Julie Bishop - Member for Curtin

Radio Australia, Connect Asia with Liam Cochrane

Subjects: Colombo Plan announcement; second languages in schools; border protection
 
E&OE…
 
JULIE BISHOP    What we will do is work with countries in the region and with our universities and the business and private sector in Australia to work out a way of reintroducing the Colombo Plan but making it a two-way exchange. So countries that wish to be part of this - because of course the students will be studying in their countries - and we will be able to sit down and talk to them about it.
 
Through the Colombo Plan the Menzies government reached out to many countries in our region drawing in the best and brightest students to universities in Australia, and students who came to Australia under the Plan developed this lasting impression and an understanding our country and our way of life and built a legacy of enduring friendship and understanding between peoples and countries in the region.

So we want to ensure that Australian students can study overseas, and given the opportunities and challenges that Asia’s re-emergence present, increasing the number of two-way student exchanges between Australia and the region will not only promote greater understanding and awareness but open up a new generation of networks that Australia can draw upon in the future.
 
LIAM COCHRANE    And will it be driven by Australia’s trade needs, as in will China be a greater focus of students going in both directions because of the great potential there economically?
 
JULIE BISHOP    It will depend on the response from countries in our region because their universities will need to be part of it.
 
When I travel overseas I am often reminded by countries that send many students to Australia that there are very few in return. There about 120,000 Chinese students studying in Australia at any one time but very few Australians studying in China. So that would be an obvious target, likewise Indonesia. I believe Tony Abbott mentioned that on Saturday. He said while 17,000 Indonesians are currently studying in Australia only 150 Australians have ventured the other way, and it is a similar story with other countries.
 
There are an increasing number of universities in Asia that are world class, for example in Singapore, in China, in Japan, in Hong Kong, and we want to see our students gaining that experience of living and studying in our region.
 
LIAM COCHRANE    How much would this cost?
 
JULIE BISHOP    We haven’t costed it to that extent for it will depend on how many countries wish to be involved and how many students show interest here in Australia. So we have said that it will be done within two years of the Coalition coming to government. I will be talking with - and I have already started - I will be talking with leaders in our region to gain their enthusiasm for the Colombo Plan and I think we will get a lot of people very interested in it. These are the sorts of details we will work out once we are in government.
 
LIAM COCHRANE    We heard Tony Abbott say it will be funded from the existing budget, how can you say it will be funded from the existing budget if you don’t know how much it costs?
 
JULIE BISHOP    Because we will be working with universities, the private sector, we will be working with countries overseas to put in place a plan that is costed and will deliver the benefits that we are speaking about. So these are the sorts of details we will work on aw we get into government. Of course there is another budget between now and the next election so we will want to see the state of the national accounts and we will start the program, hopefully it will grow over time, and we will see the benefits from this two-way student exchange that we saw under the original Colombo Plan.
 
LIAM COCHRANE    Obviously a key factor in getting Australia’s Asia literacy better is in the area of languages and you have promised, or the party has promised, that within a decade 40 per cent of school leavers will study at least a foreign language. How will you be encouraging kids at school to be studying Asian languages?
 
JULIE BISHOP    Well this is one of a number of commitments we have made to deepen and broaden our engagement in the region. And we have made a commitment to ensuring that our students can learn a second language. We will be working with the state governments who of course run the educational departments in each state – we will be working with them to ensure that second languages are taught in primary schools.
 
And we want to aim to get at least 40 per cent of Australian students with a second language in Year 12, and I think this is the kind of initiative that needs to be put in place in order for Australia to take advantage of the opportunities. I mean essentially we want a body of young people who have not only enriched their learning experiences and expertise but also that of our nation by studying at educational institutions in Asia and learning a second language. I think it sends a powerful message that we are truly interested in establishing enduring people to people links within the Asia region.
 
LIAM COCHRANE    Julie Bishop lets talk asylum seeker policy for a moment. The Opposition Coalition says it would not send underage asylum seekers to Malaysia because it hasn’t signed the UN Refugee Convention and yet would tow boats with children on board back to Indonesia, which also hasn’t also signed the Convention. Why would you send children back to Indonesia but not to Malaysia?
 
JULIE BISHOP    These people are already in Indonesia, they leave from Indonesia. But what the government’s proposal is, is to get 800 people who haven’t come from Malaysia, haven’t been living in Malaysia, and send them to Malaysia without any legally enforceable human rights protections at all.
 
The Malaysia solution is just trading in people. It strips away enforceable human rights protections, and  after 800 people are sent to Malaysia and 4,000 taken here in return, the deal is over. Now 800 people, that is just four or five boats, and four boats have arrived in the last few days anyway so their plan would be exhausted in a question of days.
 
LIAM COCHRANE    But what fundamental difference between Malaysia and Indonesia if both haven’t signed the UN Refugee Convention, both don’t have those protections that you are talking about?
 
JULIE BISHOP    But the people are currently in Indonesia, leaving from Indonesia. That is a choice they have made to be in Indonesia before going.....
 
LIAM COCHRANE    Their choice is they are leaving Indonesia though isn’t it?
 
JULIE BISHOP    In the case of Malaysia they are people who have never been in Malaysia and they are being sent to Malaysia. And our point is that we will not have a processing arrangement with Malaysia because it is not a signatory to the UN Convention on Refugees and the government cannot guarantee legally enforceable human rights protections. Because these people have come under our care and responsibility and when they come under your care and responsibly then we should ensure that their human rights protections are enforceable.
 
LIAM COCHRANE    But Nauru wasn’t a signatory to the UN Convention on Refugees either, why is that different to Malaysia?
 
JULIE BISHOP    That is why we put in place, in the migration legislation, human rights protections. We had a specific paragraph inserted that the human rights of the asylum seekers sent to Nauru would be protected. They were under Australian protection, they were in an Australian funded detention centre, there were Australian doctors and teachers and representatives from the government there. We could guarantee their safety, we could guarantee the schools they attended, we could guarantee the medical treatment that they received.
 
LIAM COCHRANE    There was some protections in the draft deal with Malaysia, I mean were they not adequate?
 
JULIE BISHOP    The High Court found them to be illegal. The High Court struck it down.
 
LIAM COCHRANE    As far as the one other new idea that has been floated in the last day or two is that of a floating processing centre for asylum seekers. Is that something that the party is officially backing?
 
JULIE BISHOP    I have not heard that proposal at all. I haven’t heard that one so I don’t have any detail as to the legality of it. We have to remember…
 
LIAM COCHRANE    This was raised in The Australian newspaper it was quoted, was linked to an unnamed senior Liberal source and it was talking about using a large naval warship or even a commercial cargo ship as a floating base to process asylum seekers as a way to deter boats but also treat people and process them. I mean…
 
JULIE BISHOP    I have never heard that discussed in any Coalition meeting or any Shadow Cabinet meeting. And you say it is an unnamed source? Well unless they tell me who the source is I can’t possibly comment on an idea that I’ve never heard of.
 
But the point about the Malaysia solution is that the High Court found that it was illegal. The government now has no other plan in place. We have said all along that it is very simple - the government just has to admit they got it wrong, apologise to the Australian people for creating a situation where the people smugglers are back in business, and reintroduce the laws that worked.
 
In the three years after the Howard government adopted those tough measures on border protection only one boat a year arrived. They were a deterrent. Since Labor changed those laws?  Over 340 boats, 20,000 people, hundreds of lives lost at sea and a massive blow out in costs.

The Howard government policies were a success through offshore processing in Nauru, through temporary protection visas and we did turn back the boats where it was safe to do so.
 
LIAM COCHRANE    Will the Opposition Coalition listen to the expert panel that has been gathered by Julia Gillard to try and work out a solution to this ongoing seemingly somewhat intractable position? Will the Opposition Coalition be influenced by what they have to say?
 
JULIE BISHOP    Well the only evidence that we have of laws that worked are those contained in our policy- the laws that were in place when the Howard government reduced boat arrives to a trickle. There were. some years where no boats arrived at all, in other years maybe a couple of boats. And in 2007 there were only four people that had arrived by boat in our detention network. So the evidence is that the laws that we had in place worked and they are the only ones that should be put back in place.
 
LIAM COCHRANE    So the Opposition will ignore the advice of Angus Houston and the expert committee?
 
JULIE BISHOP    We don’t know what their advice will be, but what we do know is that Julia Gillard has come up with every option except the one that worked. We know that the only evidence of a deterrent that worked are those contained in our policy.