Julia Gillard has been told to do more to counter Tony Abbott's famously effective "stop the boats" slogan and expose it as undeliverable by an increasingly exasperated Labor caucus.
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Laurie Ferguson, a western Sydney backbencher strongly aligned to the Prime Minister, reportedly told the Tuesday meeting of Labor MPs that he and others based in the city's sprawling western suburbs were "dead" unless the government could explain its position on asylum seekers better, and discredit Mr Abbott's promise to immediately stop the boats.
Mr Ferguson, who holds the seat of Werriwa by less than 7 per cent, was joined in voicing an opinion on Labor's troubles, by his outgoing brother, the former resources minister, Martin Ferguson.
The latter called for additional information from Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor to demonstrate where the 457 temporary skilled migration visa class was being rorted by employers.
The government is currently cracking down on the 457 scheme, popular among employers but which unions have complained is being used to undercut local wages and to employ foreigners ahead of Australian citizens.
While Martin Ferguson's contribution was said to be broadly supportive of the concept of skilled migration, South Australian Labor MP Nick Champion went further, calling for the 457 scheme to be initially capped and then scrapped.
He told his colleagues the idea of skilled migration was sound, but the 457 visa arrangements left workers beholden to employers for fear of being left visa-less, and was therefore more akin to a "guest-worker" program.
The Tuesday meeting followed a series of reports on near-disastrous poll results in the morning's papers revealing Labor's primary vote sliding, Ms Gillard's own approval rating deteriorating, and suggesting the party could be all but unrepresented in the House of Representatives by Queenslanders after the September 14 election.
Newspoll published in News Ltd papers put Labor's two party-preferred vote at just 42 per cent, compared to the Coalition on 58 – a result that could see as many as half of Labor's 71 seats ceded to the Coalition in the election.
The government is highly critical of the "stop the boats" promise, arguing an incoming Abbott administration would find it much harder to do than to say.
In recent days, the opposition's foreign affairs spokesperson, Julie Bishop, has defended the policy on the basis that Indonesian officials have indicated to her privately that their country would co-operate in enforcing a new policy of stopping vessels departing Indonesian ports, and would agree to take back boats laden with asylum seekers, which had been turned around at sea by Australian authorities.
The government says that is simply wrong. Laurie Ferguson told the meeting Labor needed to accept the problem was not going to "simply go away" and that voters should be levelled with and told directly just how difficult the challenge of reducing boat arrivals actually is.
On Tuesday, Mr Abbott refused to directly clarify whether the Coalition had asked the Indonesian government to support a policy to tow asylum seeker boats back to Indonesia.
"I don't go into the details," he said when asked if he or his government had raised the issue with the Indonesian leadership. "The Indonesian government understands our position.
"It's impossible for an opposition to negotiate with a sovereign government."
Earlier in the week, Ms Bishop said that high-ranking Indonesian officials signalled that they would support the Coalition's tow-back policy.
The Indonesian Ambassador to Australia had later said his government would not co-operate with the policy.
with James Robertson
