Immigration Minister Peter Dutton is confident the Manus Island detention centre will close in October, despite only 70 refugees having been processed for resettlement.
Mr Dutton, who will soon take responsibility for a newly announced super portfolio overseeing Australia's domestic security, said he would close the centre "tomorrow" but was at the mercy of an American timetable.
An agreement was struck between Australia and the United States in the dying days of the Obama administration to resettle up to 1250 of the asylum seekers detained on the island.
Donald Trump has said he would honour the deal but the president has slashed the US's overall refugee intake, which has bumped the Manus Island resettlement to October 31.
'We have been caught up in the US process, they have a quota each year," he told Sky News.
"It was 110,000 people they were taking in the refugee program under President Obama, President Trump has reduced that to 50,000 which was part of his mandate in being elected president.
"But their year finishes on the 30th of September, so we have now been pushed into October in terms of when people will move."
Nauru will remain open following the Manus closure, but Mr Dutton held firm to the commitment no refugee in the centres would be resettled in Australia.
"The reality is we need to get people off as quickly as possible," he told Triple M Melbourne radio on Thursday.
"We struck this deal with the United States. We probably under the deal won't get a lift of people now until October. I have stated very clearly that we want to close Manus Island facility by the end of October and we are on track to do that.
"…If we can close Manus Island, then I think that is the closure of a sad chapter – one of the great things is, not only have we got kids out of detention, we have closed seventeen centres, but we have not had a death at sea."
Wednesday marked four years since former prime minister Kevin Rudd vowed asylum seekers who arrived by boat would never step foot in Australia.
It was a commitment he said would be reviewed annually and on Wednesday, he took to Twitter to say the refugees should have been resettled in Australia a year after he made his vow.
"It's a joke," Mr Dutton said on Wednesday night.
"Kevin Rudd's tweet today should reinforce the view that if Bill Shorten becomes prime Mminister, the boats will recommence, no question."
A report from the Human Rights Law Centre released on Wednesday highlighted statistics from the Department of Immigration for 2017 showing a critical or major incident in the Manus Island camp or surrounding community had taken place almost every day.
The offshore immigration detention program has cost the federal government at least $5 billion since 2012, according to figures recently released by a Senate committee.
