Peter Dutton is standing by his claims about what sparked a rampage on Manus Island, dismissing alternative accounts as "the Twitter version".

In a fiery interview on ABC television on Sunday, the Immigration Minister declared "there are facts that I have that you don't" as he refused to resile from his assertions that appeared to blame asylum seekers for last week's violent outburst.

Mr Dutton last week said the Good Friday confrontation came after asylum seekers were spotted leading a five-year-old Papua New Guinean boy into the Australian-run detention centre. The incident caused "a lot of angst" and the mood escalated quickly, he said. PNG police and soldiers fired up to 100 gunshots during the subsequent brawl.

But Mr Dutton's account has been disputed by authorities on the ground, including the Manus Province police commander David Yapu, who said the incident with the child actually occurred a week earlier and had nothing to do with the violence.