the Sydney Morning Herald

NSW Premier Bob Carr today urged federal Labor to support detention centres or lose control over people smuggling into Australia.

The comments came amid a split in the ALP over the issue, with Labor frontbencher Carmen Lawrence telling a weekend rally in Perth she was ashamed of the ALP's position on an issue she believed was morally indefensible.

But her views clash with those of frontbench colleagues Mark Latham and Laurie Ferguson, who believe Labor should continue with its support for the detention policy.

Mr Carr today said while Australia was unable to accept the world's estimated 20 million refugees, detention centres were a fact of life.

"People brought to Australia by people smugglers will melt into the population unless there are detention centres," Mr Carr told reporters.

"It's a fact of life ... you can end up with a subterranean population and economy of people who got here illegally and won't present when required.

"If you are going to retain control over the appalling reality of people smuggling then detention centres are going to be a sad fact of life."

Mr Carr said the backgrounds of refugees needed to be assessed.

However he said detention centres needed to be run humanely with assessments conducted swiftly.

"There is a pattern of misrepresentation by some people who want to stay here and who invent backgrounds about persecution (or) an ethnicity and religion for themselves," Mr Carr said.

"While you make that assessment, you need to hold people in detention centres.

"I just caution federal Labor against moving away from a policy that federal Labor in the past has accepted as inevitable - detention centres are a fact of life."