Both the federal government and the opposition are toughening their positions on asylum seekers who, they claim, are taking advantage of Australia.
The federal opposition says, if it wins power, it would send in special-forces troops to intervene when asylum seekers threaten to harm themselves at sea.
Meanwhile, the Government has moved to punish asylum seekers who are believed to have destroyed their identity documents.
Thea Cowie reports.
The latest crackdown on asylum seekers follows reports 34 would-be refugees on their way to Australia threatened to harm themselves rather than be taken back to Indonesia.
A Maltese oil and chemical tanker picked up the asylum seekers after their boat got into trouble last week.
The tanker's captain planned to hand them back to Indonesian authorities, but, when the asylum seekers threatened self-harm, they were taken to Christmas Island.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says a Coalition Government would not let the asylum seekers get away with what he describes as coercive behaviour.
"The Australian government should not be expected to take responsibility for foolish actions by non-citizens. We just can't be expected to take responsibility for that. And I make the fundamental point that the most compassionate thing to do is to stop the boats. As long as the boats keep coming, the drownings will keep happening." REPORTER: "So you're happy to stop the drownings but not self-harm?" ABBOTT: "Obviously, people should not threaten acts of self-harm. And the Australian government should not be blackmailed by people who are threatening to do something that they should never do."
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison says the Government needs to send a tougher message.
He says the last Coalition government sent in special forces troops to intervene in issues at sea to great effect and a future Coalition government would be prepared do the same.
Mr Morrison has told Sky News people who act this way should be stopped the way they were under Prime Minister John Howard's direction in the 2001 Tampa affair.
"People here in this situation are basically taking advantage of the Safety of Lives at Sea Convention. They get rescued by a ship that comes to their aid, and then they threaten them with their own suicide to demand that they be taken to Australia. People who are going to try this on should be stopped. And what the Australian government should be doing is letting merchant vessels know that, if they are in that situation, that an Australian naval or customs vessel would come to their aid. What the Government has done is the reverse Tampa effect: they've just welcomed people to Australia."
In 2001, John Howard ordered SAS troops to board the Norwegian cargo ship the MV Tampa.
It was carrying nearly 500 asylum seekers it had rescued north-west of Christmas Island.
The Coalition credits this tactic with helping stem the arrival of asylum seekers.
But Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare disagrees.
He says sending in forces has been disastrous in the past.
"Go back and have a look at what happened with SIEV 36. The boat wasn't turned back, but the people on the boat thought the boat was going to be turned back, and there was an explosion on the boat. Five people died, 40 people were injured. When the WA coroner did an investigation into this, he said that it was because people on the boat thought the boat was going to be turned back that the boat had an explosion. And that's the reason people died, and that's the reason people were injured, including Australian personnel."aliti
And Mr Clare says it is not up to politicians to tell special forces what to do.
"It's the job of people in uniform to make these decisions, not politicians. If there was a siege and there were hostages, it wouldn't be right for politicians to tell the police to go in all guns blazing, and it's not right for politicians to tell people in uniform, or captains of ships, what to do."
Meanwhile, the Labor Party has unveiled its own tough new policies on asylum seekers.
It follows Foreign Minister Bob Carr's recent claims that many -- or even most -- asylum seekers arriving by boat are not genuine refugees.
Labor has particularly singled out middle-class Iranians who, it says, are fleeing economic sanctions, not persecution.
Jason Clare says the way to deter economic migrants is to fly them back out of Australia as soon as they arrive.
"The problem that we confront here is that Iran refuses to take their citizens unless they voluntarily want to come back to Iran. Now if we can't do that, then the next best thing is to fly them halfway back to Iran: fly them back to Malaysia. It's fly-backs that work. And that's why we need to press the case for things like the Malaysian agreement. We need that plus more. We need to build on those sorts of agreements with the countries of our region. That's what worked after Saigon fell (at the end of the Vietnam War) -- Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand working with the UN to process people and, when people were identified as being refugees, transfer them to different countries around the world."
The Australian government already operates a similar fly-back policy for failed Sri Lankan asylum seekers.
Labor also plans to crackdown on asylum seekers who are believed to have deliberately destroyed their identity papers.
Under the policy, asylum seekers who are thought to have destroyed their documents and do not cooperate with authorities to get new ones will go to the back of the processing queue.
Priority will be given to would-be refugees who have their papers.
But Immigration Minister Tony Burke says people who cannot help having no identity documents will not be punished.
"This is why I focus not on whether or not documents exist, but on whether or not people are being cooperative. The flip side, of course, is some people come from parts of the world where, for the best endeavours, there are no ways of getting documents. They don't get disadvantaged by this. But for people who are trying to game the system and who think there is an advantage in not cooperating, I'm making sure that no such advantage will exist."
The Opposition's Scott Morrison says it is a watered down version of the policy the Coalition announced ahead of the last election.
And he says it does not go far enough.
Under the Coalition policy, asylum seekers who are believed to have destroyed their papers will get no visas at all, whereas the Government will just make them wait longer for their claims to be processed.
Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul says both approaches are irrelevant because most asylum seekers do, in fact, have papers.
"They have accepted that asylum seekers actually arrive here without identification papers, and that is simply not true. It's true that people may not have passports, but they have very good reasons for that. But the overwhelming majority of asylum seekers have identity documents -- national identity documents, birth certificates, drivers' licence, trade certificates, school certificates. So I think that it's a piece of political rhetoric."
Greens Leader Christine Milne also says neither party has got it right.
She has told Sky News the deterrence measures both parties are proposing do not work in a globalised world.
"The tragedy for the Coalition, and for the Australian people, is that the Coalition thinks they can solve problems unilaterally. You simply can't in a globalised world. And that is why, to be respected as a nation -- particularly, with us taking on the leadership of the G20 -- we have to show that we are a responsible global citizen. The way that the Coalition is behaving, it's suggesting Australia wants to run a pirate regime and take on Indonesia."
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