Still room on Christmas Island: Rudd

3 Apr 2010, 4:38 pm   -   Source: AAP
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Prime Minister Kevin Rudd denies Australia's offshore immigration facility at Christmas Island is packed, even though it has surpassed its official capacity.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has denied Australia's offshore immigration facility at Christmas Island is packed, even though it has surpassed its official capacity.

A Department of Immigration spokesman told AAP on Saturday there were 2067 people in the detention centre.

The department has previously quoted its capacity as 2040.

The spokesman said he had no information about any possible transfers to the mainland this weekend, and there are yet more people on the way.

A boat carrying 79 passengers and four crew was intercepted on Friday, the 34th asylum seeker boat to arrive this year.

But Mr Rudd said his advice on Saturday from the Department of Immigration was that there was still room on the island.

"The advice I have received this morning is that capacity remains," he told reporters in Canberra.

Mr Rudd defended his government's approach to asylum seekers, saying their numbers would vary depending on global circumstances.

Migration levels were about the same under his government as they were under the Howard government, he said.

"Australia's permanent migration flow ... when the Howard government came to office, it was about 85,000 a year, when the Howard government left office, it was about 180,000 a year," Mr Rudd said.

"In the last two years that we've been in office, we've kept it at about that level, and across all those years, the number of refugees accepted into Australia has been about 13,000."

There are reports that people on Christmas Island are sleeping in rooms designed for teaching English, and that the island's wastewater treatment plant is under strain.

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the facility was built with the intention of accommodating just 400 people, but a "calamity of policy failure" had it now at breaking point.

"We have had 102 boats arrive under the Rudd government, with the highest rate of arrival on record this year," he told AAP.

"Christmas Island was never going to cope with that."

Mr Morrison blamed the situation on the erosion of the previous government's border protection policy.

"Kevin Rudd inherited a solution and proceeded to create a problem," he said.

"He now has to deal with that problem, but he can't even admit he has one."

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