The $30 million campaign includes television, radio, print and online advertisements which warn potential asylum-seekers who pay people-smugglers that they face being resettled in Papua New Guinea rather than Australia.
The government says it has targeted ethnic communities in Australia so that a strong message can be passed back to friends and relatives in other countries about the policy change.
But some migrant community groups believe the campaign is a waste of taxpayers' money which does not tackle the basic cause of the people-smuggling problem.
Michael Kenny reports.
Immigration Minister Tony Burke says the advertisements have been targeted specifically at migrant communities from countries with large numbers of asylum-seekers coming to Australia by boat.
The advertisements are available online through the Department of Immigration's website in Arabic, Farsi, Vietnamese, Sinhalese, Tamil, Pashto and Dari.
The English version also includes extracts from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's media conference where he announced the refugee resettlement agreement with Papua New Guinea.
"From now on, any asylum-seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees."
The advertisements have attracted criticism from Independent Senator Nick Xenophon who believes they amount to political advertising.
Senator Xenophon lodged a formal complaint about the advertisements with the Commonwealth Auditor General.
He says all political advertisements that cost more than $250,000 are normally subjected to scrutiny by a special parliamentary communications committee before they are approved for use.
He says the Auditor General confirmed the government has managed to exempt the advertising campaign on people smuggling from those rules by arguing that they are a matter of extreme urgency.
"This might be a political emergency for the government, but it's not an extreme urgency in any reasonable standard. The other issue is this: this campaign is meant to go through a process of scrutiny. It's been exempted. But above all, this highlights that these sorts of campaigns really are thinly disguised party political ads in the context of an election campaign paid for by taxpayers - and that's wrong."
The advertisements have been strongly defended by Immigration Minister Tony Burke.
He told the ABC he believes it is appropriate to use taxpayers' money on advertisements which could help to deter people-smuggling and therefore prevent more people from drowning at sea.
"We are in a situation where we're trying to reach the people in the pipeline before they board a vessel. I want to make sure we use every means available to get a message to people that discourages them from taking their lives into their own hands on the high seas."
However a number of migrant community organisations believe the government's advertising campaign is flawed, claiming it is targeted at the wrong people.
The Australian Federation of Tamil Associations believes the government should have sent consular officials into communities in countries like Sri Lanka rather than targeting diaspora communities in Australia.
A spokesman for the federation, Dr Victor Rajakulendran, believes Australian diaspora communities have never actively influenced relatives or friends in Sri Lanka on issues surrounding people-smuggling.
"Not a single life can be saved through this advertisement. It's a waste of money. It's only an advertisement for the government because they are talking about this during the election. They are going to use this as an election issue to win votes - both sides of politics - they are trying to say I'm stronger than the other one in border protection."
Another migrant group, the Vietnamese Community in Australia, is also sceptical about the federal government's motives in launching the advertising campaign.
A spokesman for the group, Trung Doan, believes the government should be focusing its efforts more on addressing the causes of people smuggling.
"The very reason that people are fleeing from regimes like the one in Vietnam is because they have no freedom there. And Australia knows about that. The Australian government knows very well about that. But all it does is hold an annual human rights talk with the Hanoi regime. It just does those talks and little else. I think that's the key root of the problem."
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