Lin Thorp voted a mixture of for and against turning back asylum boats when possible

The majority voted against an amendment introduced by Liberal Senator Michaelia Cash. This would have amended a previous motion(See the division on that motion here. ) with the following:

At the end of the motion, add “and in addition to the opening of offshore processing on Nauru, calls on the Government to implement the full suite of the Coalition’s successful border protection policies and:

(a) restore temporary protection visas as the only visa option available to be granted to offshore entry persons found to be refugees;

(b) issue new instructions to Northern Command to commence to turn back boats seeking to illegally enter Australia where it is safe to do so;(FactCheck on ABC discussed whether it is illegal to turn back boats in international waters to Indonesia here. )

(c) use existing law to remove the benefit of the doubt on a person’s identity where there is a reasonable belief that a person has deliberately discarded their documentation; and

(d) restore the Bali Process to once again focus on deterrence and border security”.

There was one rebel voter in this division. Labor Senator Lin Thorp crossed the floor to vote with the Coalition.(Read more about crossing the floor here.) However, Senator Thorp subsequently sought leave to make a personal statement that "I apologise that I rushed in and inadvertently sat on the wrong side of the chamber during the division". This suggests that the Senator did not intend to cross the floor.

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The majority voted against part (b) of a motion proposed by Liberal Senator Eric Abetz.

This motion calls on the Government to implement Coalition policies with regards to asylum seekers. This includes:

• restoring temporary protection visas for persons found to be refugees;
• instructions to turn back asylum seekers boats when it is safe to do so;
• removing the benefit of the doubt on a person's identity when it is suspected that that person deliberately discarded their documentation;
• making the Bali Process focus on deterrence and border security.

Someone who votes aye for this motion supports this view. The majority voted no to this motion so it was unsuccessful.

Background to the bill

The bill was originally introduced in the House of Representatives as the Migration Legislation Amendment (Offshore Processing and Other Measures) Bill 2011. It was drafted in response to the High Court's judgement in Plaintiff M70/2011 v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship () HCA 32, which put an end to the Labor Government's Malaysia Solution policy.(Read more about the decision on Wikipedia here and on ABC News here. Read more about the effect of this decision on the Malaysia Solution here.)

To this end, the bill amends the Migration Act 1958 to replace the existing framework for taking offshore entry persons to another country for assessment of their claims to be refugees. The bill also replaces discretionary detention with mandatory detention for all asylum seekers at an offshore place, such as Christmas Island, and alters the Immigration (Guardianship of Children) Act 1946 in relation to making and implementing any decision to remove, deport or take a non-citizen child from Australia by overriding the guardianship obligations under that Act.

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