Leaders lash out at Abbott over anti-immigration lecture

Two leading Australian catholic priests are "appalled, ashamed and offended" following former prime minister Tony Abbott's use of the bible in his warning to the world over immigration concerns.

Mr Abbott, who is a devout Catholic and practiced as a former trainee priest, warned European nations they are in danger of making a "catastrophic error" if they don't secure their borders and turn back asylum seekers as Australia has done.

Mr Abbott, who is a devout Catholic and practiced as a former trainee priest, warned European nations they are in danger of making a "catastrophic error" if they don't secure their borders and turn back asylum seekers as Australia has done. Photo: AAP

"It will require some force," he said while delivering the annual Margaret Thatcher lecture in London on Tuesday night

"It will gnaw at our consciences yet it is the only way to prevent a tide of humanity surging through Europe and quite possibly changing it forever.

"This wholesome instinct [to love thy neighbour] is leading Europe to catastrophic error."

At the black-tie gala banquet at London's Guildhall, Mr Abbott laced his speech with praise for Mrs Thatcher, calling the former British prime minister "Mrs T" and saying she revived the "great" in Great Britain.

He said there were perhaps millions of people living in poverty and danger "who might readily seek to enter a Western country if the opportunity is there. Who could blame them?"

"Yet no country or continent can open its borders to all comers without fundamentally weakening itself.

"This is the risk that the countries of Europe now run through misguided altruism."

But two leading priests have hit out at Mr Abbott for 'confusing the situation regarding Australia'.

"I'm ashamed that a former Australian PM would be putting out a message like this," retired Bishop Pat Power told Fairfax on Wednesday.

"People will make their own judgements but that's completely at odds with what's at the heart of Christianity. I'm certainly offended."

Father Frank Brennan, a human rights lawyer and Jesuit priest, also condemned Mr Abbott's speech.

"The appalling thing is that ex-PM Abbott has no right to preach to the world because having stopped the boats, he insisted on maintaining the facilities at Nauru and PNG," he told Fairfax.

"They are not are just harsh but cruel and they don't deter asylum seekers because we've now locked the front door."

Mr Abbott outlined the measures that his and John Howard's government put in place to stop boats bringing asylum seekers to Australia, including offshore processing, denial of permanent residency and turning boats back to Indonesia.

He said the boats had stopped, migrant detention centres had all but closed and there were no more deaths at sea.

"That's why stopping the boats and restoring border security is the only truly compassionate thing to do," he said to applause.

"It will require some force, it will require massive logistics and expense."

Mr Abbott said because people smuggling was a global problem and Australia was the only country to successfully defeat it, the Australian experience should be studied.

He advocated turning boats around in the Mediterranean, denying entry at borders and setting up camps for people who have nowhere to go.

The former prime minister also raised the prospect that putting Western special forces on the ground in Syria and Iraq might be needed to defeat the Islamic State group.

Mr Abbott said that given the horrors unleashed by the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria it was striking how little had been done to address the problem at its source.

Australia had joined US-led air strikes on IS but the jihadists could not be defeated without more effective local forces in a part of the world "that's such a witches' brew of danger and complexity".

"Everyone should recoil from an escalating air campaign, perhaps with Western special forces on the ground as well as trainers yet as Margaret Thatcher so clearly understood over the Falklands, those that won't use decisive force, where needed, end up being dictated to by those who will."

Mr Abbott said the alternative of leaving Syria to the collective determination of Russia, Iran and the IS group was "too horrible to contemplate".