The myth of Nauru
Excellent long-read on how European policymakers have fundamentally misread what actually stopped unauthorized boat arrivals to Australia. The TL;DR: offshore processing (Nauru) gets all the press and is what everyone wants to replicate, but it demonstrably didn't work on its own, arrivals hit record highs the year after Gillard reintroduced it in 2012. What actually worked was naval turnbacks (Operation Sovereign Borders), which the Australian government kept deliberately quiet about.
Australia today processes three times as many asylum claims as it did at the height of the boat crisis, faces minimal political backlash, and has the most pro-refugee public opinion in the developed world. The countries that didn't get control of irregular arrivals — Germany, Sweden, the UK — have watched anti-immigration parties hollow out their political consensus and push policy in a dramatically more restrictive direction overall.