A boat carrying 160 people has been intercepted by Australian authorities north of Christmas Island today.
It is the fourth boat arrival since the weekend.
According to Customs, Border Protection Command intercepted the vessel after it requested assistance this morning.
Since January this year, 92 boats carrying 6570 people have arrived in Australia.
This compares with 69 boats carrying 4565 people for the whole of 2011.
Today Prime Minister Julia Gillard told reporters that she knew Australians wanted to see a solution to the asylum seeker issue.
''With the number of arrivals we've seen, I know Australians want to see us get this fixed,'' Ms Gillard said in Sydney.
Ms Gillard said she had been prepared to ''give a tick'' to Nauru to break the impasse on asylum seeker policy.
''Unfortunately we've been met every step of the way with negativity from the opposition. Negativity that's truly destructive,'' she said.
A government-appointed expert panel is currently investigating options to stop asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat, after a parliamentary bid to reintroduce offshore processing failed last month.
Submissions to the panel - which is headed by former Defence chief Angus Houston - closed last week.
Today, a separate cross benchers group, including independents Tony Winsdor and Rob Oakeshott, Labor MP Joel Fitzgibbon and Coalition MP Judi Moylan met to discuss the issue of asylum seekers losing their lives at sea.
The group heard advice from experts in the asylum seeker sector and agreed that it is becoming ''increasingly clear that a durable and humane way forward will be to work with our neighbours to establish some form of regional architecture for the assessment and resettlement of refugees.''
The group did not give any detail about what that regional architecture might involve and have agreed to meet again in early August.
Ms Moylan - who has long been outspoken on the subject of refugees - cautioned people to be mindful that the asylum seeker issue was not just about boats.
''It's about people,'' she said.
