The migrant boats have not stopped, despite what the Australian government says, says Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young.
In the past week, 2000 Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants have been rescued off Indonesia and Malaysia, while activists estimate there are another 8000 stuck in harrowing conditions out at sea in Southeast Asia.
"The boats haven't stopped, they are marooned out on the high seas and people are starving to death," Ms Hanson-Young told reporters on Saturday.
"(They are) being used as human ping-pong balls, pushed from one country's borders to another."
Ms Hanson-Young has called on the Australian government to send out search and rescue crews and resettle refugees, many of whom are fleeing persecution in Myanmar (Burma) and poverty in Bangladesh.
But Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have been turning away stricken boats filled with starving asylum seekers.
The waves of weak, hungry and dehydrated migrants who arrived on Friday were the latest to slip into countries that have made it clear they are not welcome.
Thailand has announced a regional meeting on the crisis for May 29, but Myanmar - which refuses citizenship to its Rohingya minority - indicated it would stay away.
Federal opposition finance spokesman Tony Burke said the Australian government should respond by joining in a regional approach.
"The response ... is an acknowledgement that only a regional approach is an approach that would work," he told reporters on Saturday.
"We need to make sure, as Labor has always viewed, we want people who are in a genuine desperate situation to be able to be given a place, a safe haven.
"But to make sure in finding a safe place for them to live they are not using methods of getting there that cause them to lose their lives on the way."
Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla defended his country's unwillingness to accept refugees, telling the BBC that it sent aboard engineers to tend to migrant boats so they could reach their intended destinations.
"These refugees, the target is not Indonesia," he said.
"In Indonesia it is not easy to have work. Usually they are going to Australia or Malaysia - it's easy to have a job there. The target is not Indonesian waters.
"If their target is other countries, we give them supplies."
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