Third Country Deals Are The UK's Only Option For Tackling Small Boats, Says Australia's Home Affairs Minister
6 min read
Australia’s home affairs minister, Tony Burke, has said that third country deals are "the only serious option" for countries like the UK to address illegal migration flows.
Burke, a senior member of Anthony Albanese's Labor government in Canberra, also warned centre-left governments that progressives needed to have strong border policies to be electorally successful and uphold support for humanitarian and regular migration schemes.
“Progressive governments need to be strong on borders. That's true for progressive governments around the world," he said in an interview with PoliticsHome.
Keir Starmer made cancelling the previous Tory government's Rwanda scheme an early hallmark of his Labour government after entering office in July 2024, describing it as a "gimmick". Under the old policy, the UK agreed to send migrants who entered the country illegally to Rwanda for their asylum claims to be processed there. The policy faced legal hurdles and, in the end, resulted in nobody being sent to the African country.
Despite the Prime Minister's promise to “smash the gangs”, the Labour government has struggled to bring down the number of illegal crossings since being elected. Over 36,000 people have made the journey in 2025, around a third higher than at the same point last year.
Australia's approach to stopping migrant boats is often cited as a successful policy and a blueprint for other Western governments to follow, though experts stress there are key differences between the situations facing Australia and the UK.
Burke recently travelled to London to meet Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and other Five Eyes intelligence sharing counterparts to exchange tips and devise ways of stopping illegal migration.
Asked if the UK Labour government had been correct to cancel the Rwanda scheme, he said he was not familiar with the exact policy, but that basic principles applied when it came to illegal migration.
“I start with the principle that we don't refoul people, so you don't send people back to a place of persecution,” he said.
“The second principle is, if someone has no right to be in your country, they should leave, and a third country option becomes the only way of being able to do that.
“There's not a fourth option. It's either country of your origin, third country or people stay.
“If it's country of origin for most people, you can, but for some, if it definitely means a place of persecution, that's not something that most countries will want to do, which then leaves third country as the only serious option."
He said in Australia, a court ruling had determined that detention was not a solution, meaning that “certainly for us, third country is the only serious option.”
But he said this applied to other governments and said centre-left administrations could not afford to misunderstand the need to control borders.
“Progressive governments need to be strong on borders. That's true for progressive governments around the world,” he told PoliticsHome.
“The public will accept and will often welcome a nation making good, compassionate decisions.
“I've just recently signed off on the four thousandth person from Ukraine who we’ve given permanent residence to, and there's no controversy in the public on that because people have a good understanding that when someone's trying to play our system, we're dealing with that seriously, to people are willing to be a generous nation.
“People are willing to be a kind nation, they're not willing to be a nation that is taken advantage of, or where criminals get their way.”
The Australian minister's remarks come as the UK hosts a summit of Western Balkan nations on Wednesday, where tackling illegal migration is set to be one of the items on the agenda.
Politico reported on Tuesday that Kosovo was willing to enter a returns deal with the UK in exchange for deeper security cooperation, with its prime minister quoted as telling a private meeting: “We want to help the U.K. — we consider that that is our friendly and political duty."
The leaders of Montenegro and Albania have both talked down the prospect of agreeing returns deals with the Starmer government, however.
Albanian Prime Minister Edvin Rama has said his country is not prepared to host return hubs (Alamy)
The UK and France recently agreed on a one-in, one-out system, which the Labour government hopes will help deter boat crossings.
Australian officials helped craft the Rwanda scheme based on Australia’s successful deterrence policy of denying migrants who use illegal crossings any right to settle in their target country.
Former Australian high commissioner to the UK, George Brandis, who also helped British officials devise the policy that his Liberal government introduced, told PoliticsHome that Starmer made a mistake in scrapping the Rwanda scheme on day one.
“The debate in the UK will go exactly the way the debate in Australia went, that is, the Labor party took a position similar to Keir Starmer’s on Rwanda years ago, and the situation spiralled out of control.”
He added: “Immigration, particularly in a crowded country and adjacent to a crowded continent in continental Europe, will be one of the great defining issues of the next decade or two.
“This is a tangible and acute problem, and it is not a racist thing, or a hard right thing to say, the problem of unlawful movement of populations across sovereign nations is something that nation states have to deal with.”
He said that not even ten per cent of boat arrivals needed to be deported for it to work.
“You merely have to create a sufficient level of doubt in the minds of people who might be inclined to put themselves in the hands of people smugglers that maybe, maybe they won’t get the settlement outcome they’re paying for,” he said.
A Conservative Party spokesperson said: "Australia has shown us that you need to be bold if you are serious about ending illegal immigration.”
“Keir Starmer promised to 'smash the gangs', but instead he cancelled the Conservatives' Rwanda scheme and Labour have presided over record numbers of small boat crossings."
Dr Peter Walsh from the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford said Australia’s pushback system, whereby boats were turned back into international waters, was the central reason for Australia’s success, and this method did not apply to the UK.
“Comparisons between Australia’s border policies and those in the UK may also be liable to mislead,” he told PoliticsHome.
“Australia’s geography, legal framework and migration pressures are very different to those of the UK.
“For example, Australia carried out physical interception of migrant boats at sea, and engaged in swift returns of these people to Indonesia, with Indonesia’s consent.
“This is something the UK has been unable to achieve with France, in part because the small boats crossing the Channel are highly perilous and increasingly overloaded, making pullbacks too dangerous, according to French authorities."
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Last month, the Home Secretary and Australia’s Minister for Home Affairs met with their Five Eyes partners to affirm a shared commitment: countries must take back individuals who have no legal right to remain.
“Since taking office, this government has lifted returns to over 35,000. Under our landmark return agreement with France, we are now sending a message to small boat migrants: if you come here illegally, we can send you straight back.
"As the Home Secretary has said, we will do whatever it takes to secure our border."
