An asylum-seeker baby temporarily spared from being returned to Nauru will ultimately end up there, the immigration minister says.
Baby Asha has been released into community detention after doctors at Brisbane's Lady Cilento Children's Hospital engaged in a 10-day stand-off with the government.
They refused to release the one-year-old until they could be assured she was going to an acceptable home environment.
Protesters opposed to the offshore detention of children staged a round-the-clock vigil outside the hospital.
Supporters have welcomed the government's decision to temporarily put the child in community detention in Australia.
But Immigration Minister Peter Dutton says it's the government's intention to return the child to Nauru, once legal and medical issues are resolved.
"People will go back to Nauru," he told ABC radio.
"We are not going to allow people smugglers to get out a message that if you seek assistance in an Australian hospital, that somehow that is your formula to becoming an Australian citizen."
He said police were investigating how the child came to suffer burns while in immigration detention on Nauru.
A small number of protesters remain at the hospital, saying they want to keep the spotlight on the issue of children in offshore immigration detention.
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