So far this year 15,610 asylum seekers have arrived in Australian waters on 220 boats. The figure stands in stark contrast to 2002 – the year after the then prime minister, John Howard, introduced the Pacific Solution – when a single boat carrying one asylum seeker reached Australian waters.

The comparison is often touted by senior members of the Liberal party as proof that Howard “stopped the boats” and that his policies of offshore processing and temporary protection visas were a deterrent.

Did the Pacific Solution deter asylum seekers?

The Pacific Solution was introduced in 2001 and was made up of a series of policies which excised islands around Australia from the migration zone, turned boats back to Indonesia and processed asylum seekers in offshore detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru. Four boats in total were turned back by the Australian navy under the Howard government.

The year after the policy was introduced, arrivals dropped from 43 boats carrying more than 5,000 people, to one boat carrying one asylum seeker.

In 2011, the then immigration minister, Chris Bowen, conceded that although there were push factors involved in the fall in the number of asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat, Howard’s policy was a deterrent.

“Combined with key international events – such as the large-scale return of asylum seekers to Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban and the decrease in Sri Lankan arrivals with the hiatus in the conflict [there] – the policy did discourage boat journeys.

"But the execution is where it falls over,” he wrote in The Australian.

Alleged people smuggler, Sayed Abbas, told Australian Associated Press earlier this year that Howard’s policies contributed to the slowdown of boats.

"The Australian government can stop (the boats) like before, when John Howard was there," he said. "If they were more serious, they could stop. It's very easy."

The Pacific Solution was softened in 2005 after a revolt from four Liberal party backbenchers. After nine hours of negotiations with Petro Georgiou, Judi Moylan, Russell Broadbent and Bruce Baird, Howard announced changes to the asylum seeker policy but stopped short of abolishing mandatory detention. Women, children and families were released into the community and processing time for permanent visas was halved from six months to three months.

How important were global events to the drop in asylum numbers?

The introduction of the Pacific Solution coincided with the removal of the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, which lead to a global decline in the number of Afghan asylum seekers – one of the biggest groups seeking asylum in Australia. In 2002, the United Nations reported a 45% reduction in refugee resettlement around the globe and a drop in the international refugee population of 1.5m people. Australia increased its number of resettlements by 38% to 9,200 in 2002.

However, while asylum seeker claims in 38 industrialised countries fell by an average of 5%, in Australia the number fell by 52%.

Did temporary protection visas deter asylum seekers?

Temporary protection visas (TPVs) were granted for three years to people found to be refugees. After that their case would be reviewed but with no guarantee they would be granted a permanent visa. Refugees on a TPV could have it revoked if they left Australia, and it did not have a provision allowing for their families to settle in Australia.

Tony Abbott has said he plans to reintroduce TPVs if elected, claiming they were one of the factors which deterred asylum seekers travelling by boat in the early 2000s.

Howard introduced TPV visas in 1999, following a global spike in refugee numbers during which 3,721 asylum seekers arrived in Australia by boat.

In 2000, the year after TPVs were introduced, the number of asylum seekers arriving by boat dropped by about 800 to 2,939 people but then rose again in 2001 to 5,516 people.

During the 2009 estimates hearings, the then immigration minister, Chris Evans, argued that this was evidence the policy did not deter asylum seekers. “In fact, in the period after that there was a huge surge. Our figures show that in that period the percentage of women and children went from around 25% to around 40%. We saw more women and children taking the very perilous journey to come to Australia by unlawful boat arrivals,” he said.

When did boat people become a major political issue in Australia?

The term “boat people” entered the Australian lexicon in the 1970s when boats carrying refugees from Indochina began arriving in Australia. The then Liberal prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, says he was advised to introduce mandatory detention at the time but refused on compassionate grounds. Fraser allowed the asylum seekers who arrived by boat to be processed on Australian soil and his government supported 200,000 more refugees being resettled in Australia after coming through camps in various parts of Asia.

The arrivals were not greeted with open arms by all parts of the community, some claiming they were “pirates, rich businessmen, drug-runners and communist infiltrators” and in 1977, the Darwin branch of the Waterside Workers’ Federation called for strikes to protest the “preferential treatment of refugees”.

Between 1976 and 1979 a total of 2,059 asylum seekers arrived in Australia by boat. By 1982 that number had fallen to zero and another boat carrying asylum seekers did not arrive in Australian waters until 1989. Labor leader Bob Hawke became prime minister during that time but did not make any major changes to asylum seeker policy to deter the boats. His successor, Paul Keating, introduced mandatory detention in 1992.

The number of asylum seekers travelling to Australia by boat fell from 216 to 81 the year after the policy was introduced, but in 1994 it climbed to its highest level of the decade, 953.

Asylum seeker policy was one of the most contentious issues in the lead-up to the 2001 election. It was exacerbated by what became known as the Tampa affair – in which the Norwegian ship MV Tampa, carrying rescued asylum seekers, entered Australian waters without Australia’s permission – as well as a separate incident when Howard claimed that asylum seekers had thrown their children overboard. The claims were found to be false by a Senate inquiry.

Between 2002 and 2008, 25 boats carrying asylum seekers arrived in Australian waters. The number began to rise sharply in 2009, when 60 boats arrived, followed by 134 boats in 2010, 69 boats in 2011 and 278 boats last year, according to figures from the parliamentary library.