Saturday's ALP national conference vote to support the Coalition's policy of turning back asylum seeker boats has left Australians hoping for a more humane approach - on all sides of politics - despairing.

An amendment moved by Victorian left-faction MP Andrew Giles that would prohibit Labor from supporting turnbacks in future asylum seeker policy was defeated.

One member, Matthew, interrupted the vote as it was taking place, crying and shouting "You're supposed to listen to us!" and refused to be quiet after he was told to 'calm down', according to BuzzFeed.


Afterwards, he explained why he interrupted the vote - and in the process summed up the feelings of everyone who's been following Labor's stance on asylum seekers and hoping for some opposition to 'Operation Sovereign Borders'.

"It's inhumane, it's against international law and it will be challenged in the High Court if they do attempt to do it," Matthew says in this video. "We should not be giving the public any more of a view that both parties are the same, we're not! But this shows a massive move to the right on immigration and we're vacating the field on this and we are making it a lot harder for activists to keep fighting against it."

Matthew was also upset by the method with which the vote was decided, which he says had "no accountability": there was no official count, just a which-side-yelled-'aye'-or-'no'-the-loudest" situation.

"If you're going to say you think turnbacks should be an option, I want you to put your name to it. I want to know what the exact numbers are. It seems to me there are some within the party who don't want you to know what the numbers are."

He also decried the party's lack of courage in the face of media-generated fearmongering. "Too much of what we do is driven from how the media spin it. And we should be more courageous than that."