Where the parties stand

Coalition

• Heavily regulate migration, with a strong emphasis on money and skills.

• Wind back allocation for family reunion and humanitarian entrants.

• Maintain a cap on overall migration, with the effect of around 1% overall population increase per year.

• Punish and deter those who try to migrate or seek refuge outside the "proper channels", including mandatory detention without trial and temporary second-class visas for refugees who enter "illegally".

Labor

• Has no substantial differences from the Coalition.

• Keep mandatory detention. Punish asylum seekers who arrive unauthorised.

• Ensure Australia's immigration intake reflects the needs of business.

• Establish an Office of Population Policy.

• Establish stronger links with Indonesia, and greater regional cooperation, to solve the issue of people smuggling and unauthorised arrivals.

• Appoint a Special Australian Representative to promote regional action on people smuggling, to reflect Australia's seriousness.

• Establish a Coast Guard, "a cop on the beat 52 weeks of the year".

• Increase Australia's contribution to the UN High Commission for Refugees (currently $20 million a year).

Democrats

• End mandatory detention, instead favouring reception centres to determine identity, provide health checks.

• Extend permanent residence to all those found to be refugees, oppose temporary protection visas.

• Institute community-based arrangements for asylum seekers while claims being processed.

• Remove those found not to be refugees.

• Incorporate into Australian law those international conventions which protect people from being returned to face situations of danger in their own countries.

• End two-year waiting period for social security entitlements.

• Maintain current immigration levels, but with a heavier emphasis on family reunion and humanitarian intake.

Greens

• Abolish mandatory detention.

• Abolish three-year temporary protection visas for refugees who arrive without a visa, and grant immediate permanent residence to all those currently on temporary visas.

• Institute reception centres to determine identity, provide health checks.

• Institute community-based arrangements for asylum seekers while claims are being processed.

• Broaden the term "refugee" to apply to people displaced due to famine, poverty, environmental degradation, war, political oppression and denial of human rights.

• Restructure immigration system so it is based predominantly on family reunions and other special humanitarian criteria while recognising the importance of the skilled migration category.

• End language discrimination, reject the requirement to be fluent in English.

• Grant Full access to social security, legal and interpreter services, English language classes, post-trauma counselling.

• Increase funding to immigrant service providers.

Socialist Alliance

• Close the detention centres

• End mandatory detention

• Grant full rights for asylum seekers and migrants

• Abolish the two-year waiting period which prevents newly arrived migrants accessing social security.

• Abolish temporary protection visas.

• End all deportations.

• Remove all restrictive and discriminatory immigration regulations and abolish the pro-business "points" system.

• Fund specialist services for resettlement.

• Institute unlimited and free English classes.

• Extend full citizenship rights including the right to vote to all refugees and migrants.