Melbourne unsafe for Indians: Oz opposition leader

Melbourne, Feb 23: In line with the growing concern about the racial attacks on Indians, Australia's Opposition Leader Tony Abott admitted on Tuesday, Feb 23 that the streets of Melbourne were not safe for Indians.

"Our streets aren't safe, particularly the streets of Melbourne, which appear to have been pretty seriously under-policed. If you didn't have these racially motivated bashings in unsafe streets we wouldn't have the PR problem, so let's go to the heart of the matter," Abbott said.

Abbot said that the government should invest on stepping up security measures to control racial attacks if it wants to improve relationship with India.

"I think it would be much better spending the money on better policing of our streets because that's the basic problem," said Abbott.

Abbot made the statement ahead of the visit by 25 Indian journalists to Australia.

Aimed a repairing the diplomatic relationship that has been hit by the series of racist attacks, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is spending $250,000 on flights and five-star accommodation for the journalists, The Herald Sun reported.

A visit the Melbourne Cricket Ground along with an attendance to the concerts of Bollywood composer AR Rahman to be held in Sydney and Melbourne are among the list of plans that the government has lined up for the visitors.

Commenting on the visit, Spokesman of the Federation of Indian Students in Australia, Gautum Gupta said that it was "just marketing junkets paid for by the taxpayer", tightly scheduled and designed to gloss over problems.

OneIndia News