Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton will hold high-level meetings in Sri Lanka, with people smuggling at the top of the agenda.
Mr Dutton is due to meet Sri Lanka's President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and his ministerial counterpart in Colombo on Tuesday.
The minister hoped his visit would send a message to Sri Lankans contemplating making the journey to Australia by boat.
"There's a lot of activity up in the region at the moment as you'd expect," Mr Dutton said before leaving Australia.
"People thought there was going to be a Labor government and they thought if they hop on boats they'd be allowed to stay."
The boat carrying 20 Sri Lankans was intercepted last week. Source: Supplied
His visit comes after a boat carrying 20 Sri Lankan asylum seekers was intercepted off Australia last week.
The asylum seekers were returned by plane to Sri Lanka.
Mr Dutton has said the boat left in early May and people smugglers were trying to test the re-elected government's resolve.
While Mr Dutton focuses on the potential arrival of asylum seekers by boat, he is yet to respond to Labor's claims he has lost control of Australia's air borders.
Labor's new home affairs spokesperson Kristina Keneally highlighted the "explosion" in the number of asylum seekers by plane.
Unlike those who have arrived by boat who have been mostly found to be genuine refugees, fewer than one in five of the 81,000 people who flew to Australia had their asylum claims approved in the past four years.
Mr Dutton, who arrived on the island on Monday for a two-day visit, laid a wreath at the altar of St Sebastian church, one of the three churches and three hotels hit in the Easter Sunday suicide bombings on April 21. The attacks left 257 dead, 113 of them at St Sebastian.
Mr Dutton said Australia would also help Sri Lanka rebuild after the attacks.
"We're here to continue to provide support as Sri Lanka rebuilds, particularly its tourism market, but the economy otherwise off the back of these horrific attacks," he said.
