Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has called for protesting detainees to be removed from the roof of Sydney's Villawood Immigration Detention Centre.
Three detainees - Majid Parhizkar, 24, from Iran, and stateless Kurdish men Mehdi and Amir - have now spent a week on top of the centre. Their applications for asylum have twice been rejected.
"I think we've got to get them down," Mr Abbott told Macquarie Radio on Wednesday.
"We can't have a situation where people are acting in consistent defiance of legitimate authority.
"These protests have to be ended and if it was happening in our streets, people were occupying buildings in our cities, the police would move in and they would sort it out. "And I don't think there's any fundamental difference here. It just has to be sorted out."
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Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison added: "It simply requires the (immigration) minister to issue an instruction to his department that these people are to be removed from the roof.
"And then (centre operator) Serco and others would contact the relevant authority, whether it's the AFP or the state police, and then they would take matters into hand."
The three men at Villawood are still not eating, Mark Goudkamp of the Refugee Action Coalition says. "I'm pretty sure water's been getting to them," Mr Goudkamp told AAP.
"But food is not. They're not consciously on hunger strike but effectively they are because it's being imposed upon them."
Their prolonged protest follows a riot at the centre involving up to 100 detainees who destroyed nine buildings by setting them on fire.
The Department of Immigration and Citizenship was unable to immediately respond on Wednesday to requests for comment on the latest situation. It also remains unclear whether or not a small protest by detainees on Christmas Island has ended.
Eight people climbed onto a roof at the island's Northwest Point facility on Tuesday, but by mid-afternoon just two remained. Detainees at WA's Curtin Immigration Detention Centre in WA have ended a three-day hunger strike, Mr Goudkamp said.
Meanwhile there are reports that an epileptic detainee allegedly involved in the violence at Villawood last week has been bashed. Refugee advocate Fabia Claridge has told the ABC the man was attacked by a group of 10 Fijian detainees who were angry that visiting rights had been curtailed.
"He has been bashed around the head. He's got a black eye and a swollen nose.
He looks like he's been assaulted," Ms Claridge said. Immigration Minister Chris Bowen unveiled plans on Tuesday to change the Migration Act so that any detainee involved in criminal activity would be denied a permanent protection visa.
