Australia has spent a quarter of a century selling the world a simple idea: crack down on boats at the border, and people will believe you have migration under control.

As Australian politicians and advisers have promoted this model abroad, other governments have bought in. The United Kingdom borrowed Australia’s “stop the boats” slogan and tried to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. European governments are pursuing offshore processing, turnbacks and “return hubs”.

The model began with the Tampa affair 25 years ago, but its political message is misleading. While the asylum crackdown rhetoric has lasted decades, it has disguised the deregulation of many other parts of Australia’s immigration system.

Successive governments have not tightened overall control of immigration. If anything, they have loosened it.

What was the Tampa affair?

In August 2001, an Indonesian fishing boat carrying 433 asylum seekers, mostly Hazara Afghans, became stranded in the Indian Ocean. The Norwegian freighter Tampa rescued them.

When its captain tried to bring them to Australian territory, the Howard government refused.

Australian special forces boarded the Tampa to prevent it entering Australian waters. Within weeks, parliament had cut several islands out of Australia’s migration zone and created the “Pacific Solution”. People arriving by boat could be sent to these excised islands and barred from settling in Australia, even if they were found to be refugees.

The government also introduced boat turnbacks. Then in 2013, the Rudd government added an even harder line: anyone trying to reach Australia by boat without a visa would never be allowed to settle here.

For years, critics have attacked these policies for the suffering they cause.

That suffering is substantial, particularly in offshore detention. One study using Australian government records found 260........

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