Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have spoken frequently in this chamber in the past about the need for Australia to tackle with a sense of urgency the task of engaging with our region. As shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen recently noted, Australia needs a step change across government, business and culture in its engagement with Asia. There's a middle class of 1.7 billion people in our region, bigger than all of Europe and North America combined, but less than 10 per cent of Australian businesses currently do business in Asia. Our northern neighbour Indonesia is predicted to become the fourth-largest economy in the world, but it's not even in Australia's top 10 trading partners. Indeed, we invest more in New Zealand, a country of just four million people, than we do in Indonesia, a country of more than 260 million.

The reality is that Australia's Asia capability in our governments, businesses, education, and cultural institutions is very low. We have a big task ahead of ourselves if we want to engage effectively with Asia in the future. Programs like the New Colombo Plan, which supports students who choose to study in a non-Australian city in our region, are a good start. It is particularly pleasing that Indonesia is the most popular destination for undergraduates under the New Colombo Plan. But we shouldn't get too carried away with its success. When looking at the backgrounds of New Colombo Plan participants, there's a real question about whether Australian kids from all backgrounds are getting an equal opportunity to participate in it.

Further, the scale and impact of the program can be easily overestimated. Thirty thousand Australian undergrad students will spend some time abroad under the plan by the end of 2018—all to the good. But the Erasmus program in Europe, designed to promote cross-cultural engagement between students in the EU, saw over 200,000 students travel to a different city in the European Union in 2013-14 alone. By 2020, more than four million European students will have participated in the program. For the equivalent level of engagement with Asia under the New Colombo Plan, adjusted to Australia's student population, we would need to be sending at least 50 per cent more Australians into the region every year. So it's a good start but, taken alone, the program doesn't reflect the urgency of the need to engage and improve our Asia capability.

To truly build engagement and scale in a way that all Australians are able to participate in, we need to be looking for opportunities across all facets of our society. Building Asia capability through high school engagement and youth leadership exchanges are also important in this regard. I recently had the opportunity to see a great example of this in action when I hosted the shadow Treasurer and delegates from the Conference of Australian and Indonesian Youth at a session with students studying Bahasa Indonesia at Williamstown High School in my electorate. The Williamstown High School Bahasa Indonesia program is led by dedicated teachers Matthew Grose and Sharon Croft and includes a sister-school partnership with Labschool in Jakarta. Students have been travelling backwards and forwards between Willi High and Labschool for a number of years now. Willi High students recently returned from a trip to Indonesia to homestay with Labschool students' families. Unfortunately, the kids at Willi High are swimming against the tide. Depressingly, more Australians were studying Bahasa Indonesia when Gough Whitlam was the Prime Minister than are doing so in 2017—and there are 10 million more of us today. These students should be thankful to their teachers for giving them a competitive advantage in the global economy.

The delegates from CAUSINDY, a bilateral youth organisation which provides a platform for young leaders from both countries to create a stronger bilateral relationship, came with me and the shadow Treasurer to Willi High to support the teachers and students in their endeavours. CAUSINDY holds an annual four-day program which brings together 30 young leaders from Australia and Indonesia. I am pleased to say that this year, 2017, it was hosted in Melbourne and supported by the Victorian state government. I was pleased to host delegates in Footscray for a Vietnamese meal as part of the CAUSINDY program this year to show off Australia's multicultural background. I reckon CAUSINDY is pretty great for building personal relationships between Australians and Indonesians. As a former delegate myself, I've seen its work firsthand. I was pleased to be able to give the shadow Treasurer an insight into it as well. I know that the shadow Treasurer is in particular looking forward to receiving his jersey from Melbourne's very own Indonesian expat Aussie Rules team, the Krakatoas.

We need to create more opportunities for schools like Willi High to build partnerships with Asian schools, to offer these opportunities to Australian high school students. That's why as part of Labor's future Asia policy Labor is committed to restoring funding to the Asia Education Foundation, an initiative of the Keating Labor government that was established to promote Asian studies in Australian schools. The Asia Education Foundation currently offers a BRIDGE School Partnerships Program to promote partnerships like the one between Willi high and Labschool in Jakarta. The New Colombo Plan is worthwhile, as far as it goes. But we need to do a whole lot more to get Australia's Asia capability up to where it needs to be in the new world in which we live.

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