Burke 'didn't know' of Perera appointment

Former immigration minister Tony Burke says he knew nothing about a Sri Lankan military commander being made a manager at the Manus Island detention centre.

Human rights activists are outraged that Dinesh Perera was hired at the facility which houses 30 Tamil asylum seekers, saying it showed a "callous disregard" for the experiences of many detainees.

But Mr Burke, who was immigration minister in the second Rudd government, said recent reports were the first he heard of Mr Perera's appointment.

"I understand ... it's not an appointment that's made by government, it's an appointment that was made by (centre operator) G4S," he told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.

The Human Rights Law Centre has called on the Abbott government to remove Mr Perera from the facility, saying it was inappropriate to appoint a former military officer from a country accused of human rights abuses.

But Sri Lanka's High Commissioner to Australia was critical of calls for Mr Perera's removal, saying his military background was irrelevant to a managerial job at the detention centre.

"Sri Lankan military is highly professional, well trained, disciplined, brave, and bringing out just a name of a person (and) saying `ex-Sri Lankan military' is absolutely out of context," Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe told ABC Radio.

Immigration department secretary Martin Bowles was grilled about Mr Perera's role during a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday.

The hearing was told Mr Perera was one of four operations managers on the island.

Mr Bowles played down concerns about his past military links.

"The civil war in Sri Lanka is over," he said.