Abbott's Nauru boat plan 'childish': Burke The first group of asylum seekers are expected to be flown to Papua New Guinea on Wednesday under Australia's tough border policy. Dr Otto Numan, chief executive of the only hospital near Manus Island detention centre, told AAP the group was due early on Wednesday. This group, believed to be coming from Australia, will be the first arrivals since Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his PNG counterpart, Peter O'Neill, agreed to expand asylum-seeker processing two weeks ago. "I will be at the airport, checking the manifest to make sure they are who they are," Dr Numan said on Tuesday. In Australia, the federal opposition toughened its asylum seeker policy for a second time in a week, as it tries to catch up to Labor's hardline plan to banish boat arrivals to Papua New Guinea. Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison says the coalition will immediately erect a 2000-person tent city on Nauru to process asylum seekers should it be elected. The five-year plan will see capacity on Nauru boosted to 5000. Mr Morrison, who was in Nauru on Tuesday, said he would discuss with President Baron Waqa redeveloping a site for housing asylum seekers after their refugee applications had been assessed. The coalition's strategy also includes turning back the boats, issuing temporary protection visas and building capacity at Manus Island in PNG. Immigration Minister Tony Burke said expanding offshore processing in Nauru had merit and he'd raised a similar idea with the island nation's leaders last week. But the opposition had been "grossly irresponsible" in rushing the policy out and putting a figure on the capacity for the proposed facility. "People smugglers want to know the figure," Mr Burke told reporters in Sydney. Mr Abbott brushed off concerns a tent "slum" could be established on Nauru, saying tents would eventually be replaced with permanent shelters. Mr Abbott last week unveiled a military solution to combat people smugglers. Under a coalition government, a three-star military commander will lead people smuggling and border protection operations. The asylum seekers to be taken to Manus Island on Wednesday are likely to be only men, with women and children to be moved at a later date. Mr Burke declined to give further details, due to the risk people smugglers could beginning filling boats with certain groups of people. "Eventually, everybody goes there," he said. The Labor policy denies arrivals settlement in Australia and transfers them to PNG for processing and potential resettlement. Almost 1400 people have arrived since it was announced on July 19. Meanwhile, Australian Crime Commission figures show 964 people died, or are presumed to have died, between October 2001 and June 2012 trying to come to Australia by boat. The data doesn't include the recent deaths after boats foundered in Australian waters or on their way here. Of the 964 deaths cited, 605 occurred since October 2009 - more than one every two days. Some 111 boats arrived in Australia in 2011-12, compared to just 23 in 2008-09, 117 in 2009-10 and 89 in 2010-11. Australian Greens leader Christine Milne said the major parties had adopted an approach of "barbarism" in order to win votes in marginal seats. "Today's effort of one-upmanship, I'll raise you two thousand tents and a slum city on Nauru ... it is an appalling spectacle," Senator Milne told ABC TV. We are turning this into an horrendous gulag. She denied the Green's policy on accepting asylum seekers was "open-ended" despite declining to give an upper limit on arrival numbers.