Attacks on international students, particularly those from India, have led the Australian gov. to review several aspects of its education programme

CHENNAI: Attacks on international students, particularly those from India, have led the Australian government to review several aspects of its education programme, said Australian High Commissioner John McCarthy.

Speaking to journalists of The Hindu at the newspaper’s headquarters, he said greater policing had already been put into effect, especially in the western suburbs of Melbourne, where most of the recent attacks took place.

Revealing that the police deployed in this area had been doubled in recent weeks, he added that he was “quite confident that we are going to see an improvement in the situation… The most important thing is that these crimes stop.”

Referring to the 10-point plan for student safety drawn up by an association of Australian universities, he stressed the need for student counselling. “We need to give them more thorough information before they leave India and as soon as they arrive in Australia.”

He also discussed the importance of providing students “adequate” accommodation and ensuring that they are aware of which areas are safe and which are not. “We need to look carefully at the policy linkage between assisting students to come to Australia, the immigration process and the education in Australia which will lead to Permanent Residence.”

Strongly condemning the attacks, he said the principal motive behind most of them was theft. However, he clarified that it cannot be discounted that that there was a racial undertone to some of the incidents. “Our image has suffered very seriously. It’s certainly by far the most serious thing in the public perception that has occurred between India and Australia.”

Saying the Australian government is taking the issue very seriously, he drew attention to the high-level delegation that is currently in India to talk to the government, students and the media to explain the measures being taken to safeguard international students. Mr. McCarthy said that a senior police official was included in this team of mainly educational experts to answer questions on law and order issues.

Referring to the pattern of the attacks in Melbourne, he said the most vulnerable students have been those who attend Vocational Education and Training (VET) colleges. “It’s largely these students that have tended to come down in large numbers. They often find accommodation in the poorest areas of the cities.” He added that Indian students often work late hours, making them soft targets.

Mr. McCarthy said that many Indian students enrol at VET colleges to equip themselves with skill sets that facilitate Permanent Resident status in Australia. Suggesting that Australia may have “allowed too vigorous a recruitment programme” leading to a mushrooming of such institutions and “unscrupulous” agents, he said one solution was to have an audit of such institutions in the State of Victoria. Even though attacks have mainly been on vocational students, ironically it is the Australian universities that have witnessed a drop in interest levels from Indian students, he added.

Stressing that the Indian community has traditionally lived peacefully in Australia, he said: “We do, after all, have roughly 200,000 people of Indian origin living in Australia and they are coming out with categorically different stories. They say, ‘We have lived here 20 years, we have never been attacked’.”

Asked about Australia’s measures to tackle the economic recession, he said that although it was “biting,” the government had “pushed a lot of money into the economy very quickly and was one of the first countries to initiate Keynesian measures to stimulate the economy and bring down interest rates, particularly for housing.”