For a few months last year, a legal instrument underpinning Australia's offshore asylum seeker processing policy stopped working.
The "Instrument of Designation" used to send asylum seekers to Nauru, first put in place by the Gillard government 10 years ago, expired in October.
And no-one seemed to notice.
Yesterday, the government moved to rush a renewed instrument of designation through the parliament, warning of "real-life consequences" if it failed to act.
So what happened?
A decade of offshore processing
A bit over a decade ago, the then-Gillard government was grappling with how to manage a significant surge in asylum seekers travelling to Australia by boat.
In the first eight months of 2012, nearly 9,000 people attempted to reach Australia on 135 boats.
It was estimated at the time that 704 people had died at sea between October 2009 and September 2012.
It was in that context, acting on advice from an expert panel, then-immigration minister Chris Bowen signed two instruments of designation establishing offshore processing in both Nauru and Papua New Guinea.
It was later decided that all asylum seekers arriving by boat would be processed offshore.
Over 10 years, just over 4,000 people were transferred to Nauru and Papua New Guinea for processing.
The number of people living within the centres at any one time fluctuated, reaching well over a thousand in both centres around 2014.
Only 65 are in Nauru at present and are living in the community.
Papua New Guinea ceased to be a regional processing country at the start of last year, but the agreement remains with Nauru.
A legal hiccup
The Nauru designation approved by parliament in 2012 was built with a 10-year "sunset clause", so it needed to be renewed last year to remain effective.
But for reasons that remain a bit unclear, that simply did not happen and for a while, it seems that no one noticed.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil was eventually told in December that the instrument had lapsed two months earlier.
And because the instrument had to be approved by both houses of parliament, it would be two more months before it could be fixed.
The designation effectively centralises the legal powers the government needs to process asylum seekers offshore.
But it was advised those powers still exist separately through other legal avenues, so while the designation was not in place, the government's operations in Nauru could continue.
A controversial fix
The government successfully sought to put aside other business in parliament yesterday to have the Nauru issue, and an entirely unrelated issue around superannuation, dealt with urgently.
It was met with fury from the opposition, who accused it of "dropping the ball" on a matter of national security, and from the crossbench, with one MP labelling the government's handling of the issue as "egregious and perverse".
Offshore processing of asylum seekers has been controversial since the beginning, with concerns about the safety and security of asylum seekers, prolonged uncertainty for those being processed, punitive living conditions and the significant financial cost.
In 2016-17, the total cost of running offshore processing centres reached almost $1.1 billion for the year.
Some members of parliament were not keen to rush through another 10-year approval of offshore processing in Nauru.
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie argued the government could have used the chance to take a different approach.
"This was an opportunity to think afresh, this was an opportunity to end offshore processing," he said.
"This was an opportunity to invent a humane and legal response, one that would just as effectively destroy the business model of the people smugglers."
But Ms O'Neil made a lengthy defence of the current arrangements, arguing they had to continue and pointing to third-country resettlement programs as evidence the system works.
"The permanent resettlement of many persons from Nauru to the United States, Canada and now New Zealand demonstrates the ability of regional processing arrangements to ensure durable permanent pathways for resettlement," she said.
"While also ensuring that people smugglers are denied their objective, which is simply making money by marketing Australia as an outcome of an incredibly evil trade."
Shadow Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said Labor had left a hole in Australia's border regime.
"It is unforgiveable that the Labor government could do absolutely nothing in a four-month period of time to ensure there was a regional processing centre designated," she said.
With the support of the Coalition, the instrument was voted through both houses and will last another decade, unless a change is made in the meantime.
