Organisers of a memorial to 353 asylum seekers who drowned during the 2001 federal election campaign say their efforts have been thwarted by a "mean-spirited" Canberra bureaucracy.

A coalition of church, community and school groups had planned the exhibition on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra to mark the fifth anniversary of the disaster.

Organiser Steve Biddulph said a month ago the group had received a letter from the National Capital Authority — the federal government agency responsible for the proposed site — telling them 10 years must pass after an event before a permanent national memorial could be established.

"We were quite devastated because it was too late to do much about it," Mr Biddulph told theage.com.au.

Mr Biddulph says while the group hopes to eventually establish a permanent memorial, it had only applied to stage a temporary exhibition.

"It sounds like they haven't read our application," he said.

The proposed three-week exhibition was to consist of 353 wooden poles planted in the ground stretching over a distance of more than 300 metres. Each of the poles would represent a victim of the disaster and has been decorated by churchpeople and schoolchildren from across the country.

The asylum seekers, mostly women and children from Iraq and Afghanistan, died when the overcrowded fishing vessel - widely referred to as SIEV X, the acronym for suspected illegal entry vessel - on which they were travelling sank en route from Indonesia to Christmas Island on October 19, 2001.

About a week ago, the memorial organisers received a second letter from the NCA, telling them they needed to first seek permission from the ACT government, which owns Weston Park in Yarralumla, where the exhibition was to be held.

"I think they started to think they were looking bad for having stopped it and wanted to put it onto somebody else," Mr Biddulph said.

"It just seemed mean-spirited that they couldn't let us put some poles in the park for goodness sake," he said.

But without permission to plant the poles, the group will be forced to hold the poles up by hand for a short ceremony on Sunday, to be addressed by ACT chief minister John Stanhope. At the end of the day, the poles will go into storage.

National Capital Authority spokeswoman Anna Jackson told theage.com.au that the group's application was for a permanent national memorial, and the authority could not approve such an application because 10 years had not passed since the event.