THE Rudd government is closer to laying out changes to its strategy on asylum seeker boat arrivals as Opposition Leader Tony Abbott declared Australia was facing a national emergency.
After moving to neutralise the carbon tax as an election issue by "terminating" it on Tuesday, federal Labor now plans to address its biggest policy weakness.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Wednesday outlined his three-pronged approach to the vexed policy area covering action at the global, regional and national level.
"That's the correct response to a problem which is not uniquely Australia's - it is a problem right around the world," he told reporters in Gladstone.
The prime minister's comments came as a search and rescue operation began off Christmas Island after an asylum seeker boat carrying 80 people issued a distress call.
It also came a day after four people died when a boat capsized while under the escort of two navy vessels en route to Christmas Island.
The bodies of two men and two women, all thought to be in their 20s and 30s, were recovered from the water and a further 144 people were rescued.
Last weekend a baby boy, who was on a vessel swamped by high seas as it struggled toward the Australian coastline, was drowned.
Mr Rudd indicated Labor was looking at the effectiveness of the United Nations Refugee Convention.
While there's no suggestion Australia will withdraw from the convention, his comments imply the government might push for the 60-year-old agreement to be changed to reflect current movements of displaced people.
This could make it easier for Australia to reject refugee applications for people it deems to be economic migrants and not persons fleeing persecution or war.
Foreign Minister Bob Carr has already expressed concerns there were more economic migrants, particularly from Iran, coming to Australia on boats provided by people smugglers in Indonesia.
Iran currently refuses to accept people who don't want to be returned.
Mr Rudd, who recently visited Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, said on Wednesday he was looking at strengthening co-operation with nations in southeast Asia and the southwest Pacific.
The government was also looking at reforming Australia's domestic refugee determination process.
As part of the process, the foreign affairs department is updating advisory information provided to refugee tribunals and courts on asylum seeker source countries.
The government wants to change a review process that overturns the overwhelming majority of failed asylum seekers.
Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare has also called on all sides of politics to work together to "fix this God-awful problem".
"This is a wretchedly difficult area and it's been poisoned by politics," he said in Sydney.
Mr Abbott said he was more than happy to put partisanship aside and support Labor in making the changes needed to stop the boats.
"Bring back the parliament, let's debate this issue and let's make the changes now to stop the boats," he said in Mackay, Queensland.
"This is a national emergency, it's got to be addressed now."
Australia's border protection commander Rear Admiral David Johnston said his staff had suffered psychologically.
"It is a dreadful feeling in the stomach when we hear that a vessel has capsized or that it's in some difficulty," he told reporters.
Recently retired navy Lieutenant Commander Barry Learoyd, commander of the patrol boat HMAS Albany in the 2009 SIEV-36 incident when an intercepted vessel exploded with the loss of five asylum seekers, said boat turnbacks could be done.
"If the government says yes we are to turn the vessel around, then there would be procedures in place to make sure that happens as safely as we can," he told ABC television.
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