The federal government will attempt to rally support for a regional asylum seeker processing centre in East Timor during a meeting in Bali this week.

But details of the proposed centre are unlikely to be nutted out. Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd and Immigration Minister Chris Bowen will use the March 29-30 meeting in Bali to garner support for a centre on East Timor.

The meeting will focus on ways to combat people smuggling but Mr Bowen says it is not a forum to make final decisions on the so-called East Timor solution.

"It (the Bali process meeting) won't be the be all and end all," he told Network Ten on Sunday, acknowledging the proposal was "controversial" in East Timor.

East Timor will be one of many nations in the Asia-Pacific region represented at the Bali meeting, co-chaired by the Indonesian and Australian governments.

The meeting comes as Mr Bowen was today forced to defend the number of police on Christmas Island prior to breakouts and riots at its immigration detention centre.

The Australian Federal Police stationed 189 more officers on the island following serious disturbances earlier in March. Mr Bowen said he was "perfectly satisfied" with the AFP response to the events.

"The AFP moved very quickly back to Christmas Island," he told Network Ten, responding to reports that police numbers on the island were scaled back in November 2010.

"Frankly more AFP presence in the broader community wouldn't have made a difference in those early days inside the detention centre."

All 170 detainees who broke out of the centre have been accounted for, and some charges have been laid. The AFP has rejected allegations of mistreatment of detainees, after police were forced to use tear gas and bean-bag bullets to quell rioters.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott reiterated his call for a tough government response to the rioters.

"We should not give visas to people who have been responsible for destroying taxpayer property and obstructing commonwealth officers," Mr Abbott told Sky News.

"What happened on Christmas Island was a succession of criminal acts, serious criminal offences and the people responsible should be denied Australian citizenship."