Australia on Tuesday ended a controversial policy of charging asylum seekers thousands of dollars to be forcibly locked up in detention centres. Under laws introduced by the conservative administration of former prime minister John Howard, refugees who arrived by boat were automatically locked up on arrival and handed a bill at the conclusion of their stay. At a daily cost of 125 dollars (83 dollars US), detention for a year typically exceeded 45,000 dollars, and the government said detention debts in the hundreds of thousands of dollars were not uncommon. Australia's upper house voted 30-34 to abolish the law, after conservative Liberal senator Judith Troeth crossed the floor to support her centre-left Labor party rivals. 'No advanced society should have on its books laws like this, and so I will be supporting the government on this bill,' Troeth told the Senate. She said it was difficult to imagine how newly-arrived refugees must feel being charged every single night for their accommodation and board when they were locked up and only had 'quite literally the clothes in which you stand'. Troeth also rejected her own party's claims that Labor's easing of the previous government's harsh policies had prompted a surge in arrivals, with 18 illegal vessels stopped this year carrying hundreds of refugees. According to the United Nations, Australia had received 4,500 asylum claims, which Troeth said was just 0.5 percent of the global total, adding that 'almost all of them did not arrive by boat.' 'So I challenge the theories of those who want to say that this (softer policy) is opening the floodgates,' she said. Between 2006 and 2008 debts were incurred worth 54 million dollars, of which just two million was recovered, according to official figures. Under the new policy existing debts would be waived for current and former detainees, but would not refund debts already repaid. Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last year announced a 'more humane' approach towards refugees, scrapping a widely-criticised system that often resulted in asylum seekers, including children, being locked up for years. 