Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says the government won't back down from its new hardline asylum seeker policy, with accusations it's already floundering.
"We don't intend to flinch, this is the right policy, this is the right message," Mr Rudd told the Nine Network on Thursday.
Under the federal government's deal with Papua New Guinea, announced last week, people arriving by boat will be denied resettlement in Australia, be taken to Manus Island for processing and be resettled in PNG if their refugee status is approved.
On Wednesday, nine people including an 18-month-old baby, four children and a pregnant woman died and 189 people were rescued when an asylum seeker boat bound for Australia sank off the Indonesian fishing town of Cidaun in western Java.
Mr Rudd said he never expected the PNG announcement to immediately stop the boats and he had expected people smugglers to try to test the government's resolve.
He said the government needed to take a hard stand against people smuggling with the crisis in Syria potentially resulting in 1.8 million asylum seekers.
"Australia's immigration policy, asylum seeker policy is not chipped in stone."
Mr Rudd again defended his decision to drop the Howard government's Pacific solution after the 2007 election, but he acknowledged it should have been adjusted in 2009/10 when global circumstances changed.
He said the Australian government was working with the PNG government to improve conditions on Manus island.
Immigration Minister Tony Burke is due to visit Manus Island on Thursday.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is set to announce a new asylum seeker policy on Thursday to establish a new multi-agency taskforce led by a three-star general, to be called Operation Sovereign Borders.
Mr Rudd said it just added a second slogan to the opposition leader's "stop the boats" mantra.
"So we have two three-word slogans: stop the boats (and) operation sovereign something-or-other," he told reporters in Launceston.
"The business of border security is a hard and tough business for any government of Australia.
"Mr Abbott doesn't have an alternative, he has a three-word slogan."
