Labor believes it has support to establish a parliamentary inquiry into allegations of child abuse, sexual assault and human rights breaches in Australia's offshore immigration detention centre on Nauru, after the publication of more than 2000 incident reports last week.
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Senior Turnbull government ministers have sought to downplay the reports published by Guardian Australia documenting allegations of abuse, self-harm by asylum seekers and refugees, assaults and poor living standards, as Labor's manager of opposition business in the Senate, Sam Dastyari, said Australians did not want to turn a blind eye to abuse allegations in offshore detention centres.
With Parliament due to resume on August 30, Labor is expected to push for a Senate inquiry to investigate the allegations, including the role of private contractors operating the centre and the government's response to the leaking of the reports.
"This is horrific. These allegations are just disgusting," Senator Dastyari told ABC TV's Insiders.
"The idea that there is 2000 incident reports and some of these ... show what appears to be abuse, sexual abuse, torture, violence, human rights abuses, and in particular violence against children.
"We, as a nation, as a society, are not a people who turn around and turn a blind eye to human rights violations and abuses and I don't believe that's the country Australia wants to be."
After heated debate within Labor about the politics of offshore processing in the lead-up to the July 2 election, Senator Dastyari said Labor could support tough deterrent measures to stop asylum seeker boats coming to Australia but still stand against abuse in detention.
"I believe we will get the support," he said.
"There is a sense among certain groups and people within the current government ... the harder we are, the crueler we are, the worse we treat people, the more we put pressure and beat these people down, that somehow its going to act as this kind of deterrent to people wanting to come to Australia."
He called for politicians and journalists to have better access to Australia's immigration activities on Nauru.
The island's government restricts visas to journalists and advocates, and regularly claims Australian media reports about conditions in the centre are wrong or biased.
"At the heart of this is this secrecy fetish that's being run by the government and this idea that says that we can cover this up and hide it," Senator Dastyari said.
"Some people have even gone to the extent of self-harming, and people have self-immolated in an effort to get to Australia and certainly some have made false allegations in an attempt to get to Australia," he said.
The comments were criticised by advocates, while Greens immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said they were "abhorrent".
Separately last week, human rights groups said the child sexual abuse royal commission had the legal authority to examine the Nauru allegations.
Advocates, headed by the Human Rights Law Centre, released legal advice which was handed to the royal commission in 2015.
