He is proposing changes to the Migration Act that would mean any detainee convicted of a criminal offence would fail the character test and could be denied a permanent protection visa.
Until recently, the Immigration Minister appeared to be sticking to Labor's policy against temporary protection visas - a policy being promoted by the coalition.
In February, Chris Bowen told the ABC he had sufficient powers under the Migration Act to deal with rioters on Christmas Island.
Now, two months later, and following further unrest in immigration detention centres, Chris Bowen appears to be talking differently about temporary protection visas.
The minister says the Migration Act already permits him to issue temporary visas, although he's stressing that if this occurs refugees will not be returned to countries where they'd be in danger of persecution.
"There are a number of options open to the government… in response to any various events that can be applied,” Mr Bowen said.
“They include temporary visas, that are existing under the act, those temporary visas can include a requirement to not engage in violent or disruptive behaviour, they can include steps to return them if situations improves in the home country and are no longer at danger, they include different rights to sponsor other people into Australia and to travel.”
Chris Bowen says what he is proposing does not amount to the return of temporary protection visas which the Rudd government abolished in 2008.
“They're two of the potential temporary visas available under the Act, then you have an incentive to know that if you are a genuine refugee, who has conducted themselves according to law, according to the appropriate expectations of the Australian community then you would be granted a permanent visa, if not, you'll be granted a visa with less rights,” Chris Bowen said.
The head of the Human Rights Law Centre in Melbourne, Phillip Lynch, says Chris Bowen is making up new policy on the run.
Mr Lynch says Mr Bowen is talking about using the existing visa provisions in inappropriate ways.
“What the minister is suggesting, however, is that those visas be used for purposes for which they were never intended,” Mr Lynch said.
“A bridging visa pending removal for example is a visa that is intended for someone who would otherwise be indefinitely in detention to enable them to be removed from detention whilst they're awaiting deportation".
The Federal Opposition's spokesman on Immigration Scott Morrison has told the ABC Chris Bowen's plan is just more spin from a minister who won't deal with the issues.
“One day they say they're going to enforce the strong powers under the Act and the next day when they find themselves unable to do so they talk about changing the Act,” Mr Morrison said.
Phillip Lynch from the Human Rights Law Centre says the announcement is an attempt to find a short term fix to a long term problem.
There was a similar message from the Australian Greens.
Sarah Hanson-Young is the party's spokesman for Immigration.
“The changes announced by the government and the minister today are indeed no different really than the current powers that the minister has," Minister Hanson-Young said.
The only difference is the excuse of the minister to re-introduce temporary protection visas, a regime that has been denounced by this very own government and human rights activists around the world,” she added.
The Liberal Party wants to resurrect temporary protection visas because it says there use acts as a disincentive to people smugglers and is one way of stopping asylum seeker boats.
It's an argument rejected by at least one member of the Coalition - Liberal moderate Judi Moylan from Western Australia.
Earlier this year, she said the actual statistics make a lie of the argument that temporary protection visas would stop asylum seekers arriving by boat when used in conjunction with the mandatory detention policy that was introduced in 1992.
"Ten years later there were five thousand boat arrivals, in the five years prior to temporary protection visas being introduced there were three thousand one hundred and three boat arrivals, in the five years following the introduction of temporary protection visas there were over eleven thousand arrivals,” Ms Moylan stressed.
“If we are serious though about stemming the flow of refugees we must desist from punitive policies and join with our regional neighbours and the international community to prevent tyranny, genocide, and war which causes people to flee from their homelands,” she said.
