Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has sidestepped questions about whether the federal government will accept a New Zealand offer to resettle some of the asylum seekers destined to be returned to Nauru.

Mr Turnbull will hold official talks with NZ Prime Minister John Key later this week in Sydney amid uproar in Australia over the fate of 267 people in line to be set back.

"I don't want to foreshadow any changes to our policy," Mr Turnbull told reporters in Brisbane on Wednesday.

The asylum seekers, including 91 children and 37 babies, are in Australia for medical treatment or are accompanying ill family members, but face being returned to Nauru after a failed High Court challenge.

The federal government insists returns will be on a case-by-case basis.

Mr Turnbull hinted he was not keen to revive a longstanding deal, never taken up, which was struck in 2013 between Mr Key and then prime minister Julia Gillard, for NZ to accept 150 asylum seekers a year.

"We recognise that the most important thing we have to do is not at any point give any encouragement or say or do anything that the people smugglers will use for their marketing," Mr Turnbull said.

"We have to manage this challenge with compassion but with a very, very clear head because the objective is to keep the boats stopped."

Despite big hearts within the federal government's ranks it was imperative to stop drownings at sea.