Australians will ultimately reject the policies that have consigned more than 1500 asylum seekers to life in limbo on Nauru and Manus Island, according to the Liberal MP who forced the Howard government to soften its treatment of asylum seekers in 2005.

Returning to Parliament House for the first time since he retired from politics in 2010, Petro Georgiou lamented that Australia's treatment of asylum seekers has gone through alternating phases of generosity and "harsh new measures".

Petro Georgiou receives the Migration Council of Australia's lifetime achievement award from Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Tuesday night. Credit:Penny Bradfield/MCA

"Today, under the pressure of numbers and the significance of tragic deaths at sea, we have returned to punishment," Mr Georgiou said in a speech accepting a lifetime achievement award from the Migration Council of Australia on Tuesday night.

Mr Georgiou was presented with the award by the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, who sat at table with former immigration minister Scott Morrison, the architect of the government's deterrent strategy, during his speech. If they felt uncomfortable, it did not show.