A retiring federal Labor MP has used her final speech to parliament to criticise Australia's offshore immigration detention regime, describing it as a festering wound that is killing people.
Her comments were aimed at both her own party, which resumed the offshore processing of asylum seekers just before the 2013 election, and the government.
The speech came hours after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull admitted he grieved for hundreds of asylum seekers in detention camps on Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.
The retiring Member for Fremantle, Melissa Parke, said the bipartisan policy - accompanied by a faux concern for drownings at sea - had facilitated "profound deterioration" of Australia's image of itself as a nation of a fair go.
"The present offshore detention system is a festering wound that is killing people and eroding our national character and reputation," she told parliament on Wednesday.
"It needs to be healed."
The government falsely accused asylum seekers of arriving illegally when it's actually Australia that's violating its legal obligations, Ms Parke said.
The former human rights lawyer, who has long opposed offshore detention, called for the government to dedicate a quarter of its 200,000 migrant intake to refugees.
Mr Turnbull denied asylum seekers on Nauru were in detention, but acknowledged many of them were suffering.
"The misery that many of those people are in, the mental anguish that many of them are in, is something that we sympathise with, we grieve for them," he told Fran Kelly on ABC radio when asked about the intense desperation that was leading to asylum seekers "killing themselves".
But that doesn't mean there is about to be a change to Australia's hard-line border protection stance and offshore processing regime.
Mr Turnbull echoed Immigration Minister Peter Dutton's view that refugee advocates should stop giving false hope of resettlement in Australia.
Doing so influenced self-harm attempts, the pair argue.
A Somali refugee remains in a critical condition in a Brisbane hospital after setting herself alight on Nauru, a week after an Iranian man died from injuries he sustained in a similar incident.
Nauru president Baron Waqa says he's immensely distraught by the incidents.
He also took aim at advocates, claiming they were goading refugees and asylum seekers to skip work on the island to become full-time protesters.
Meanwhile, officials from Australia and Papua New Guinea are still working on a plan to deal with the closure of the Manus Island detention centre and the fate of hundreds of asylum seekers.
PNG has flagged it wants to close down the facility after a Supreme Court ruled the centre was illegal.
"The two governments agreed to continue to work together on a roadmap that would ensure the Papua New Guinea government's compliance with the court's orders," a joint statement from both nations said.
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