SYDNEY, Australia — Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia moved on Friday to curtail the record number of people trying the dangerous boat journey to claim asylum in the country, pledging that no one who arrives by boat without a visa will ever be granted permission to settle in Australia.

Under the tough policy, all asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat will be sent to a refugee-processing center in nearby Papua New Guinea, which like Australia is a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention. If the asylum seekers are found to be genuine refugees, they will be resettled in Papua New Guinea, but forfeit any right to asylum in Australia.

Thousands of asylum seekers fly into Indonesia every year, where they pay smugglers to ferry them in often unsafe, overcrowded vessels to Christmas Island, a remote Australian territory in the Indian Ocean that is its nearest point to Indonesia. Accidents at sea have killed more than 600 people since late 2009, and a long-term solution has bedeviled successive Australian governments going back more than a decade.

Mr. Rudd’s announcement came on the same day that Indonesia announced it would stop issuing visas on arrival to Iranians, many of whom use the country as a transit point before seeking asylum in Australia. Foreign Minister Bob Carr of Australia, who has recently argued that Iranians who seek asylum by boat are economic migrants and not genuine refugees, said in an interview last week that Australia would be asking Indonesia for changes like those announced Friday.