Aust to provide anti-smuggling lessons

Countries at a regional asylum-seeker boat crisis meeting have shown interest in an Australian communications campaign aimed at countering people-smuggling.

Ambassador for people-smuggling issues Andrew Goledzinowski, who attended the meeting in Bangkok last week, said many victims were desperate and poorly-educated people who were making bad decisions based on bad information.

"My expectation is that one or possibly more countries will come to us in the next (few) weeks and months looking for specific assistance," he told a Senate committee on Wednesday.

The federal government has spent millions of dollars on overseas billboards, media and internet advertising to discourage asylum seekers from boarding boats to get to Australia.

It has also commissioned a television drama, which includes storylines of asylum seekers drowning at sea, to be broadcast in Middle East countries.

The committee was told an estimated 3000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar and Bangladeshis were still stranded in boats on the Andaman Sea.

Thailand launched a crackdown on human trafficking in April, prompting smugglers to abandon their boats, some of which were initially turned away by Indonesia and Malaysia.