The team led by Colin Walters, department of education, Australia, met chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, chief secretary SC Agrawal and had a prolonged interaction with students and parents.
After a relative lull in incidents of racial violence in Australia, a nine-member Australian delegation was here on Tuesday on a damage-control mission. The team led by Colin Walters, department of education, Australia, met chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, chief secretary SC Agrawal and had a prolonged interaction with students and parents.
Walters sought to dispel mounting fears of racial violence in Australia by saying that the entire matter had been blown out of proportion. He said that students in Australia were “as safe or unsafe as they were in any other part of the world”. He said a majority of incidents of violence were not racial, but committed out of theft. The attacks got highlighted because Indian population in Australia stood at about 1 lakh, the second highest after Chinese students.
“No definite pattern had emerged as the motivation behind the attacks, though in between there have been stray incidents of racial violence as well,” he said.
But the Australian government “viewed it all extremely seriously”. The government announced a national strategy for international students and the police were asked to equip themselves adequately to cope with the situation. Besides, racial discrimination laws were very stringent in Australia.
Walters said it was unfortunate that the recent attacks caused diplomatic discord between the two countries. He denied there had been dip in the number of aspiring students. But the Australian government intends to curb the number of in-coming students due to rising incidents of violence. Colin said an advisory had been issued to students to be cautious about their movements.
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