The Boatwatch website started life when, in order to win an argument on the Internet, I idly Googled for small boat migration figures. The raw data is easily accessible on the official government website, but that's literally just dates and numbers. It's not a particularly user-friendly presentation of the data.
So, on the principle that you should always graph your data, I thought I'd put together a rough and ready website which does just that for the small boat migrant data. And here it is.
Important!
The presence of this website should not be used to infer any particular position on the immigration debate. It is generally agreed on all sides that small boat crossings are undesirable, not least because of the hazards they pose to participants and the fact that the only people who benefit from them are people traffickers with no concern for human life. But there is no concensus about the best alternative. Some want to simply eliminate unlawful migration by any means possible, while others would prefer to see the traffickers rendered unnecessary by the provision of safe and legal routes for all refugees. People at both ends of that spectrum may find the information on this site useful, but neither has a right to claim that this site supports their goals.