Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The New Colombo Plan is, indeed, a signature policy, and I thank the member for Berowra for the question. He knows that the New Colombo Plan represents our engagement in the Indonesia-Pacific. It is where our foreign policy finds its expression.

Yesterday the government announced that 69 Australian undergraduate students will receive the prestigious New Colombo Plan scholarships for 2015. The best and brightest students from across our universities will now have an opportunity to live and study and work in our region for up to 12 months. Twenty-three universities across all states and territories have produced undergraduates who have received New Colombo Plan scholarships.

Members will know that the pilot phase that we rolled out throughout 2014 saw almost twice the number of students undertake these courses than we had expected. Thirteen hundred students from 37 universities studied in four locations: Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. In 2015 scholarship recipients will study in 17 locations including Brunei, Cambodia, China, Fiji, India, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, the Philippines, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vanuatu, as well as Indonesia, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong.

They are studying in a wide range of disciplines—law, business, health, engineering, natural sciences, language, culture. In fact, the scholarship winners were at Parliament House today to meet with their local members and senators. One of the students spoke on behalf of the recipients. She epitomises what we are seeking to do through the new Colombo Plan. Michelle Howie, from the University of South Australia, will study electrical engineering and communications technology at the University of Seoul in South Korea, and she has an internship arranged by the Australian government with Samsung, Korea's technology giant. This is the kind of transformational experience that the new Colombo Plan is providing for our young people.

This follows last week's announcement that a further 3,150 students from 37 universities across 32 locations will receive mobility grants this year for 2015. What we are doing is investing in our young people. We are investing in our region. We are investing in the future.

This is one of the government's achievements this year. We have stopped the boats that saw 50,000 illegal migrants come to this country. We have stopped the deaths at sea. Twelve hundred deaths at sea occurred under Labor's watch. We have put an end to Labor's big new taxes. We have got rid of the carbon tax. We have got rid of the mining tax. We have signed free trade agreements with our three major trading partners. We are bringing the budget back under control. This government delivers.

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