Malcolm Turnbull has said the US-Australia refugee swap was always subject to US security vetting as he defended telling Donald Trump the US could decide not to take any refugees in a leak of their first conversation.

The Australian prime minister described the conversation, leaked in a transcript to the Washington Post, with the US president as courteous and frank and he again thanked Trump for honouring the refugee deal.

But the transcript, the contents of which have not been denied by the Coalition government, shows Turnbull told Trump that the US did not have to settle any of the asylum seekers, given it would go through its own vetting process.

“It has always been subject to American vetting procedures,” Turnbull said on Friday. “That’s always been part of the arrangement and the procedures of department of homeland security are ongoing.”

Turnbull refused to say what would happen to those refused by the US, saying he was focussed on resettling refugees.

“We have an arrangement with the United States and we are looking forward to that vetting process being completed,” Turnbull said.

“I think Australians can see I stand up for them.”

In the phone call, Turnbull also told Trump the deal was for Australia to take people the Obama administration were “very keen on getting out of the United States”.

“We will take more,” Turnbull said in the call. “We will take anyone that you want us to take. The only people that we do not take are people who come by boat.

“So we would rather take a not very attractive guy that helps you out than take a Nobel peace prize winner that comes by boat. That is the point.”

On Friday, Turnbull said Australia had agreed to work with the US in resettling some South American refugees but would not go into details.

And he defended the Coalition’s decision to include 90% of Christians in the one-off 12,000 intake of Syrian refugees announced by Tony Abbott just prior to losing the leadership.

“[The intake] was focussed on and avowedly so, quite openly focussed on persecuted minorities and the bulk of those are in fact Christians because they are also Yazidis, also Muslims but the majority are in fact Muslims.”



The extraordinary transcript leaked to the Washington Post relates to the first phone call between the leaders on 28 January. Just days after the call, details of what had been said were also leaked to the Washington Post.



At the time, Turnbull refused to comment on the conversation.

Josh Frydenberg rejected the suggestion that the transcript showed a lack of compassion for asylum seekers.



“We have an issue here in Australia that we came to government to solve, which was the fact that we saw 50,000 unauthorised boat arrivals,” Frydenberg, who is the federal energy minister, said.

“The prime minister reiterated in that phone call to the president, that our principal strategy here is to deny those evil people-smugglers a product to sell. That’s why these people are not being settled in Australia and it is working.

“If they get to settle in the United States, then they will have a better life.”



The former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd described the call between the two leaders as “right out there”, saying it would cause a large domestic political problem for Turnbull.



Rudd said Turnbull’s description of himself as “a highly transactional businessman” would go down like a “lead balloon”.

“To say, hey look, we just want to be seen to be doing a deal with you guys – you don’t actually have to take any of these asylum seekers or refugees – and then as part of the swap ... we’ll take anybody that you want to send to us,” Rudd told CNN.



“Mr Turnbull now faces through this extraordinary leak from the United States, a very large-scale domestic political problem concerning his own credibility and his tenuous hold on the conservative party leadership in Australia.”

Rudd said the US-Australian alliance would survive the leak but it was more troublesome for Turnbull.

“I think the real unfolding dynamic from this extraordinary conversation is prime minister Turnbull having been loose with the truth with his dealings with the Australian people.”



But Frydenberg said the transcript showed that Turnbull had stood up for the deal signed with Barack Obama in 2016, under which the US agreed to take up to 2,000 asylum seekers currently in offshore detention.



“He stood up for the deal that he had agreed with the Obama administration and he made that point very forcefully as we already knew with that conversation with the president,” Frydenberg told Sky.

“And quite clearly that is what we expect of our prime minister and that is what he has done.”

When the Turnbull government announced the deal in November last year, he declined to say what would happen to refugees who did not get accepted in the US.



In the phone call, Turnbull told Trump: “Every individual is subject to your vetting. You can decide to take them or to not take them after vetting. You can decide to take 1,000 or 100. It is entirely up to you. The obligation is to only go through the process.”

Labor senator Murray Watt accused the Coalition of lying when they said the US would take all the refugees in offshore detention.

So every time Turnbull & Dutton have said US will take 1,250 refugees, they were lying. https://t.co/I9Kaua0Upd — Senator Murray Watt (@MurrayWatt) August 3, 2017

When Turnbull described Australia’s policy to refuse any refugee who came by boat, Trump said: “That is a good idea.

“We should do that too. You are worse than I am.”

Greens leader Richard Di Natale said it was time for a radical change of approach if Trump considered Australia worse than his own administration on immigration.

“It’s now obvious that Malcolm Turnbull is more worried about his own political survival than the lives of innocent people,” Di Natale said.

“The lack of empathy or compassion for people who are suffering and the callous disregard for their fate is deeply shocking.”