Today the Senate has a duty to shift the pall of inaction that hangs over our elected representatives.
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Australia must do its bit to end the terrible trade in people that so often results in deaths by drowning.
In a late night media conference, while the parliamentary mid-winter ball was starting, Julia Gillard put the onus on Tony Abbott's senators to act in the national interest.
''The Senate will face a yes-no choice,'' she said. She needs the Coalition's support because the Greens are implacably opposed to offshore processing of asylum seekers.
Kevin Rudd tried that approach, and it failed. The people smugglers ramped up the flow of boats after he dismantled John Howard's Pacific solution. The House of Representatives made a step forward, by passing a bill to circumvent the High Court ruling, and allow offshore processing of boat people.
Earlier, an embarrassing squabble dominated the House for most of the day. While asylum seekers were missing in yet another boat capsize, some fine speeches were given, tears were shed, voices were raised.
Until the last minute, the only thing MPs could agree on was holding on to their partisan views, at all costs, and twisting the circumstances to suit their view of the world.
The compromise was reached with the support of the independents, but, as noted here previously, Abbott will not hand Gillard a win.
Underlining this determination, he used Tuesday's meeting of Coalition MPs to repeat his assertion Gillard is a ''rotten Prime Minister leading a rotten government''. Abbott is again retreating to the lofty mountain of high principle to find a way to disagree with his own policy - of offshore processing.
The Opposition Leader and his team hammered Gillard for proposing to send asylum seekers to Malaysia, a country which is not a signatory to the refugee convention. He claims the Malaysia plan was ''cruel deal'' for boat people.
Such hypocrisy.
Abbott was a minister in the Howard government when a deal was done to dump asylum seekers on Nauru, which at that stage had not signed.