Sri Lanka's external affairs minister has pleaded with Tamil refugees in Australia who fled the nation's bloody civil war to come home – having quietly slipped into Canberra for talks on combating people smugglers.

G.L. Peiris told Fairfax Media in an exclusive interview Sri Lanka is now perfectly stable, with an economic boom in the once devastated northern Tamil regions running at three-times the national average.

Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr shakes hands with his Sri Lankan counterpart Gamini Lakshman Peiris during a joint media conference in Colombo in December, 2012. Credit:Reuters

But he warned smugglers sending record numbers of Sri Lankans by boat to Australia were making "unconscionable profits" and cared nothing for the people they put on unseaworthy vessels.

"Sri Lanka is today a land at peace, it is a perfectly stable society. The northern province is developing at about 22 per cent, when the average population of the country is between 6 or 7 per cent," Professor Peiris said.