KEVIN Rudd is facing further pressure over his troubled border protection regime with the Christmas Island detention centre just one boatload away from reaching capacity.

As Parliament resumes today after a two-month break, the Opposition is set to maintain its attack on the Prime Minister and his asylum-seeker policy following the latest boat arrival.

Authorities have begun processing 181 asylum-seekers and four crew of a boat intercepted near Christmas Island last night.

The latest arrival - the ninth this year - means there are 1801 people, including 15 crew - in detention on the island, which has a capacity of 1900.

This means just one boatload of asylum-seekers could push facilities on the island beyond its limits.

The Government has a contingency plan to process asylum-seekers at a purpose-built facility in Darwin but Mr Rudd said Christmas Island remained the first option.

Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.
End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.
"My advice from officials is that there is capacity there," Mr Rudd said.

"Our advice is that Christmas (Island) remains the best place to accommodate people."

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said Mr Rudd had given up on border protection.

"I wish he was more worried about the illegal arrival of people in Australia than being so worked up about the arrival of Barack Obama," he said.

"That seems to be his focus and he is quite happy to put the white flag up on illegal boat arrivals."

More than 500 asylum-seekers had arrived by boat in the past month alone, Mr Morrison said.

"We literally have a highway on the sea running to Christmas Island and Christmas Island essentially operating as a visa factory."

A group of between 80 and 90 people will leave the island on Wednesday night after being granted visas.

However, the departures will do little to ease the pressure on the island with another boatload similar to that which arrived yesterday able to push detention facilities beyond their capacity of 1900.

Of the 1801 detainees on the island, 1460 are in the detention centre, including 200 in tents, while 288 are in the construction camp facility.

Another 45 people are at the Phosphate Hill facility and eight are in community detention on the island.

ALMOST 200 asylum-seekers caught Department of Immigration and Citizenship officials by surprise yesterday when they motored into Christmas Island's Flying Fish Cove.

The 181 passengers were taken into immigration detention for processing last night.

Residents of the suburb known as The Kampong saw the boat from the windows of their waterfront flats as it approached the jetty shortly after 3pm local time yesterday (7pm AEDT).

The navy vessel HMAS Larrakia was standing off the cove when the boat arrived, and Immigration officers rushed to the scene.

Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor said last night the boat had 181 passengers, including women and children, and four crew on board.

It is understood some of those on board are Hazaras from Afghanistan. They are the ninth boatload of asylum-seekers to be unloaded at Christmas Island this year. Before this boatload, there were 1595 asylum-seekers in the island's detention centre, which has a capacity of 1848.

Rarely has a government promised so much, spent so much, said so much, and launched so many nationwide programs, and delivered so little value for money and expectation. Two years of Kevin Rudd has produced 20 years of debt, and most of it cannot be blamed on the global financial crisis. This alphabet soup is self-inflicted.

Asylum seekers Unless the government can show otherwise, it appears about 98 per cent of asylum-seekers are getting Australian residency. In contrast, the latest figures from the United Nations refugee agency show most asylum applications are rejected worldwide. The bulging Christmas Island detention centre has become a grossly expensive sham and a mockery of a core election promise.

Beijing Supposedly Rudd's strong point, the relationship with China deteriorated badly last year after a series of serious missteps with Beijing.

Computers in schools A million computers promised to schools, one for every student. This turned out to be much harder than it sounded.

Debt and deficit The Rudd government inherited a massive $90 billion financial firewall when it came to office, via a federal budget surplus, the Future Fund and two infrastructure funds. In two years the budget has gone from $20 billion in surplus to $58 billion in deficit. Net federal debt has gone from zero to a projection of between $130 billion and $180 billion. It took the previous government 10 years to dismantle the $96 billion debt mountain that it inherited. It took Rudd one year to build it back up again.

ETS The Copenhagen climate conference was a disaster. Rudd's emissions trading scheme is abstract, complex, expensive and polls show about 80 per cent of Australians do not understand or trust it. A T-shirt produced by Newcastle steelworkers distils the political problem: "Rudd's ETS: Higher Prices. Lost Jobs. 0.001 degrees cooler."

Fuelwatch Big promise, empty outcome.

Grocerywatch Ditto.

Hospitals Ditto.

India Disaster. Last year Australia degraded relations with the two emerging Asian superpowers.

Juvenile justice The plight of young Aborigines is worse than ever, with ideology trumping pragmatism. Children are shipped off to violent foster families while government exhibits a mesmerised inertia in the face of pockets of endemic violence.

Kaiser The aptly named Mike Kaiser, former ALP Queensland state secretary and state MP, became the umpteenth poster boy for the Labor patronage machine this month by landing a $450,000-a-year lobbying job with National Broadband Network. The job was not advertised.

League tables The government's one-size-fits-all league tables for schools, plagued by glitches and misleading data, is another centralised scheme that serves as a substitute for tackling the union-imposed rigidities over teacher performance.

Migration Permanent migration to Australia surged 550,000 during the first two years of the Rudd government, the highest two-year increase in history. This is at odds with the government's rhetoric on reducing Australia's carbon footprint. It was also never mentioned before the election.

National broadband network Last year the Rudd government spent $17 million looking for a private partner to co-build the network. The process yielded nothing. The government will now build and operate the network itself at a cost of $43 billion. A money sink.

Opposition theft The Rudd government inherited the strongest budget position and banking sector of any major Western economy, which protected Australia from the global financial crisis. The government pretends this was all its own work.

Power The national solar power rebate is a political debacle. The GreenPower scheme has failed. The renewable energy trading certificates scheme is in disarray.

Question time Question time has blown out by 50 per cent over its traditional running time because of long ministerial answers and incessant points of order, while the time devoted to answering real questions, rather than Dorothy Dixers, has shrunk to less than 30 per cent of question time; a blatant corruption of the process.

BIG business has urged the Rudd government to set clearer priorities in its massive COAG reform agenda, warning it risks falling short of meeting expectations on important policies by trying to do too much too quickly.
, Business Council of Australia president Graham Bradley said the BCA would present a report to the government in coming weeks to help it "focus this process which does run the risk of overload".

Mr Bradley said there was "a good case for clearer priority setting".

"There is a very full agenda for COAG and there is a danger that it will fall short of expectations on the really important reforms, those that do generate significant savings for business by attempting to cover too much in too short a time," Mr Bradley said.

In a 440-page report released yesterday, the COAG Reform Council said targets had been met in 18 of 27 deregulation priorities and four of eight competition priorities. However, Assistant Deregulation Minister Craig Emerson said significant progress had been made since the report was closed off on September 30.

Launching the report yesterday, COAG Reform Council chairman Paul McClintock said while it showed a solid start, the report "is a valuable early warning for COAG where some reforms aren't going as well as they could".

Mr McClintock said the council had expressed concern to COAG "that there appears to be a significant loss of momentum in these key competition reform areas of infrastructure and transport".

COAG formed a centrepiece of the Prime Minister's successful 2007 election campaign, in which he promised to usher in a new era of co-operative federalism.

But the opposition has increasingly targeted the government's problems in policy delivery in a range of issues, as the Prime Minister attempts to use the forum to drive health reform, end indigenous disadvantage and boost social housing.

Australian Industry Group chief executive Heather Ridout said she would have liked to have seen more progress.