Abbott's favourite catch phrase turns out to be completely untrue. John Menadue, former secretary, Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs 1980-83, and Peter Hughes, senior officer in the Department of Immigration and Citizenship for 30 years, explain.

Now that the dust has settled on the end of Tony Abbott's prime ministership, it is time to put to bed the myth that Abbott stopped the boats. That is a great piece of spin, but Tony Abbott did not stop the boats. The game changer was the announcement by Kevin Rudd on July 19, 2013, two months before the election, that any persons arriving irregularly by boat would not be settled in Australia. Boat arrivals fell quickly and dramatically as a result of this announcement, coming on top of other measures the Labor government had already taken. In fact, Tony Abbott kept the door open for tens of thousands of boat arrivals in the first place. His failure to support the Malaysia Arrangement in September 2011 resulted in the surge of boat arrivals over the next two years. In May 2011 the Australian and Malaysian governments announced an "in principle" arrangement that up to 800 boat arrivals would be transferred from Australia to Malaysia for their asylum claims to be heard and, in response, Australia would be prepared to accept 4000 refugees from Malaysia. The arrangement with Malaysia was signed on July 25, 2011. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) gave it qualified support. At that stage, people arriving irregularly by boat were running at about 200-300 per month. On August 31, 2011, the High Court found against the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship’s powers to transfer people to Malaysia under the arrangement. In response, on September 21, 2011, the Gillard government introduced legislation -- the Migration Amendment (Offshore Processing and Other Measures) Bill 2011 -- which was designed to modify those parts of the Migration Act that had caused the problem in the High Court. There was strong opposition to the bill in the House of Representatives by the Coalition, led by Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, who were bitterly critical of Malaysia. As the bill was doomed, the government decided not to proceed with the legislation. (It was subsequently passed in August 2012 after the Houston Report). There were some lags in the response of asylum seekers and people-smugglers to gear up to the opportunities the Coalition and others had left open for them. The timing of boat arrivals was also affected by bad weather and heavy seas, typically in the period December-March. Surges of people of different ethnic background can also change the dynamics of people flow. But it is clear that after the legislation stalled, there was a substantial increase in boat arrivals, particularly from Sri Lanka and Iran. People-smugglers saw the High Court decision and the failure of the Australian Parliament to amend the Migration Act as a clear signal that their business could proceed. From November 2011, monthly asylum seeker arrivals began to trend up again. In the month of May 2012 they reached 1286 and, allowing for seasonal variations, kept rising inexorably to a monthly peak of 4230 in July 2013. See the chart below:

The source of this data is the Senate Select Committee on the Recent Allegations relating to Conditions and Circumstances at the Regional Processing Centre in Nauru: Submission 31 from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP). Crew are excluded.