The former defence chief in charge of turning back asylum-seeker boats under John Howard says Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's border protection plan won't make a big difference to the number of people trying to reach Australia.
Retired Rear Admiral Chris Barrie says much of the coalition's plan to establish a multi-agency border protection taskforce led by a three-star military commander amounts to simply shuffling arrangements in Canberra.
"By adding another three-star to the six three-stars we already have, all we're doing is paying somebody to do a job that could already be done effectively anyway if we tried a little harder," he told ABC radio on Friday.
"How is that actually going to affect the numbers of people coming to Australia? It's still trying to solve a problem at the wrong end of the equation."
Under Operation Sovereign Borders, as the coalition plan is known, the commander would report directly to the immigration minister. But Admiral Barrie says there's already a military commander who reports to the home affairs minister.
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"Can somebody please tell me what big difference that's going to make?" he said.
"Out there where we're doing surveillance, patrol and response, short of a huge investment in a coastguard or something like that I can't see it making any difference at all."
Admiral Barrie led the defence force when the Howard government put in place Operation Relex to turn back asylum-seeker boats.
Mr Abbott is proposing to revive this policy.
The former defence force chief said conditions were very different now to the early 2000s, with many more people seeking asylum across the world.
"Unless we create conditions at the source of the problem rather than the end of the problem we're not really going to change the stream of people wanting to come to a land of hope and opportunity like Australia."
