Just because the boats have stopped doesn't mean the government won't have to find hundreds of millions of dollars for border protection and refugee processing.
No asylum-seeker boats have successfully breached Australian borders for about four months.
Turn backs, under Operation Sovereign Borders, as well as Labor's offshore processing deal with Papua New Guinea have stemmed the tide.
But there are nearly 24,000 asylum seekers living in the community on bridging visas as they wait for their claims to be processed.
Another 3100 are in what's called community detention while about 4700 asylum seekers are being held in immigration detention centres.
Australia is also picking up the tab to process and resettle in Papua New Guinea about 1300 asylum seekers detained on Manus Island.
The first are expected to be resettled in June.
Another 1200 or so asylum seekers in detention on Nauru might end up in Cambodia if Australian can clinch a deal with the Hun Sen regime.
That arrangement will also come at a cost.
As well, there's been much speculation Customs and Border Protection is running deficits because their maritime operations are under-funded.
The federal government's commission of audit has recommended the roles of the immigration department and Customs merge into a single new body, to be called Border Control Australia.
The move would remove duplication and bring staff numbers down, the commission says.
It also recommends outsourcing the department's visa processing role.
On the credit side, the government plugged a blow out in offshore immigration detention in the mid-year budget making allowance for $2 billion over four years.
After the September election, the coalition inherited from Labor a $1.2 billion shortfall for the cost of running detention camps on Nauru and Manus island.
Offsetting some that cost, the government cut the humanitarian program intake from 20,000 to 13,750 places, saving $964.5 million over four years.
It also allocated $493.2 million over four years to clear a backlog in asylum-seeker claims and re-introduce temporary protection visas, a move scuttled by Labor and the Greens in the Senate.
The government gets another chance when a more compliant Senate is in place from July.
Operation Sovereign Borders is budgeted to receive $210 million until 2017/18.
That figure may change on May 13 to reflect the government's belief it has stopped the boats.
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