Abbott foreign policy in disarray: Marles

The coalition government's boat turn-back policy has failed and its foreign policy is in disarray, Labor says.

The government on Saturday ordered a Customs boat to bring 63 asylum seekers to Christmas Island after Indonesian authorities refused to take them back to Java during a 24-hour high seas stand-off.

Opposition immigration spokesman Richard Marles says it's now completely plain that turn-backs are not happening.

"We have had Indonesia from day one saying they won't accept tow-backs," Mr Marles told Sky News on Sunday.

"It was inevitably going to fail. And that's what we saw yesterday."

Mr Marles said the prime minister's "more Jakarta, less Geneva" approach to foreign relations was also in tatters.

"Its foreign policy is in a state of disarray today as well," he said.

Mr Marles conceded asylum seeker boats had slowed over the last few months but said that was primarily because of Labor's tough Papua New Guinea resettlement deal.

"The change point is not September 7, the change point is July 19," he said.

"It's because of what Labor put in place."

Labor leader Bill Shorten said the government's boat policy was in serious trouble.

"There's no doubt in my mind that the coalition's boat person policy is absolutely not working," he told ABC television.

Mr Shorten also slammed the "pattern of secrecy" surrounding the government's asylum policies.

"They're not answering questions about what's happening," he said. "We are finding out more about what the Australian government's doing in the Jakarta Post than we're finding out from the government ministers."

And the government had damaged Australia's relationship with Indonesia in just eight weeks, he said.

"That has got to be a land-speed record for getting things wrong."

Mr Shorten also said the slowdown in boat arrivals was largely due to Labor's PNG solution.

Tony Abbott on Saturday described the stand-off as a setback but said the coalition's boat policies were working.

Government frontbencher Christopher Pyne said on Sunday he didn't believe Indonesia's refusal to take back asylum seekers was punishment for reports that Australia had been spying on Indonesia.

"I don't think so," he told Network Ten.

"The recovery of our border protection ... is not going to be a straight line. There will be times when it zig zags in different directions because that is the nature of this very complicated process."

The number of boat arrivals had dropped by 75 per cent since the coalition was elected, he said.

"The message is out there, the boats have been turned back, sometimes it won't work that way and those people who have come to Christmas Island will go straight to Manus Island or Nauru," he said.