefing would entail.

Dr Phelps’s private members bill, if passed, would give doctors, rather than politicians and bureaucrats, control over medical evacuations from Australia’s offshore processing centres.

Mr Morrison today warned this could result in paedophiles, rapists, and murderers entering Australia.

“This bill will mean that we would just have to take them,” he said.

“This is what will happen if Bill Shorten does not put national security ahead of his own political opportunism.”

The Prime Minister also warned that a large number of single men who are currently in detention could come to Australia.

“Hundreds of them will have to be transferred to Australia at the directive of doctors, not the government, and this will mean we’ll have to reopen detention centres that we closed like Christmas Island,” he said.

“This will cost a serious amount of money on the Australian taxpayer and it will undermine the successful border protection framework that has stopped the boats and ensured the integrity of our borders.”

Speaking on Sky News on Tuesday night, Mr Morrison labelled the bill as “stupid” and composed by “people who haven’t got the faintest idea how this works”.

Labor leader Bill Shorten has indicated Labor will support the bill, meaning the government needs the support of Queensland MP Bob Katter, which it has secured, and one other crossbencher to avoid becoming the first government in 90 years to lose a substantive vote in parliament.

Tasmanian independent MP Andrew Wilkie said he had been lobbied by the government but not been persuaded to drop his support for the bill.

A spokeswoman for fellow independent Cathy McGowan said the Indi MP would confirm her position when the legislation went before parliament next week.

Ms Sharkie has said she “trusts the doctors over the politicians”.

“This bill seeks to achieve a way forward to address the medical needs of those people left on Manus and Nauru without going through lengthy legal proceedings,” she said.