Former foreign minister and high commissioner to Britain Alexander Downer told a European audience that migrants in Australia were living "Bantustan-style" lives in "separate ghettos".

In the speech to a Hungarian migration summit in March, which flew under the radar in Australia at the time, Mr Downer also took aim at refugees he said were "undermining the whole system" by demanding permanent settlement rather than temporary protection.

"Ghettos": Former foreign minister Alexander Downer spoke at a Hungarian migration summit in March.

Mr Downer's lecture to the Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest strongly commended integration of migrants rather than letting them live what he called a "Bantustan-style life", a reference to the segregated black settlements of apartheid South Africa.

"If you do take people as migrants, you want to make sure they integrate," he said.