The 600 refugees waiting it out in squalid conditions at a mothballed detention centre on Manus Island are "effectively squatting", federal cabinet minister Christopher Pyne says.
Water, electricity and food supplies were cut to the centre more than a week ago and the Papua New Guinea government has on Thursday told the men to prepare to leave immediately.
Mr Pyne says they have refused to take other options available, including access to new accommodation facilities or returning to their country of origin.
"All those people in Manus Island who are at that detention centre are effectively squatting there," Senator Pyne told Nine Network on Friday.
"Activists in Australiatelling them to stay there and they will get to Australia are lying to them and that is unfortunately the situation."
Federal Labor MP Anthony Albanese says the government hasn't provided third party country settlement options for the refugees.
"New Zealand have made an offer and the government rejected it. They would rather have this stand-off and it is time that the politics ended," Mr Albanese told the Nine Network.
Mr Albanese said the centre was supposed to be a processing centre, but instead became a place of indefinite detention.
