Katie Hopkins, The Sun‘s controversy-courting columnist, has applauded Australia for deterring Asylum seekers by “threatening them with violence until they bugger off”.

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In her April 17 column for the British newspaper, titled ‘Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants’, Hopkins compares migrants to “cockroaches”, calling for a more drastic approach to deter asylum seekers.

In order to prevent the flow of people coming to Europe from countries like Libya, Hopkins suggests adopting a “stop the boats” approach similar to that of the Abbott government.

“Australians are like British people but with balls of steel, can-do brains, tiny hearts and whacking great gunships,” Hopkins writes.

“Their approach to migrant boats is the sort of approach we need in the Med.

“They threaten them with violence until they bugger off, throwing cans of Castlemaine [XXXX] in an Aussie version of sharia stoning.

“And their approach is working. Migrant boats have halved in number since Prime Minister Tony Abbott got tough.”

Oh my actual god. This is racism/xenophobia on a whole new level RT @jpublik Katie Hopkins and the Sun are a disgrace pic.twitter.com/3CgivajQNG

— Fiona Laird (@fionalaird) April 17, 2015

Hopkins’ piece has attracted a barrage of criticism for her likening asylum seekers to vermin who “might look a bit like ‘Bob Geldof’s Ethiopia circa 1984’, but are built to survive a nuclear bomb”.

“NO, I don’t care. Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad,” Hopkins proclaims in her column.

“I still don’t care. Because in the next minute you’ll show me pictures of aggressive young men at Calais, spreading like norovirus on a cruise ship.”

The piece has prompted an online petition to have Hopkins fired from The Sun, while prominent Brits like Russell Brand have publicly lambasted the 40-year-old for her views.

“To write about immigrants so hatefully you cannot love yourself. Come back to humanity, you must be shattered,” Brand wrote to Hopkins on Twitter.

The furore surrounding the piece came as news broke of a ship carrying hundreds of African migrants capsizing north of Libya on Sunday.

With up to 700 people feared dead, the tragedy may prove to be the Mediterranean’s deadliest migrant disaster ever.