WAVES of Australia-bound asylum seekers crossing from Malaysia to Indonesia have prompted the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, to send the national security adviser, Duncan Lewis, to talk with Malaysian officials about counter measures..........

THE Rudd Government's compromise on emissions trading may yet fail to clear a path through the Senate for its climate scheme, with independents Nick Xenophon and Steve Fielding responding negatively to the latest changes.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd today delayed the start date of its proposed emissions trading scheme by a year to win Senate support for its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. The measure is just one of a series a compromise measures announced by the Prime Minister in an attempt to win the support of the Greens for its climate blueprint.

The package includes a very low fixed price on carbon for the first year of the scheme’s operation and extra assistance for each of the two categories of so-called trade exposed industries for the duration of the recession.

It also includes the concession that the government will consider a tougher emissions reduction target of 25 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020, in the unlikely event of a global agreement designed to limit the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at 450 parts per million. Otherwise the government’s previously announced target range of 5 to 15 per cent would apply.

The amendments, signed off by the Cabinet subcommittee on climate change this morning, and later announced by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at a press conference in Canberra, are designed to win support from Malcolm Turnbull’s opposition in the Senate and appease mounting industry concern about the costs of the scheme during the global recession.

But the Government will still need the support of independent Nick Xenophon and Family First’s Steve Fielding to steer the CPRS through the Senate, and both responded negatively to today’s announcement.

“The governments CPRS is fundamentally flawed,” Mr Xenophon told The Australian Online. “The model is unfixable and the changes announced today are simply window-dressing.

“If you give a lame duck a hair-cut, it’s still a lame duck.”

Senator Xenophon said the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme still needed stronger emissions reduction targets. “The only way to achieve strong targets is to implement a fundamentally better designed scheme,” he said.

Family First’s Steve Fielding said the government was “still intent on putting Australian jobs at risk” through the CPRS.

“Four months ago the Prime Minister told Australians it would be ‘reckless and irresponsible’ to delay this scheme and now he has done just that,” Senator Fielding said. “I’m concerned that this government is taking a huge risk by demanding it lead the world with its climate changes scheme, and it’s a risk that will carried by the Australian people.”

Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull said the Prime Minister had made a “humiliating back down”.......

OPEN recreation areas have been set up as dormitories and dozens of bunk beds have been flown in to Christmas Island's detention centre, where the imminent arrival of 136 asylum seekers and boat crew is placing pressure on resources.

There are already 262 asylum seekers in various forms of detention on the remote island - the highest number since the mass arrivals that preceded the Tampa stand-off in 2001.

The surge that began last September has so far delivered 411 asylum seekers to Christmas Island, and the rise in numbers, although good for local businesses, has created an expensive challenge for the Government.

Last week, the Department of Immigration reverted to bringing in staff, contractors and supplies on commercial flights to save about $70,000 it had been spending each Thursday on a charter flight from the mainland.

Since 2001, the commonwealth has invested more than $500million in detention-related infrastructure on the island, including 162 bedsits, five duplexes and two houses for staff and community detainees, but shortages are now being felt keenly.

Negotiations are under way that could allow guards and staff to live at the island's mothballed 156-room casino, and the department's review of accommodation on the island has included talks over two more blocks of flats in the suburb of Poon Saan.

The department's stock of accommodation has become strained as increasing numbers of families and minors are granted community detention; last month, a group of five Sri Lankan asylum seekers was moved out of a department-owned duplex in the suburb of Drumsite and back to transportable huts on the site of the island's old detention centre to make room for new community detainees.

The old detention centre, built as a temporary measure after the Tampa incident, is also being used again by immigration officials processing asylum seekers from the adjacent family compound, which houses 41 adults and children.

The compound initially had a capacity of 50, but has been adapted and has held as many as 61 in recent weeks.

The island's main detention centre now holds 193 single men and, as HMAS Tobruk prepares to deliver a further 136 people, it is being readied for what its staff term "surge capacity".

The Tobruk is carrying three boatloads of asylum seekers. The first group was intercepted in international waters off Ashmore Reef on April 25 by the HMAS Albany and transferred to the Tobruk, which has a crew of 150 and a capacity for a further 390 people. But the Tobruk did not steam straight for Christmas Island, instead waiting off Western Australia's north coast to make two more intercepts. On April 30, the Government announced those interceptions, and the passengers are aboard the warship.

The Tobruk was expected to reach Christmas Island on the weekend. Border Protection Command would not comment yesterday on speculation that it was waiting off the north of Australia to receive further passengers.

While former detainees have told The Australian they stayed in comfortable single rooms at the immigration detention centre, rows of bunk beds have

been set up inside dual-use rooms that can be opened up for recreation space or closed off as dormitories.

The centre's Red Block, built to separate anyone who becomes violent, will be kept vacant.

Christmas Island's immigration detention centre has a capacity of 400 single male adults, with a surge capacity of a further 400, which can be accommodated within the existing floor plan and framework of the centre, a department spokesman says.

The Government says in the event the detention centre fills up, it is committed to finding alternative accommodation on Christmas Island.

Last week, a male Sri Lankan asylum seeker who reached the mainland last November with 11 others, returned home voluntarily, becoming the third person from that boat to do so.