Immigration Minister says half of 500 asylum seekers sent offshore The government hopes curbing the release of public information on asylum-seeker boats will deter people smugglers, cabinet minister Greg Hunt says. Courtesy: Sky News, Australian Agenda New government speeds up turnaround of boat people ... IMMIGRATION Minister Scott Morrison says more than half of the 500 asylum-seeker arrivals since September 7 election have already been sent offshore as the government speeds up the turnaround time for dealing with boat arrivals. Scott Morrison, who will today give his first official briefing on asylum numbers, this morning said the Coalition was attempting to shut down the microphone for people smugglers by only providing an update to media once a week. Labor previously announced each individual boat arrival by email each time they entered Australian waters. "It is not the government's job to run a shipping news service for the people smugglers," Mr Morrison told 2GB's Ray Hadley. We will confirm the numbers of people on a timely and regular basis and hopefully and we are very confident that we will see those numbers are dropping. Mr Morrison said since the implementation of Operation Sovereign Borders there had already been a marked increase in the speed in which asylum-seekers were transferred offshore. "We have already moved more than half the people that have turned up since September 7 offshore," he said. More than half are already gone (totalling around 493 people not including the weekend arrival) and we are going to continue to rapidly increase the turnaround time for people transferred offshore. Mr Morrison said the Coalition were still nutting out the specific implementation details of their asylum policies and would not reveal if Navy commanders had been given the go ahead to turn boats around at sea. But he said the state of how the Labor government had left the immigration portfolio was very bad, including the fact that there was no funding in the budget for offshore processing and transfers to Manus Island after January 1, 2014. Labor left no funding for offshore processing ... First transfer to Manus Island under the Regional Settlement Arrangement. "The previous government said they had a big solution in Papua New Guinea but they have not funded operations beyond the 1st of January," Mr Morrison said. There is not currently $1 in place. Mr Morrison also weighed in to comments made by Christmas Island administrator Jon Stanhope that he would "reconsider" his position if a gag was placed on island residents to not reveal to media when an asylum boat arrived. "It's not my intention to keep a lid on it," Mr Morrison said. Residents of Christmas Island are free citizens of Australia and they can do what they like but I would think those who are employed by the government to do government jobs would assume would implement government policy ... that would be my reasonable expectation whether it was a Labor or Coalition government. Speaking this morning Mr Stanhope said he believed there had been a marked slowdown in asylum boat arrivals since the return of the Coalition government and last minute policy changes by Labor before it lost the election. Mr Stanhope, the former longstanding Labor chief minister of the ACT, said he had "no doubt" the new policies were having an impact on people smuggler movements. "Over this last three or four weeks it's been very noticeable that the rate of arrivals has slowed," Mr Stanhope told ABC radio. In terms of the nature of the flows it does seem like the new policies are having an effect. On the policy of only releasing boat arrivals once a week, Mr Stanhope said he would have to "reconsider his position" if there was a blanket ban put on he and other island residents speaking to the media when a boat arrives. "I would find it remarkable that there would be a policy in place seek to prevent 2000 Australians from talking about what happens here," he said. If there were a government policy like that I would have to consider my position ... I don't think that is a policy I could abide by.