It is remarkably hard to tell what side the first speaker is on this issue.

Public fed up with asylum policy stoush: Bowen

Updated August 12, 2012 15:36:56

Federal Immigration Minister Chris Bowen says the public has had a "gutful" of the stand-off over asylum seeker policy and wants Parliament to agree on a new deal this week.

A panel led by the former Defence Force chief Angus Houston has been tasked with finding a new asylum seeker policy and is due to release its findings on Monday.

Despite the report's release, the parliamentary deadlock on the issue seems set to continue, with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott still committed to offshore processing on Nauru.

The Government has not agreed to accept the panel's recommendation either, but Mr Bowen told ABC's Insiders Mr Abbott's attitude to the report is disappointing.

"It takes a particular type of arrogance to reject a report's recommendations before you've even seen them, when we're dealing with people's lives are at stake," he said.

"The public will be judge which parties wanted to act in good fate to this get this sorted and get a clear policy of deterrents in place.

"We will be progressing this through the Parliament and taking the recommendations seriously because the Australian people have had a gutful of this.

"We can argue about the benefits of Malaysia, we can argue about the drawbacks of Nauru, but the time for that has passed.

"I think the Australian people are looking to the Parliament this week to implement offshore processing, if it's recommended by the expert panel."

Meanwhile, Australian authorities have intercepted three more asylum seeker boats.

HMAS Broome intercepted a boat carrying 87 people north-west of the Ashmore Islands overnight.

The second boat had 31 people on board and was intercepted west of Cocos Island late yesterday.

This afternoon, a third boat carrying 60 people was found north-north-west of the Cocos Islands.

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