Handling of attacks on Indians disappointing: Oz

Melbourne, Jan 23: Disappointed by the inaction of the Australian authority inspite of being forewarned about the dangers to foreign students, the groups representing the country's universities said on Saturday, Jan 23 said the authorities were just not interested in listening.

"We were disappointed that earlier warnings took the unfortunate development of street assaults to lead to the reforms that should have been in place already. We saw this two years ago as an issue, tried to transmit it to government and were meeting resistance," Universities Australia chief executive Glenn Withers said in a newspaper report.

Withers said that they were not taking seriously, despite expressing a willingness to assist the Coalition of Australian Governments to tackle the problems concerning the vocational training sector which was likely to hamper higher education sector.

"We were told basically, 'This is not a matter for you, you are a concern of the Commonwealth and have no place at our table'. We were warning: 'Look it's a reputational issue, it's a brand Australia issue, please let us work with you'. The states weren't interested in listening. I think they thought they could just ride this industry to their benefit without worrying about their role in any serious way, " he said.

They said that they had showed concern over the impact of the attack between New Delhi and Canberra.

The federal government was so "enamoured of short-term labour market convenience (to) employers that it did not listen when we said immigration should be part of long-term national development. Permanent migration should not have been skewed for those purposes. They realised that and began to repair it, but too late," he said.

OneIndia News