Hazara Nation

ToL A new wave of boat people to Australia has forced the government to open a controversial detention centre on a tiny Indian Ocean island nearly 1000 miles off the coast.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government had been resisting pressure to open the detention centre on Christmas Island, criticised by its own MPs and refugee workers as harsh and 'prison like.'

Mr Rudd had inherited the Christmas Island facility from the previous government of John Howard, but had consistently argued that the $A400 million (£180m) centre, which was completed only a few months ago, would not be used as it was not family friendly.

Michael Danby MP, the head of a parliamentary delegation that visited the centre earlier this year described it as a "stalag" and a "grandiose waste of money".

Refugee advocates who toured the facilities in August criticised the high security facility as "prison like".

In a letter to Chris Evans, the Immigration minister, Amnesty International reminded him of "the damage done to people's mental and physical health by detaining them in remote, high security detention centres such as this."

But a spate of refugees arriving by boat has forced the government into an about turn. Australian authorities have intercepted seven boats trying to make it to Australia, with 164 suspected asylum seekers on board, in the past three months.

The most recent arrivals were intercepted on Tuesday, 100 miles north east of Darwin. The boatload of 37 suspected refugees will be the first asylum seekers to be housed at the detention centre.

The Rudd government has recently come under fire for relaxing its policies on asylum seekers which some have blamed for the recent spate of boat people.

Since coming to power a year ago, the government has instituted a number of changes to migration policy, which under John Howard had been notoriously hard-line.

One of its first acts was to end the so-called Pacific Solution - a policy of compulsory detention for asylum seekers, who were sent to offshore institutions on Papua New Guinea and Nauru to make it impossible for them to apply for refugee status in Australia.

It has also ended the system of temporary-protection visas for refugees, a move that has led to accusations from the Liberal opposition that it is turning Australia into a 'soft touch' for people smugglers.

Last month, Indonesian officials arrested an Iranian they described as the head of a people smuggling racket responsible for an influx of mainly Iraqi and Afghan refugees to the shores of Asutralia.

The Immigration Department said in a statement today: "The government's policy is to open the new facility when numbers and separation arrangements required it."

It said women,children and family groups would not be detained at the facility but would be housed in other accomodation on the island.