More Labor MPs slam asylum seeker policy

Outgoing Labor MPs have slammed Australia's bipartisan asylum seeker policy on their way out, insisting something needs to be done.

Anna Burke, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, used her valedictory speech in parliament on Thursday to call for an end to the practice of using asylum seekers as political footballs.

"These are people so traumatised, some of them are setting themselves on fire," she said.

"These are not illegals, these are not criminals, these are refugees - I know we can do better."

Another retiring Labor MP Jill Hall called on her parliamentary colleagues to stop using refugees as "election fodder".

"History will judge us very poorly when it comes to looking at the way this parliament has treated asylum seekers," she told parliament.

"We can't leave people on Manus Island and Nauru forever.

"There's a real challenge for members of this parliament to show that we're up to that challenge and that we can right this atrocity that's going on - it's not good enough."

She also called for recognition of Palestine, saying the "dreadful" situation there had been allowed to exist for too long.

Their comments follow those of another Labor MP, Melissa Parke, who on Wednesday used her final speech to label offshore detention policy a "festering wound" that kills people.

Together with faux concern over drownings at sea the policy had facilitated "profound deterioration" of Australia's image of itself as a nation of a fair go.

Offshore processing of asylum seekers who come by boat was reinstated by Labor ahead of the 2013 election with coalition support.

But Ms Burke said it was up to the Turnbull government to resolve the issue now.

Another outgoing Labor veteran Kelvin Thomson said global overpopulation was contributing to the asylum seeker crisis.

He also blamed the United Nations Security Council, insisting it had failed to do what it was set up to do and should be made accountable for decades of failure.

Permanent members of the council should be forced to provide refugee camps on their own soil to accommodate those fleeing conflict zones, he said.

"That would act as a real incentive ... to resolve conflicts rather than letting them fester for years."

Meanwhile, the nation's human rights chief Gillian Triggs told a Senate hearing that hundreds of asylum seekers on Manus Island should be brought to Australia.

The United Nations refugee agency has made the same call following a court decision in Papua New Guinea which ruled the immigration detention centre there breached the country's constitution.

"That seems to be a logical step particularly in light of the Supreme Court decision," Professor Triggs told a Senate estimates hearing in Canberra on Thursday.

Many of the asylum seekers had been held for an average of 16 months in conditions which "pretty well everybody acknowledges are unacceptable".

It comes after the more than 700 asylum seekers held on Manus launched a High Court bid to have them moved to Australia.

The group is also seeking a court order to prevent them from being moved to Nauru.