The Hindu : Front Page : Indians safer in Australia: Rudd

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Thursday, Jun 25, 2009
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Front Page

Indians safer in Australia: Rudd

Anita Joshua

Incidents against students termed “opportunistic crime”

Kevin Rudd.

CANBERRA: Despite the series of attacks on Indian students recently, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Wednesday maintained that they were safer in Australia than anywhere in the world, including the United States and the United Kingdom.

“Australia is one of the safest countries,” Mr. Rudd told a group of visiting Indian journalists here, amid evidence of growing alarm in his government over the damage being caused by the attacks to Australia’s reputation in India and elsewhere.

At least five key departments of the Federal government, right from the office of the Prime Minister, are engaged in a damage-control exercise, which includes amending the Education Services for Overseas Students (ESOS) Act, according to which the National Code of Practice for Registration Authorities and Providers of Education and Training to Overseas Students has been drawn up. The Act was due for review in 2010-11, but the review has been advanced following the attacks.

Maintaining that Australia was very sensitive to the well-being of every international student, Mr. Rudd insisted that “any assault against any person is one assault too many” for him. He was confident that “we will work our way through this with friends in the Indian community.”

Answering questions on what more was being done to ensure the security of Indian students, he said: “Have you looked at comparable data between Indian students and their safety in the U.K., France, Italy and the U.S.? In relative terms, Indians and international students are safer here than in most countries.”

Furthermore, he pointed to the fact that 20 Australians had been murdered, assaulted or sexually assaulted over the past decade in India. “We don’t blame the people of India or the government of India for these incidents. These are things which regrettably happen.”

Though the Australian government was seeing the attacks as “opportunistic crime” instead of racist attacks as they were widely portrayed in the Indian media, various remedial measures were being considered since the country depended heavily on migrant labour to meet its shortage of human resources. A quarter of Australians were born outside the country, and another 25 per cent nationals had at least one parent born elsewhere.

“We are a deeply multi-cultural country; we come from everywhere. We have a broad ethnicity,” Mr. Rudd said, adding for good measure that India had contributed vitally to Australia’s culture, music and food.

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