Opposition Leader Bill Shorten on Wednesday accused Mr Dutton of statements that would make "Pauline Hanson proud" and seeking to divide Australians, while the Greens accused him of xenophobia. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton. Credit:Andrew Meares "I don't think you can argue against the facts here," Mr Dutton said. "I'm not going to stand back from what I said "Many [refugees] come here with no English.

"Almost one in two will never have been in paid work and it costs a lot of money to support them "The fact is people come here without formal education, without skills and we provide significant funding for those people." Asked about demands by independent MP Andrew Wilkie for him to resign, Mr Dutton replied: "Well that's a body blow. "Sarah Hanson-Young calls for me to be sacked twice a week." Mr Dutton said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who hailed him as an "outstanding" minister on Wednesday, had shown strong leadership on asylum seekers.

"He was rock solid yesterday," Mr Dutton said. "He agrees because you can't argue with the facts here." Asked about the Greens proposal to increase Australia's refugee intake from around 13,700 to 50,000, Mr Dutton said on Tuesday: "They won't be numerate or literate in their own language, let alone English. "These people would be taking Australian jobs, there's no question about that. "For many of them that would be unemployed, they would languish in unemployment queues and on Medicare and the rest of it so there would be huge cost and there's no sense in sugar-coating that, that's the scenario."

He later released statistics showing 23 per cent of female arrivals and 17 per cent of male arrivals under Australia's Refugee and Humanitarian Program are illiterate in their own language. Fifteen per cent have never attended school and 46 per cent have never undertaken paid work. "Those people who come through refugee program come from war torn countries facing persecution we do the right thing, we offer significant support, we should be proud of that, the question for Bill Shorten is how would he stop the boats if his party is divided?" he said. "He's a person who can't control his own party, how would he control the borders?" Hadley strongly backed Mr Dutton's comments, saying Australia has enough "home-grown bludgers" without importing more from overseas and that he had spoken to family friends the night before who says "Australia needs more Peter Duttons". Mr Dutton said Mr Shorten needed to explain how he would lift the refugee intake to 27,000, as is Labor's policy, when recent arrivals had caused problems in some communities. He named recent Somali arrivals in Melbourne as one example.

On Thursday Mr Turnbull again backed his Immigration Minister. "Bill Shorten is only interested in the politics of this issue," the Prime Minister said as he visited a tanker manufacturer south west of Sydney. "And you can see the way he leapt on it yesterday to demonise Peter Dutton as a means of distracting attention from [David] Feeney's rather careless accounting for his real estate interests." Mr Turnbull was referring to revelations the Labor frontbencher "forgot" to declare a $2.3 million investment property, and that he initially did not know whether or not it was negatively geared. This week's focus on refugees and border protection has led some commentators to surmise the government is playing up asylum seeker fears for electoral advantage.