Opposition Leader Bill Shorten faces sharp differences within Labor over whether to embrace the federal government's controversial boat turnback policy.
Former foreign minister Bob Carr told AAP in Canberra on Tuesday he was an "unabashed supporter" of boat turnbacks.
He called for bipartisan support for anti-people smuggling measures and said it should be neutralised as an issue heading into the next election.
Labor frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon has also backed boat turnbacks but others in the party staunchly oppose the move.
West Australian MP Melissa Parke, a former United Nations lawyer, has attacked the premise of the turnback policy - that it saves lives at sea.
"The people turned back, the majority of whom past experience has shown are genuine refugees, will still be fleeing persecution, will still be seeking a safe haven and will still suffer the uncertainty, the fear and the lack of rights that are features of transit countries," she said in a statement.
"Do they die on a different sea, or in an airless container en route to Europe, are they jailed for working or sent back to their country of persecution? These questions seem not to feature in our discussion of boat turnbacks but they should."
Boat turnbacks were also a violation of international law, she said.
Mr Shorten is keeping mum on his stance, vowing that federal Labor will "get the balance right", before debate on the matter at the party's national conference in late July.
"We want to defeat the people smugglers who say that if they can take people to Australia then, once you get here, then you can stay here," he told reporters in Melbourne.
Mr Carr played down concerns continuing boat turnbacks could jeopardise relations with Indonesia.
Former Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa on Monday said the policy was incompatible with good bilateral relations between Canberra and Jakarta.
Mr Carr said good diplomacy could help neutralise the issue.
Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek said it was a terrible development that Australia had gone from being described as the "midwife" of Indonesia's independence to such a current low point in relations.
"Labor was always concerned that turnbacks would contribute to a strain in relations with Indonesia," she told a leadership conference at the Australian National University.
Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said Australia needed to take a regional approach.
"We don't risk being a pariah, but we will become totally isolated from helping our regional neighbours deal with something they can't simply turn their backs on," she told Sky News.
