The president of the Australian Human Rights Commission will meet the Prime Minister on Friday to press the case for a "rights-based" alternative to using offshore processing on Nauru and Manus Island to deter arrivals.

The commission will release its blueprint for change on Wednesday, proposing several new pathways for refugees to come to Australia, an increase in the resettlement program and a regional refugee protection framework.

"It's become very clear that what we have cannot be maintained and something has got to give. The purpose of this paper is to provide some ideas that would encourage that," Professor Triggs told Fairfax Media.

Many of the recommendations complement those in a separate report by UNICEF and Save the Children released on Tuesday that estimated the cost of Australia's border protection policy since 2013 at $9.6 billion.

Both reports follow a call from Paris Aristotle, the pre-eminent adviser to both sides of politics on refugee issues over the past two decades, to act swiftly or face the "high likelihood" that "many more men and women will express their despair by attempting to harm and kill themselves". Mr Aristotle said Australia should be among the countries considered for resettling the refugees on Manus and Nauru and played down the potential for such a move to reignite the people smuggling trade.

While the commission's report does not address the plight of those who have been on Nauru and Manus for three years, Professor Triggs said: "Because no other solutions have been found, clearly those on Nauru and Manus must be brought to Australia.

"They've been held for years, many of them. It's indefinite detention with no solution and I see no other alternative at the moment to bringing them to Australia and integrating them."

Professor Triggs said the report Pathways to Protection: A human rights-based response to the flight of asylum seekers by sea, had been informed by discussions with senior government officials, international experts and months of research.

"I hope that this report presents some positive proposals to break the current policy deadlock; that Australia's policy response shifts from a deterrence-based to a rights-based approach that prioritises safety of life at sea and pathways to durable solutions," she says in the introduction to the report.

"The international response to Australia's policy of third country processing suggests that our reputation as a welcoming and rights-respecting nation is being eroded while we maintain this approach."

While the report does not address human rights issues raised by turning boats back and affording refugees only temporary protection, the report says its proposals "could also be considered as alternatives to these proposals".

Meanwhile, an audit has found the Immigration Department failed to rein in spending on Australia's overseas immigration detention centres, which cost taxpayers more than half a million dollars for each asylum seeker.

Auditor-General Grant Hehir's searing report shows officials could not explain how they selected the businesses that received more than $3 billion to build and run the centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea's Manus Island.

with Henry Belot and Markus Mannheim

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