A new study is critical of the level of support available to women who are trafficked into the Australian sex industry.

The researchers from the universities of Queensland and Sydney say as many as 2,000 women are trafficked to Australia each year, mainly from Asia.

They are concerned Australia's priority has been border protection rather than the human rights of women.

The study found that most of the women trafficked end up working in brothels in Sydney and Melbourne.

Associate Professor Julie Hepworth, a co-author of the report, says the women are in a "horrendous" position.

"They are facing a lot of immediate health consequences, legal consequences, economic consequences from the situation," she said.

"Often this results, obviously in quite severe trauma.

"And they would also be facing the possibility of being in a debt bondage whereby there's a certain amount of money that's been paid which they believe they need to repay in order to leave the industry.

"And there's consequences if they didn't pay that, such as threats to themselves and even to their families in their home countries."

The study focused on the experiences of sex workers in Sydney and drew on information provided by health centres, a law enforcement agent and women's health policymakers.

Professor Hepworth says the services available to trafficked women often struggle to deal with their needs.

"Repeatedly the issue of trauma comes up and that can often have lifelong consequences for an individual woman," she said.

"So a great need that (non-government organisations) reported that they had was access to psychologists to do trauma counselling.

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"Also from the government side of things, there's also a need for trauma assessment: in what state is the woman in terms of prepared to give evidence and things like that."

Professor Hepworth says that up until 2009, trafficked sex workers could not get help from Australian authorities unless they agreed to cooperate with Federal Police investigations.

But that has now changed.

"I think the key issue is now grappling with policy development that focuses on these complexities of how do women actually access them in a safe way," Professor Hepworth said.

"And then how do state and non-government organisations actually support women with very scarce resources.

"So that whole complexity of actually getting the policy into practice is one of the key issues."