Australia's PM defends 'hardline' approach on refugees

Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday defended his "hardline and sensible approach" to refugee policy, after a people smuggling boat was intercepted with almost 200 on board.

Mr Rudd has come under sustained political attack over a surge in illegal entrants making for Australia this year, with a 15th boat carrying 194 asylum seekers intercepted off the northwest coast on Sunday.

It was the biggest boatload of asylum seekers to arrive in Australia in eight years, taking the total arrivals since January to 825. A total of 179 boatpeople were intercepted in the whole of last year.

Indonesian and Malaysian officials told local media up to 10,000 more boatpeople were waiting in Malaysia to travel to Australia, and the opposition party has blamed Rudd for taking a "soft" stance on refugees.

But the centre-left leader, who relaxed the previous conservative government's policy of locking up boatpeople for years at a time, said he was taking a methodical, hardline approach to the problem.

"The government has introduced hundreds of millions of dollars worth of new measures to work at country of origin, to work at our cop on the beat, the navy on the high seas," Mr Rudd told commercial radio.

"(There is) also a hardline system which says, if this is not a bona fide asylum seeker then they go back, go back to the country concerned."

Mr Rudd said a great deal of work was being done behind the scenes in countries of origin such as Indonesia and Malaysia to address the people smuggling issue.

"I am not going to underestimate the problem," he said.

"It's there, it's real, it's growing around the world, but we intend to be hardline and sensible in the way in which we handle it."

More than 20 boats have arrived in Australia since rudd's Labour government rolled back restrictive measures that regularly left asylum seekers, including children, locked up for years in immigration centres.