THE Gillard government is under pressure to explain how it can fund big budget items such as immigration detention and balance the demands of the domestic welfare sector.
The opposition on Wednesday turned its focus in parliament to the cost of offshore processing of asylum seekers, as Prime Minister Julia Gillard declined to speculate on the size of the budget deficit.
Labor also announced a new spending package - a national cultural policy with a $235 million price tag over four years - as it faced welfare sector calls backed by some Labor MPs for higher benefits payments for struggling job seekers and single mums.
As a Barclays analyst forecast the 2012/13 budget deficit could top $20 billion, Ms Gillard declined to reflect on the implications for next year's books.
"I don't want to disappoint you, but you will see the updated budget in two months' time," she told reporters in Canberra.
During question time, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott quizzed the prime minister over the cost of offshore processing, which budget papers suggest will fall over the next four years as arrivals slow down.
Labor's counting on the cost of one key element - offshore asylum seeker management - to drop from $1.7 billion in 2012/13 to $137 million in 2015/16.
Mr Abbott said the figures weren't credible because more people had arrived by boat in the past nine months than during the entire period of the Howard coalition government.
Ms Gillard said Mr Abbott's "reckless negativity" meant there would be more boat arrivals because he could have eased the pressure by backing the Houston expert panel's reforms last year.
Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor said the opposition had sensationalised the issue of boat arrivals, saying 98 per cent of people had come through "regular" migration pathways.
He said he was hopeful a meeting in April of nations involved in the Bali process - a regional scheme to tackle people-smuggling - would make progress.
The minister was also questioned on whether transfers to the Manus Island detention facility had been suspended.
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said there had been no transfers since February 9 and Papua New Guinea officials had advised him of an indefinite suspension.
Mr O'Connor said there had been no such suspension and the two governments were still committed to transfers.
Labor backbenchers are also getting behind the Australian Council of Social Service's push for the Newstart unemployment payment for singles to be raised by $50-a-week.
NSW senator Doug Cameron says it can be paid for with the expansion of the mining tax, a Medicare style levy and a crackdown on the tax treatment of trust funds.
"That's a debate that Labor people should be having," Senator Cameron said.
Arts Minister Simon Crean said a new national cultural policy would be paid for by savings in government departments.
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