A refugee advocate says there are asylum-seekers in Malaysia hoping to get a boat to Christmas Island so that when they are returned to Malaysia they'll have more rights.
Director of 'Asylum-Seekers Christmas Island' Michelle Dimasi has been visiting asylum-seekers in Kuala Lumpur.
She says a group of Afghan asylum-seekers in Malaysia told her how they plan to improve their situation.
"They relayed to me that the conditions in Malaysia are so atrocious that they thought that by going to Christmas Island and coming back to Malaysia that they might have an improvement in their lives," she told SBS.
"It might mean they'd have better healthcare access, their children would get to go to school and they would feel they had a better quality of life".
First boatload arrives on Christmas Island
The first boatload of asylum seekers earmarked for Malaysia under the federal government's people swap deal has arrived on Christmas Island for processing.
An immigration department spokesman could not confirm reports of a single child among the 54 asylum seekers on board. He would not say when the asylum seekers would be told they would be transferred to Kuala Lumpur.
The asylum seekers are the first of 800 to be transferred to Malaysia for processing in exchange for 4000 processed refugees.
Security has been beefed up on Christmas Island in preparation for the arrival.
Riot police have been conducting training exercises this week, and extra security fencing has been put up at the Phosphate Hill detention centre.
As the boat arrived, Australian Greens immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young renewed her condemnation of the deal with Malaysia.
She said the federal government seemed only interested in "political point scoring."
"They're doing it as a quick political fix, not because it's the right thing to do, not because it saves the Australian taxpayers money," she said.
Acting opposition leader Julie Bishop said the boat's arrival and the government's intention to send the people to Malaysia was an admission the government had got its immigration policies wrong.
"They've now finally admitted that it was their change of policy that has given rise to the massive increase to the number of people arriving by boat, the resurgence of the people-smuggling trade, the violence that has occurred in our detention centres," she told reporters in Perth.
Senator Hanson-Young was in Canberra on Thursday for a Senate inquiry hearing on her bill to overhaul the immigration detention system.
The Migration Amendment (Detention Reform and Procedural Fairness) Bill 2010 would end offshore processing and the government's excision policy, ensure that immigration detention was only used as a last resort. It would also impose a 30-day time limit for health and security checks to take place.
Senator Hanson-Young said the government's deal with Malaysia showed these checks could be done within 72 hours.
"So why can't they do it in Australia for people held in immigration detention centres to avoid that awful, awful impact on mental health, particularly of children and families?" she told reporters.
The immigration department's submission to the inquiry says Senator Hanson-Young's bill "would remove the structural integrity of the (Migration) Act".
The submission lists many concerns, including a warning that the changes would strain existing judiciary and court resources and give executive powers to the judiciary.
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