Australian Authorities confirmed that four people have died after an asylum seeker boat carrying about 150 passengers Tuesday capsized in the rough seas off Christmas Island.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) reported that Australian Naval and Customs vessels saved about 150 people dumped into the water, while four bodies have been recovered.

The vessel had first made a distress call around 2:15 am Tuesday but poor weather conditions had delayed the rescue. Two Australian navy ships were at the scene 70 nautical miles off the island, northwest of Australia's mainland, AMSA said.

AMSA earlier believed up to 180 people were on board the vessel, but that was later scaled down.

The asylum seeker policy is regarded as one of the major failures of the Labor government, which turned its back on the so- called Pacific Solution implemented by previous John Howard government.

Under the Pacific Solution, asylum seekers would be transported to detention centers on small island nations in the Pacific Ocean, rather than being given permission to land on the Australian mainland.

In 2012, the Gillard government reintroduced much of the Pacific Solution and reopened both Nauru and Manus Island for offshore processing after its proposal of a people swap scheme with Malaysia was stymied by the High Court, the Coalition and the Greens.

As a result, since August 2012, more than 44, 000 people arrived in Australia by boat. Many of them boarded their ships in Indonesia under the arrangement of human traffickers.

In his first press conference as prime minister on June 28, Kevin Rudd dramatically raised the stakes on asylum seeker boat arrivals, saying that the policy of turning back the boats could lead to armed conflict with Indonesia.