http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/alp-urged-to-be-more-humane-on-asylum-seekers/story-fn59niix-1225972985871

A KEY Labor Party adviser to Julia Gillard's election campaign has called for a tenfold increase in Australia's migrant intake.

The call comes in the wake of Wednesday's deaths of at least 30 asylum-seekers off Christmas Island.

Cameron Milner, a former Queensland Labor Party secretary from the party's Right, has called for an overhaul of refugee policy, arguing that the tragedy highlights the need for a more humanitarian approach.

In a commentary piece for the The Weekend Australian today, Mr Milner calls on the Prime Minister to use the tragedy as a trigger for reform, in the same way that John Howard delivered tough but unpopular gun law changes in the wake of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.

His comments came as the government announced it would seek to resettle in third countries 10 Oceanic Viking asylum-seekers deemed security risks by ASIO. The Rudd government promised to expedite resettlement of the asylum-seekers, later deemed to be refugees, in a deal to get them to disembark from the Australian Customs vessel. But the adverse security assessments meant the 10 Tamils could neither be sent home nor released into the community in Australia.

Mr Milner said Australia could virtually end people-smuggling by resettling more asylum-seekers from troubled nations such as Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Australia needs a very large front door," he writes.

"We should seek to increase our UN refugee quota tenfold, more if necessary, to provide for the men, women and children who can't, and those who shouldn't have to, become human cargo.