Transfer proves Manus failure: critics - Sydney Morning Herald

AAP

Pregnant women and children held at the Manus Island asylum seeker detention centre have been brought to Australia for medical treatment and critics say it's further proof offshore processing is failing.

The 19 asylum seekers were on Thursday transferred in family groups from the Papua New Guinea island to the Inverbrackie detention facility outside of Adelaide in South Australia.

The Department of Immigration would not confirm how many required medical treatment or for what illnesses, only saying "the transfer was for medical reasons".

Refugee advocates said those transferred were from the family compound at the Manus Island processing centre and included six pregnant women and a sick eight-year-old Iraqi girl accompanied by her mother.

The Refugee Action Coalition said the transfer proved the Manus Island centre was unfit for families, and that the medical facilities were "completely inadequate".

"It says everything about the quality of medical care in Manus Island that the women about to have children have had to be brought to the Australian mainland," spokesman Ian Rintoul said on Friday.

"If the family compound cannot look after families then it should be closed."

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the transfer of pregnant women and children to the mainland was an example of how the government had bungled setting up the Manus Island centre.

The Labor government reopened the Howard-era facility in November last year.

"Families with children aged seven and under can't be on Manus Island because they (the children) cannot be immunised - that's why families have to be taken back if there is a pregnant mother who is being housed on Manus Island, and that is why those transfers would have taken place today," Mr Morrison told reporters in Sydney.

Australian Greens immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said the Manus Island processing centre was a "horror show" and needed to be shut down.

"It is not saving lives. It is not stopping boats; in fact it is harming people including refugee children," she told reporters in Canberra.

"It is making them suffer more and it's time to shut it down."

Senator Hanson-Young said one family had been split as part of the medical transfer.

"Is this a new government policy to be splitting families?" she asked.

Comment has been sought from the office of immigration minister Brendan O'Connor.