Onshore processing is killing boatpeople, says Mark Latham

FORMER Labor leader Mark Latham has blamed "so-called compassionate" politicians who support onshore processing for the deaths of asylum-seekers.

FORMER Labor leader Mark Latham has blamed "so-called compassionate" politicians who support onshore processing for the deaths of asylum-seekers at sea.

Responding on Sky News' Australian Agenda to reports that a wooden boat carrying more than 200 asylum-seekers has sunk off Indonesia, Mr Latham said “you can't have a good heart” when it comes to asylum-seeker policy.

“Let's be brutally honest about it, the boats sinking and families dying is a direct consequence of the so-called compassionate people who support onshore processing,” Mr Latham told the program.

“Onshore processing is a magnet for people to pay people-smugglers to get on boats that are unseaworthy and to effectively risk their lives on the high seas between Indonesia and Australia,” said the controversial former opposition leader.

Australia has shelved plans for offshore processing after the High Court ruled invalid the Labor government's Malaysian refugee swap.

Mr Latham attacked the Greens and Labor's Left faction for promoting onshore processing as being a more humane alternative to offshore processing.

“I just still find it an amazing disconnect between the way in which the Greens and the Labor Left talk about this issue and the way in which reality deals with it,” he said.

“You can't be compassionate and you can't have a good heart, you can't have a good soul, if you encourage people to get on boats that sink.

“And people just need to understand that the real compassionate policy is to stop the flow of the boats,” he said.

Mr Latham criticised the majority of the Labor Party for supporting onshore processing, calling it “a magnet for children sinking on the high seas on these boats and dying.”

In a swipe at Greens immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Yong, Mr Latham predicted she would be on television today repeating calls to cement a policy of onshore processing.

“These people should be silenced, there should be a way of shutting them up, because it is a moral outrage that they talk this way and they are allowed to pose in the public arena as compassionate people who are so-called left wing,” he said.