The myth of Nauru

Many countries want to copy Australia’s immigration rules. But its most-copied border policy is not the one that worked.

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Since 2014, around three million people have crossed the Mediterranean Sea to claim asylum once they reach European shores. These crossings are extremely dangerous: 33,000 people are missing, presumed dead, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration, a mortality rate of one percent. Unicef reports that at least 3,500 of them were children.

These crossings are deeply unpopular with Europeans. The vast majority of European voters tell pollsters ‘the fight against irregular migration’ is important or a priority. Three quarters say they favor a reinforcement of the EU’s external borders. Populist-right parties across Europe have garnered significant political support thanks to their opposition to the asylum system in its current form (as well as their opposition to other kinds of immigration).

In response, Europe’s leaders are alighting on a curious solution with a dull name: offshore processing. This involves sending and holding asylum seekers overseas while their claims are adjudicated.

Britain’s previous government spent two years trying to send its asylum seekers to Rwanda permanently in order to discourage arrivals on boats who had crossed the English Channel from France. The European Union disavowed that plan, but many of its members now want to try something similar.

Italy is arguing with European courts that it should be allowed to send the asylum seekers its border force collects at sea to Albania for processing. They would only be allowed to go to Italy if their asylum claim is granted. Denmark has passed legislation to enable it to process asylum seekers offshore in the hope that ‘people will stop seeking asylum in Denmark’. In June 2026, it is likely that the EU as a whole will follow suit.

The European Commission plans to loosen rules restricting offshore processing across the bloc. The changes allow more asylum seekers to be processed offshore and a greater number of third countries to host asylum seekers. Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, says the changes allow her country’s Albania plan to be put into action.

Europe’s politicians are keen on offshore processing because they think that there is one rich country which has solved its own boat problem with the same approach: Australia. Unauthorized boat arrivals to Australia peaked at over 25,000 people in a 12-month period spanning 2012 and 2013. Then a new policy regime, which included offshore processing, kicked in. Australia did not see a single boat arrival for almost a decade thereafter.

European policymakers are so convinced of Australia’s offshore processing success that Britain’s government appointed an Australian official to help draft its Rwanda plan. It even copied Australia’s ‘Stop the boats’ slogan. Meanwhile, officials from Denmark’s immigration ministry traveled 13,000 kilometers in 2024 for a fact-finding trip to a processing site on Nauru, the small island nation off Australia’s northeast coast.

There is just one problem with this narrative: offshore processing did not stop asylum seekers from trying to reach Australia. Instead, Australia’s success lay in turning boats back to their country of origin before they reached Australian shores.

Many readers will disagree that it is ever right to discourage people from seeking asylum in safe, developed countries. Nevertheless, there are three reasons to take Australia’s example seriously. The first is that many European voters want to reduce the number of asylum seekers coming to their countries, and their elected officials are looking for ways to do that. If they misunderstand the example they are trying to follow, they will spend billions of euros on an approach that is both less effective and less humane than it should be.

The second is that the status quo is awful. Tens of thousands of people have already died attempting to reach Europe. Until Europe’s governments come up with a durable solution, more people will die, including children.

The third reason is that Australia demonstrates that control of the border can preserve some consensus about the asylum system as a whole. As Ruvendrini Menikdiwela, a UN Refugee Agency official, put it, ‘the institution of asylum worldwide is under more threat now than it has ever been’.

But not in Australia: the country is accepting a growing number of asylum claims at a time when most other rich countries are attempting to cut back. Three times as many people applied for asylum in Australia in 2023 as did in 2013, at the height of the boat wave. Today, Australians hold more positive views about the asylum seekers living in their country than people in any of the other 28 mostly rich countries surveyed by Ipsos. The right policy measures can strengthen public trust instead of destroying it.

The first and second waves

Unauthorized boat arrivals to Australia have a long history. In the 1970s, when the Vietnam War came to an end, Vietnamese refugees sailed for safer countries across the Pacific. By the end of the decade, about 2,000 had reached Australia, forming the country’s first wave of boat arrivals. They were generally well received. One girl recalled a friendly immigration official teaching her her first English word: ‘kangaroo’. Almost all who came were quickly granted refugee status and brought to major cities to start new lives. Arrivals tapered off once the region’s turmoil subsided, and no more boats landed in Australia for most of the 1980s.

The second wave started in 1989 with a single boat carrying 28 asylum seekers. For the following nine years, around three hundred people arrived in Australia by boat annually, mainly to outlying Australian islands in the Indian Ocean like Christmas Island or the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. They were mainly Southeast Asians, arriving in too small a number to cause controversy.

Then something changed. In 1999, the number of boat arrivals rose tenfold. By 2001, it had nearly doubled again. The background of those reaching Australia’s shores changed with the volume. From 1999 onwards, ‘boat people’, as Australians had come to call them, were increasingly from the Middle East or Central Asia. These arrivals often flew to Jakarta before hiring smugglers to evade Indonesian border patrols and arrange a boat destined for Australian territory from one of Indonesia’s southern islands.

Neither the rising number of asylum seekers nor the new role of smugglers was popular with the Australian public. But Australia’s government, led by Liberal Prime Minister John Howard, did not think much could be done. Australia already had a policy of detaining all new boat arrivals while their status was ascertained. And while the first wave of arrivals from Vietnam had been granted asylum with little hesitation, the second wave had been treated with more discernment: around 70 percent of arrivals between 1989 and 2001 were not allowed to stay. Those that were granted refugee status were no longer entitled to have their families join them. But these changes were not sufficient to discourage people from setting sail.

In August 2001, a small fishing boat carrying 433 Afghan asylum seekers set sail from Indonesia. Overcrowded and dilapidated, the boat sank before it reached its destination of Christmas Island, an Australian territory near the Indonesian coast. A nearby Norwegian container ship, the MV Tampa, rescued the passengers.

The Tampa first turned back towards Indonesia but then continued on to Christmas Island after the rescued asylum seekers insisted. The Howard government denied the ship entry into Australian waters. After the Tampa entered Australian waters anyway, the government ordered the navy to board the ship and prevent it from landing.

The spectacle of the Tampa affair, which drew worldwide attention, led Australia to adopt a much tougher stance towards boat arrivals. The government’s refusal to let the Tampa land had been hugely popular with the public: 77 percent of Australian voters supported it, according to one poll. The Howard government was heading towards an election in the autumn. After the Tampa affair, it drew up a new, tougher border strategy to discourage further boats from reaching Australia, which it called the Pacific Solution. A new border protection act was passed to retroactively condone the government’s actions over the Tampa affair and to enable three new policies.

First, Christmas Island and other Australian islands near Indonesia were excised from Australia’s migration zone. Asylum seekers reaching them were thereafter not considered to have legally entered Australia (a requirement for applying for asylum). This stretched the journey boats would have to make from Indonesia to reach a part of Australia which still counted for asylum from 200 miles to 400 miles or more.

The second policy was offshore processing. Boat arrivals that did reach the Australian mainland to claim asylum became liable to be sent to Nauru or Papua New Guinea or even back to Christmas Island while their asylum claim was considered. Only successful applicants were to be allowed into mainland Australia.

The third policy was called Operation Relex. The Howard government ordered the Australian navy to intercept all boats during their journey to Australia. Those intercepted were either brought to offshore processing centers directly, without ever reaching mainland Australia, or else turned back, meaning that the navy escorted the boat back to its point of departure, usually the southern islands of Indonesia.

Around 12 boats, collectively carrying about 1,700 people, were intercepted under Operation Relex between September and December 2001. Boats carrying about 500 people were turned back to Indonesian waters. This angered the Indonesian government, which expressed private objections to Australian officials. But, in the end, it opted not to make a public fuss and acquiesced to the Australian approach. The other intercepted boats were brought to offshore processing centers.

The Pacific Solution was not cheap. Together the policies were estimated to have cost around A$1.4 billion ($900m) in today’s prices, mostly due to the cost of accommodating the 1,637 people sent offshore. Nor was it easy. People often reacted badly to the prospect of being turned back or brought to offshore processing centers. Several times those on board engaged in hunger strikes, sabotaged their boats, or jumped overboard. At least once, a small child was dangled overboard by one of the adults and dropped into the water, before being rescued by another passenger. The goal was to force a rescue by Australian authorities that would make an onshore asylum claim possible.

Nevertheless, the impact of the Pacific Solution on boat arrivals appeared almost instantaneous. Only a single person landed in Australia in 2002, compared with 5,516 in 2001. Boat arrivals remained below 150 annually thereafter. In 2004, John Howard turned the success of his approach into a resounding election win.

When change happens, it can be hard to separate cause from effect. At the time, many denied that the Pacific Solution was responsible for the fall in migration. One academic suggested that it was the spectacle of the Tampa affair itself that had discouraged many subsequent attempts. Others argued the overlap between the fall in arrivals and Australian policy changes was just a coincidence. Conflicts in the Middle East had calmed down at the same time, leading fewer people to flee. And, even if the Pacific Solution did make a difference, it was not clear which of the three measures – narrowing Australia’s migration zone, offshore processing, and naval turnbacks – were responsible for the fall.

Australia is interesting because this whole episode more or less happened again several years later. The Pacific Solution never won a cross-party consensus. It was formally ended by Kevin Rudd’s Labor government on 8th February 2008. Labor’s immigration minister called it a ‘cynical, costly and ultimately unsuccessful exercise’. What happened next provides a laboratory for understanding exactly what discouraged boat arrivals.

The third wave

With the end of the Pacific Solution came the return of boats. The number of arrivals rose by a factor of 17 in 2009 and continued to climb in the years following. Having campaigned against the Pacific Solution, the Rudd government found itself in a bind. In 2010, 78 percent of Australian voters were somewhat or very concerned about asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat.

Halfway through 2012, arrivals surpassed the previous 2001 peak. The government, then under Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard, decided to pivot. In August 2012, the legislature passed an amendment to reinstate offshore processing on Nauru and Papua New Guinea as a ‘matter of urgency’. The first asylum seekers arrived in Nauru the following month.

This time, it didn’t work. In the six months following the reintroduction of offshore processing, ten thousand more people arrived on Australia’s shores by boat. By the end of November, the Immigration Minister announced facilities in Nauru and Papua New Guinea were overwhelmed. Further arrivals to Australia’s shores would be given bridging visas to live in Australia while their claims were assessed.

The continuing upswell of arrivals led to an even tougher stance. In May 2013, mainland Australia was itself excised from the migration zone. In July of the same year, after Rudd returned to power, the government legislated that arrivals on or after 13th July 2013 would not only be sent offshore, but would never have the chance to settle in Australia even if their asylum claim were granted, a harder line than had been taken under the Pacific Solution.

Refugees could either settle in Nauru or Papua New Guinea, or hope that another country would agree to their being resettled there. To make space in offshore facilities, the government moved all those currently resident to Australia on temporary visas, so that the space could be filled again with new arrivals.

It was not enough to save the Labor government. In September 2013, Rudd was voted out in favor of an opposition coalition that promised a still tougher approach. Within days of election victory, the new government, led by Liberal politician Tony Abbott, introduced a policy it called Operation Sovereign Borders.

Under this approach, offshore processing was kept, but the emphasis shifted to boat turnbacks. Australia resumed navy-led policing of its borders. As during Operation Relex, the navy was charged with intercepting and turning back any boat that tried to reach the mainland’s shores. In the early stages, from September to December, intercepted boats were escorted to offshore processing facilities. After that, the policy changed to turning boats back directly to Indonesian waters.

Indonesia was again displeased, announcing in November 2013 that it would not take back asylum seekers rescued by Australian ships in Indonesian waters. Australia apologized, but continued to haul ships back.

The turnback operation had grown more sophisticated. During Operation Relex, attempting to turn back rickety, often-sabotaged, overloaded boats was a perilous task. Sabotage led to fire on board at least once, after a migrant boat was intercepted and passengers were told they might be turned back. At least five people were killed, and many others severely burned, in a separate well-reported incident in 2009 (authorities did not intend to turn the boat back, but passengers believed they were going to).

By Operation Sovereign Borders, the navy had taken to towing commercial lifeboats onto which they transferred passengers before bringing the lifeboat back to international or foreign waters. These commercial lifeboats were gradually replaced with purpose-built vessels. The navy’s equipment was also upgraded. This made turnbacks easier and safer to carry out.

In 2014, only a single boat made it to Australia. None did for almost a decade afterward.

Offshore processing didn’t work. Turnbacks did.

What can we learn from these two rounds of boats and policies? The first is that it is clear the policies made the difference. In both instances, arrivals fell sharply when the government introduced some combination of offshore processing and boat turnbacks. Arrivals rose after such policies were lifted.

The evidence was enough to satisfy politicians. Though the Labor party had initially resisted and eventually undid the Pacific Solution, by 2016 all major parties supported offshore processing and boat turnbacks. Even Operation Sovereign Borders’ strongest opponents eventually changed their minds. Anthony Albanese was deputy prime minister in Rudd’s government and argued against the policy in opposition for several years. In 2018, he conceded that it had stopped the boats. Now he is prime minister, his government regularly turns back boats which attempt to reach Australia.

The two most impactful policies were offshore processing and boat turnbacks: boat arrival numbers to Australia reached their minimums in 2001 and 2013 when both were in place. But of the two, turnbacks were by far the more decisive.

One key point of evidence is that Gillard’s reintroduction of offshore processing did not quell arrivals: numbers hit record highs in the year after its reintroduction. People set sail undeterred, likely because offshore processing no longer presented a credible blocker to eventually settling in Australia.

The sheer volume of arrivals quickly overwhelmed capacity offshore, such that a new boat arrival under Gillard was unlikely to be sent for processing there: only about 1,000 of the around 20,000 arrivals eligible over this period were sent offshore. Even if an arrival was sent offshore, the lesson of the Pacific Solution was that it might not matter: about 70 percent of the roughly 1,600 people sent offshore during the Pacific Solution eventually made it to Australia or another rich country.

Despite offshore processing, there was a good chance a prospective asylum seeker would eventually achieve their goal of settling in Australia. It appears thousands concluded that it was still worth taking that chance.

Arrival numbers did not fall immediately, even after the Rudd government re-emptied offshore facilities and removed the prospect of those processed offshore ever settling in Australia. More than 1,500 people on at least 20 boats arrived in Australia in the 16 days after Rudd’s change, compared with a few hundred in the same time period after Operation Sovereign Borders began later that year.

This is still not conclusive: given the lengthy trip involved, it is possible any policy could lag in taking effect, and the gap between Rudd’s strengthening of offshore processing and Abbott’s shift to pushbacks was only about two months.

In addition, Rudd’s rules for offshore processing were stricter than what had come before. A much higher proportion of people were sent offshore than under Gillard, which may have had a stronger deterrent effect, and under Rudd, even those granted refugee status were told they would not ever settle in Australia.

But the final and definitive proof in favor of turnbacks is what happened after Operation Sovereign Borders got underway. The Australian government still had a capacity problem, as facilities offshore had rapidly refilled. So, over the course of 2014, it quietly ended transfers to Nauru, Papua New Guinea, and Christmas Island and swapped to using only turnbacks for new boats. The last boat sent offshore was in 2014. Nevertheless, boat arrivals remained nil for years after. Turnbacks alone proved to be enough.

Learning the wrong lessons

It is understandable that offshore processing appeals more to European leaders than intercepting and turning back refugee boats. Those sent offshore are out of sight and out of mind. Meanwhile, operations on the water are visible, risky, and may lead to legal difficulties.

The European Court of Human Rights has judged that some cases of turnbacks count as ‘collective expulsion’, prohibited under European human rights law. Processing asylum claimants offshore also provides a way to relieve the domestic asylum system of those who have already reached Europe, which boat turnbacks cannot.

But that does not mean offshore processing is actually the most effective way to reduce boat arrivals. Australia’s success has been easy to misinterpret. Australia’s offshore processing received prominent, sustained coverage in the press around the world. Meanwhile, the boat turnbacks received comparatively little publicity; the government kept most details about Operation Relex and Operation Sovereign Borders secret, regularly refusing to comment on operational matters.

There are other reasons to question offshore processing. It is hugely expensive. The Australian government spent A$1.5 billion ($1 billion USD) a year on offshore processing after it reintroduced the policy in 2012. That is in part because it is practically difficult.

An interested government must pay another country for the privilege. Britain, for example, paid Rwanda £270 million ($365 million) simply to sign up to its plan. Facilities must be big enough to house a rapid inflow of arrivals, or they are pointless. Australia maintained several thousand places, which turned out not to be nearly enough. And it is the government’s responsibility to support those it sends offshore.

Offshore processing can also be a cruel policy. Those ineligible for asylum elsewhere in the world remain stuck offshore if they do not wish to return home. Even those deemed legitimate refugees were not permitted to settle in Australia; they had to wait for another country to agree to take them.

Five years after offshore processing was reintroduced, well over a thousand people were still living offshore on Nauru and in Papua New Guinea, over half of whom had been recognized as refugees. One person remained in Nauru for 11 years. Six people committed suicide while offshore. In the end, most did eventually settle in Australia, but they endured a long, uncertain wait first.

Turnbacks have their own costs. They may stop legitimate refugees from reaching any safe country. And there is the risk that something could go wrong while attempting to turn back boats of questionable seaworthiness. All sailors have an international obligation to ensure the safety of lives at sea. Sometimes the Australian navy would abandon a turnback attempt because they judged the boat could not make the return journey. Offshore processing was then a helpful backup to ensure that overall deterrence was maintained.

But, on net, Australia’s turnback policy has made its waters much, much safer than they were. Between 2008 and 2013, when turnbacks were not in force, over 1,200 people drowned attempting to reach the Australian shore. Yet no one is believed to have drowned in the years after turnbacks were reintroduced. By ensuring those attempting the crossing would have no chance of reaching Australia, Australia removed the incentive people had had to risk their lives, and people smugglers lost the market for their unsafe boats.

In the meantime, Australian hostility to asylum seekers has softened. In 2010, 78 percent of Australians told the Lowy Institute they were concerned or very concerned about unauthorized asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat. By 2022, the proportion of Australians who thought boat turnbacks and asylum seekers were an important election issue had halved.

Asked by Ipsos last year whether refugees make a positive contribution to their country, 57 percent of Australians agreed, 17 percentage points higher than the average in the European countries surveyed. Three in four supported the global right to asylum, more than any European country except Sweden and the Netherlands. Three times as many people applied for asylum in Australia in 2023 as did in 2013, at the height of the boat wave, to little public outcry. At 120 claims per 100,000 people in 2023, Australia has become more welcoming to asylum seekers than the famously welcoming Scandinavian countries.

It’s no wonder Europeans are so interested in how Australia solved its boat problem. So far, though, they have drawn the wrong conclusions about what it actually did. Turning boats around, not processing people offshore, is what really worked.

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Amelia Wood is a writer and journalist. You can follow her on Twitter here.