London: If Europe had listened to Tony Abbott and adopted an Australia-style "turn back the boats" refugee policy, tragic deaths in the Mediterranean could have been prevented, UKIP leader Nigel Farage said on Friday.

And UKIP MP Douglas Carswell told Fairfax Media that if the UK voted to leave Europe in next year's referendum, he expected it would adopt a refugee policy resembling Australia's "innovative" example.

Mr Farage, whose party received almost four million votes in this year's general election, has regularly praised Australia's immigration policy, saying Britain should adopt an "Australian points-based system" for admitting immigrants if it left the EU.

"But the immigration debate is not focused on those issues right at this moment, it's been brought into very sharp focus by a photograph – that photograph of a dead three year-old boy," he said at Friday's launch of his party's campaign for next year's referendum vote for Britain on EU membership.

"The question we need to ask ourselves is how do we prevent more appalling photographs like that, how do we prevent things like the 71 people found dead in the back of that truck in Austria?"

The only way to stop the deaths was to stop the boats from coming, Mr Farage said.

"In 2008 Australia faced a very similar crisis, boatloads of people coming on even longer sea journeys, boats sinking, and Australia stopped it by saying 'if you want to come to Australia you will not come by these means'.

"The Australians did it, the Australians stopped the drownings in that tide of misery.

"We must make sure that we do nothing to encourage people to seek refugee status in this country who come across the Mediterranean. We've got to start discouraging people from coming to Europe by those means if we're serious about stopping the deaths."

Tony Abbott had offered the EU help and advice in the way Australia dealt with their crisis.

"I am sad to say that advice has been spurned," he said.

Mr Farage said the family of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian three-year-old boy who drowned in an attempt to reach Europe from Turkey and has become a symbol of the refugee crisis, had wanted to leave Turkey because of the "pull factors" in Europe's current policy.

"If the European Union had the right policy, people would know they would not be accepted by coming across the water, just as the Australians dealt with this problem, and that would stop the drownings from happening," Mr Farage said.

Instead, leaders such as Angela Merkel were creating an ever-stronger incentive for people, through whatever means, to try to get to the EU, he said.

"I'm sorry to say that I think the shocking image that we saw of that young boy and the deaths in that lorry actually becomes more likely.

"If the European Union wants to help genuine refugees they need to establish offshore centres and process people correctly, rather than inviting what has now turned into a headlong rush."

However Mr Farage later denied he was proposing the EU "export" its migrants. If there was a proper immigration policy in place that would be "irrelevant", he said.

Douglas Carswell, UKIP's only member of parliament, said Australia had "innovated" in refugee policy "and eventually it's come up with something that works".

"It's stopping the boats, it's working in terms of stopping humanitarian disasters," he said. "There are lessons to learn from Australia. If Britain is able to create our own immigration policy, it will probably resemble, though it won't be identical to Australian policy."

Mr Farage said the issue of immigration, of open borders and "borderless Britain" would dominate the referendum campaign and its result.

He was launching his party's "Vote No to the EU" campaign, are series of hundreds of community meetings, speeches and millions of leaflet drops in the coming months, in preparation for next year's vote.