Dutton hopes refugees will go to Cambodia

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton denies taxpayer dollars have been wasted on an unpopular Cambodia refugee resettlement deal.

Three out of five refugees who volunteered to move to the Southeast Asian nation from Nauru have gone back to their own countries.

Australia provided a $40 million aid sweetener to Cambodia on top of $15 million towards resettlement costs.

Mr Dutton said the aid money had gone towards helping improve crop productions, capacity building within Khmer government departments and the running of democratic elections.

He insisted the refugee resettlement deal was not dead and pointed to the 1000 people on Nauru who would be eligible to go.

"So we've got a potential significant number of people who might go from Nauru to Cambodia," he told 2SM Radio on Wednesday.

He said Labor was playing "juvenile games" by dividing the overall dollar figure against the number of refugees resettled.

The federal opposition has described the deal as a joke.

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young labelled the Cambodia deal an "expensive flop".

"The government has no exit strategy when it comes to its asylum seeker policy, no exit strategy and they are in freefall," she told reporters in Adelaide.