Labor's approach to asylum seekers risks turning Australia into a regional "magnet" and the Bali process needs to be refocused on deterrence, opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison says.
Mr Morrison will use a speech to the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Tuesday to outline the coalition's commitment to the Bali process - set up by then prime minister John Howard 10 years ago - and argue against the way Labor has redesigned it.
He says there is a consensus across all parties that regional cooperation is needed to combat people-smuggling.
But the announcement by Prime Minister Julia Gillard in July 2010 of a planned regional processing centre in East Timor marked a shift in focus from deterrence of boat journeys to processing asylum seekers and resettling them.
"When first established in 2002, the Bali process committed itself to focus on combating people smuggling through increased information and intelligence sharing, improving cooperation between law enforcement agencies ... and increasing the opportunities for returns," Mr Morrison will say.
There needed to be a greater focus on Central Asia, from where the bulk of asylum seekers are fleeing, with a new system of "orderly returns and departures, return-country monitoring by UN observers (and) temporary increases in resettlement intakes of participant countries".
But Labor's focus on an "internationalist regional processing approach runs the risk of creating a regional asylum magnet", notes of his speech say.
"Australia and South East Asia are not responsible for the world's refugee problems," Mr Morrison will say.
"We will do our bit as we always have, especially in our part of the world.
"But we must resist the aspirational temptation to become the solution for somewhere else's problems."
Mr Morrison will reiterate the coalition's commitment to temporary protection visas, offshore processing at Nauru, turning boats back where it is safe to do so, and denying recognition to those who deliberately discard their identity documentation.
