Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Tourism and International Education) Share this | Hansard source

Earlier in question time my colleague Senator Sinodinos talked about the work we are doing on free trade agreements. In the Chinese free trade agreement one of the things that became available to Australian international education providers was the opportunity to establish in China, to grow that market. Also, we are having with discussions with India. Minister Robb has already said there will be a significant service offering as part of that free trade agreement that we are negotiating with India. That is something we are also pursuing into that market.

We announced last week that we are recommencing our economic partnership arrangements with Indonesia. In Indonesia there is significant demand for education. They have 54 million students in grades K to 12 and there is a huge demand for vocational education and training and that was justified by the people who came in the delegation last week. (Time expired)