He told Sky News on Monday that boats carrying asylum-seekers attempting to get to Australia had ceased under the Coalition government.

"The people smugglers have worked it out. They know under the Coalition government, Operation Sovereign Borders [OSB] means that the boats have stopped," he said.

He made the claim after the government revealed on the weekend that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) had helped Malaysian authorities to prevent a boat carrying 34 people from leaving Malaysia, bound for either Australia or New Zealand.

While the number of boats attempting to get to Australia has declined over the past five years from the hundreds of boats that arrived between 2009 and 2013, the government's own data provided to a Senate committee in December revealed that boats are still attempting to get to Australia and are being turned back or taken to their country of origin by OSB.