PAPUA New Guinea's flat contradiction of key details in Kevin Rudd's tough new asylum seeker policy shows the Australian prime minister can't be trusted, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says.
PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill has told Fairfax Media he has not agreed to settle all asylum seekers who are found to be refugees after processing on Manus Island.
And he says Australia will need to take back a share of them.
"There is no agreement that all genuine refugees will be settled in PNG," he said.
Mr Abbott said Mr O'Neill had "flatly contradicted" Mr Rudd's claim about their deal on asylum seekers and that the Australian prime minister would say anything to get a headline.
"You just can't trust this prime minister."
Mr O'Neill said PNG would work with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to engage with other countries willing to take part in resettling those refugees.
"That includes Australia, New Zealand and all the other countries who are signatories to the UN conventions on refugees," he told Fairfax Media.
Mr O'Neill said he believed Australia had an annual quota to settle about 20,000 refugees.
"Under that process, they will get some and New Zealand has indicated they would take some."
Mr Rudd has insisted there is "one simple principle" in his new regime - that all asylum seekers arriving by boat would be diverted to PNG and settled there if found to be genuine refugees.
Mr O'Neill derided federal opposition claims that refugees would seek to use PNG as a pathway to Australia.
"It is certainly an overreaction,' he said.
Mr O'Neill's comments show Labor's PNG arrangement is "unravelling", opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison says.
"What we've seen is comical Kevin desperately denying what is increasingly obvious to everyone - that not only is this PNG arrangement unravelling but also his own campaign is unravelling," Mr Morrison said in Melbourne.
He called on Mr Rudd to "be honest" about the true nature of the deal with PNG.
"The prime minister needs to be honest and upfront with people, particularly Australians, about what the arrangement actually does," he said.
"The Papua New Guinea prime minister has made it very clear in this latest interview that the arrangement that Kevin Rudd claims to exist does not exist in those terms."
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