The coalition will up the ante on border security by having discussions with Nauru's foreign minister later today about reopening a centre for the offshore processing of asylum seekers.
Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop and immigration spokesman Scott Morrison will meet Kieren Keke in Brisbane to discuss reactivating the Australian-built centre on Nauru.
Labor has ruled out Nauru as an option, preferring instead to continue discussions with the Gusmao government about a new centre on East Timor.
It also says negotiations with Nauru are a waste of time because the Pacific island nation's parliament is fractured.
The coalition is keen to retain its dominance over Labor on asylum-seeker policy with the latest Newspoll, published in The Australian on Tuesday, showing voters rate the opposition as better able - 42 per cent to 29 per cent - to handle the issue.
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Asylum seekers rate higher with voters than interest rates, inflation, climate changes and industrial relations but lower than health and Medicare, education, the economy, leadership and national security, the poll showed.
Labor leads the coalition on health, education, climate change and industrial relations.
Both Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott are campaigning in Queensland on Tuesday.
Labor will use economic modelling to ramp up its attack on the way the coalition plans to fund its $2.7 billion paid parental scheme.
The government will claim a 1.7 per cent levy on more than 3000 businesses, with taxable income above $5 million a year, will cost the average family an extra $355 a year on essential goods.
Opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb says the scheme's costs eventually will be absorbed into the budget once government finances improved.
"This temporary levy will replace the parental scheme many businesses already have in place," he told ABC Radio on Tuesday.
The coalition is defending its plan on another front with revelations that fathers who take leave under the scheme will receive only the same wage as the child's mother.
"The scheme is primarily designed to allow the mother to stay at home with the child," Mr Robb said, adding it was a work entitlement, not a welfare measure.
Labor will use an announcement to fund a $1.15 billion rail link, between the Redcliffe Peninsula suburbs of Petrie and Kippa-Ring on Brisbane's outskirts, to push its infrastructure credentials.
"It's a great project," Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese told ABC Radio.
The federal government will provide $742 million to the project which it says will ease congestion and reduce travelling times to Brisbane's city centre.
Labor is defending three marginal seats in the area.
