Prime Minister Tony Abbott has defended a major policy backflip on the offshore processing of asylum seekers, insisting permanent residency is off the table "now and forever".
Asylum seekers on Christmas Island, who arrived by boat between July 19 and the end of December 2013, could be offered temporary protection visas (TPVs) and allowed to live and work in the mainland community.
The move, flagged by Immigration Minister Scott Morrison, is at odds with the government's long-held insistence that they be processed offshore at Nauru or Manus Island in Papua-New Guinea and be resettled there or in a third country.
Mr Morrison argues the restoration of TPVs - abolished by the Rudd government in 2008 - are essential to clearing a backlog of 30,000 asylum seeker claims.
Mr Abbott, when quizzed about the policy backflip, said the government would continue to deny people smugglers a product to sell.
"The product they are selling is permanent residency of Australia, well it's off the table now and forever," he told reporters in Launceston on Thursday.
Temporary protection visas were a key plank of the government's border protection policy, the prime minister said.
"They're temporary, when the protection is no longer needed, the visa isn't there and you go back to your home country."
Labor and the Greens used their numbers in the Senate to quash TPVs late in 2013, but Mr Morrison is in talks with the new crossbench to have them restored.
"I have to deal with the Senate that's there and that means things have to be modified in order to get temporary protection visas in place," he said.
Asylum seekers arriving by boat in 2014 - like the group of more than 150 who arrived in July - will still be sent offshore.
The Greens say the government's TPV push was an admission that offshore processing was a failure.
"Temporary protection visas are one more punishment tool in the coalition's tool box," Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said.
"It keeps a big axe over their heads the whole time with fears they'll be sent back to danger."
The senator declined to say whether TPVs were the lesser of two evils when compared to indefinite detention.
Refugee advocate Ian Rintoul accused the government of holding asylum-seeker children "hostage" in their bid to reintroduce TPVs.
"Morrison is desperate to save some political face, as offshore processing continues to unravel," he said.
Labor said the minister was seeking to use TPVs as a band aid to hide his failure in managing the regional resettlement arrangement with PNG.
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