Kevin Rudd flags changes to asylum seeker policy

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has flagged a three-step approach to tackling the flow of asylum seeker boats, including possible changes to the Refugee Convention, as a second boat disaster in a week resulted in more asylum seeker deaths.

It also comes as a third asylum seeker boat is reported to have come into trouble north-east of Christmas Island. Mr Rudd is expected to announce a change to Labor's asylum seeker policy as early as this week. On Wednesday afternoon, he told reporters in Gladstone, Queensland, that the government had the responsibility to adjust its asylum seeker policies in ''response to new circumstances''. He said the government was working ''methodically through the real possibilities for change which will have a real effect'', before flagging a three-step approach at the international, regional and national level. ''We are looking at this right now globally, in terms of the effectiveness of the Refugees [sic] Convention," he said without further explanation. Australia was an early signatory to the 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees, which has been criticised for having an outdated definition of what is is to be a refugee and only protecting people who are able to leave their country of origin. Mr Rudd said the government was also looking at regional cooperation measures and the refugee determination processes. ''Australia so far has had a reasonably generous approach to the assessment of asylum seekers from around the world,'' he said. ''Those criteria are being looked at afresh. And we'll have more to say about that in due course.'' Mr Rudd said that action at the three levels was the right response ''to a problem which is not uniquely Australia's''.