IMMIGRATION Minister Peter Dutton has lashed out at former prime minister Kevin Rudd over his foray back into the asylum seeker debate.

Mr Rudd, who has kept quiet on domestic policy issues for the past three years, is now arguing the latest proposal to stop people arriving by boat from ever obtaining a visa is a new low and should be opposed.

“We are not going to take advice from Kevin Rudd ... from the lofty heights of his apartment in New York,” Mr Dutton told reporters during a press conference.

Mr Dutton also described false hope messages on social media from refugee advocates as “show stoppers”.

“People have put all sorts of scenarios and countries to me. I’ve not ruled countries in, I’ve not ruled countries out,” he said.

When asked about his thoughts on being called a “political thug” by Mr Rudd, he said: “I wasn’t called a rat fornicator or anything else he might have called people in the past”

Refugees on Manus Island and Nauru will be offered permanent resettlement in Canada and the US as part of a Turnbull government plan.

The government is in the final stages of negotiations to offer permanent resettlement to most of about 1800 refugees on Manus and Nauru, according to The Australian.

Several countries would likely be involved, suggesting the US and Canada are among them.

Speculation of the refugee swap with the US was rife in September after Malcolm Turnbull announced Australia would take refugees from Central America as part of its annual intake.

The latest development comes after the PM on Saturday announced it planned to ban refugees arriving from boat from ever settling in Australia.

Kevin Rudd today accused Mr Turnbull of trying to appease the right of the Liberal Party.

“This measure is about the politics of symbols, designed to throw red meat at the right, including the Hansonite insurgency, and to grovel to the broad politics of xenophobia,” Mr Rudd wrote in an opinion piece published by Fairfax Media.

Mr Rudd described the Coalition’s plan as “legislative folly”.

“It is without any policy merit in dealing with the real policy challenges all countries face today in what is now a global refugees crisis,” he wrote.

“And it does nothing to help those refugees left to rot for more than three years, who should be resettled now.”

Mr Rudd argued a 2013 deal he struck with Papua New Guinea to process refugees through Manus Island was only meant to run for a year.

“This July 2013 policy was conceived as a mechanism to break the gathering momentum of the people-smuggling industry,” he wrote.

The Coalition deliberately misrepresented it as a permanent measure, he added.

Mr Rudd also criticised the government for a failed refugee resettlement agreement with Cambodia and for refusing to accept New Zealand’s offer to resettle 150 refugees.

Cabinet minister Mathias Cormann said Mr Rudd had no credibility on the issue of asylum seeker because Labor caused “chaos and dysfunction” on Australia’s borders.

“Kevin Rudd has completely lost the plot,” he told ABC radio.

“The government is not going to take advice off somebody of such little credibility as Kevin Rudd.”