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Australia is to stop sending asylum seekers to Papua New Guinea, marking an end to its controversial detention regime in the nation.

Papua New Guinea is one of two Pacific countries paid by Canberra to detain asylum seekers and refugees who attempt to reach Australia by boat.

Australia said its arrangement with Papua New Guinea would conclude by the end of the year.

But it will continue its divisive "offshore processing" policy on the remote island nation of Nauru.

"Australia's strong border protection policies鈥� have not changed," Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said on Wednesday.

"Anyone who attempts to enter Australia illegally by boat will be returned, or sent to Nauru," she added, without clarifying it is not illegal to seek asylum.

The 120 asylum seekers and refugees remaining in Papua New Guinea will have the option to resettle there or to be moved to detention in Nauru.

Nick McKim, a Greens Senator for Tasmania and their spokesperson for Immigration and justice has visited the Manus detention centre on Papua New Guinea several times.

鈥淲hat I witnessed on multiple occasions in what effectively was a prison inside a naval base on Manus island was the deliberation dehumanisation of human beings. They were called by numbers not their names. They were not fed properly or provided with proper medical support. They were treated like human billboards, like the corpses impaled on the walls of medieval cities to dissuade other desperate people from trying to enter.鈥�

鈥淭his was never about savings lives, it was all about domestic political imperatives... If (the government) were really so keen, so concerned about the lives that were being lost (at sea) why have they tortured the people that survived those boat journeys? And there is just no answer to that question.鈥�

(Pic: Campaigners against Australia鈥檚 offshore refugee detention centres; Credit: Reuters)

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