AAP
A Labor Left faction leader fears new federal government measures to stop people smuggling will create an underclass in Australia.
"I don't want people to come here and starve," Senator Doug Cameron told reporters in Canberra on Thursday.
He predicts a robust debate when Left faction members take their concerns to the final Labor caucus meeting of the year on Tuesday.
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen on Wednesday extended the no-advantage test to asylum seekers whose claims are processed onshore.
They will be denied permanent protection visas for as long as five years even if they are found to be genuine refugees and regardless of whether their claims are processed in Australia, Nauru or Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.
More asylum seekers will be allowed into the community on "rolling" bridging visas, but they will have no work rights and only limited accommodation and financial support.
Senator Cameron is concerned about putting refugees into society and making them reliant on welfare and charity.
"If you have a situation where people are thrown into the community having to rely on charity then you are creating an underclass in this society."
He said he did not want the government to end up going further and further to the right on the issue.
"I just think that we've got to start dealing with this in a humanitarian way," he said.
Human rights commissioner Gillian Triggs warned the government ran the risk of making a serious breach of international law by holding thousands of people indefinitely.
But Professor Triggs acknowledged she had limited power to change the situation.
"My capacities are for the commission to review complaints and for me to speak out publicly as an advocate for government compliance with human rights standards," she told ABC radio.
Mr Bowen rejected criticism the government is losing the fight against people smugglers.
"I do not accept your characterisation one little bit," he told ABC radio.
But he conceded that more than 7500 people had arrived in the three months since Labor adopted its tougher policies, which were intended to "break the people smugglers' business model".
Opposition border protection spokesman Michael Keenan said Labor had lost all credibility on asylum seeker policy by making so many announcements.
"They've had so many backflips ... that when they say they're actually going to do something, nobody takes them seriously," he told Sky News.
The Australian Greens say the government is obsessed with the idea of deterrence and it is not working.
"Thousands of refugees are coming by boat despite the fact we were told locking people up on Nauru or Manus Island would stop people taking dangerous boat journeys," Senator Sarah Hanson-Young told reporters.
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