In her brief stint as the Independent Member for Wentworth, Dr Kerryn Phelps bequeathed the nation a gift, which has become known as the Medevac legislation. A short explanation of this legislation is that when asylum seekers imprisoned on Manus Island and Nauru are sick in ways that cannot be treated there, the decision to evacuate them to Australia for treatment is made by a panel of doctors, not by Border Force officers with no medical training. Doesn't seem that controversial, does it? They are not granted Australian residency. They are not even released from detention. They are simply moved from detention on a distant island to detention in Australia, close to the medical resources needed to treat their illness. It's humane in a strictly limited, basically inhumane kind of way. I think Phelps would have liked to do more, but this is the best she could get through with the help of Labor and her friends on the cross-benches. Even then the Labor Party mostly voted fo
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson