The Hon Julia Gillard MP
Minister for Education. Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations
Minister for Social Inclusion
Deputy Prime Minister
10 June, 2009
Excerpts
Transcript - Press Conference, Eastwood Public School - 9AM
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
PRESS CONFERENCE
9AM WEDNESDAY
10 JUNE 2009
EASTWOOD PUBLIC SCHOOL
JOURNALIST: Ms Gillard, can I just ask you about the Indian students and the violence there. Is Australia developing an image problem with regards to its overseas students and violence against them?
JULIA GILLARD: Can I note two things about the circumstances involving Indian students: firstly, the Prime Minister of India has made a statement about this matter, and he has reminded, and I think it’s important for us all to remind each other, that the Indian community in this country is around 200,000 strong. It’s a community that is an important part of our multicultural fabric.
Australia, overwhelmingly, is a safe place. It’s a welcoming society. Any incident of violence directed against anyone is obviously to be condemned. Many of the students that have been caught up in these incidents have been badly injured.
On behalf of the Government, both I and the Prime Minister have expressed our sympathy for them and for their families. Governments are responding. I know the New South Wales Government has responded here; the Victorian Government is responding with increased policing efforts. Our universities are responding, with Universities Australia making an announcement about a safety strategy for international students. We are working with the Indian Government so students who are considering coming to Australia get good information about this country, about living costs, about circumstances here.
But we do need to remind ourselves, and all of our survey work with international students show it, that the hundreds of thousands of students who come here to study annually, when they’re asked did they have a good time in Australia, did they get a good education, would they recommend it to their friends? Overwhelmingly, they say yes to those questions.
So we want to focus on the problems. We want to rectify the problems, but we want to remind ourselves we’re a welcoming country, an overwhelmingly safe country, and this has been a good place and will continue to be a great place for international students to come and study.
JOURNALIST: But your statements are echoing very similarly, what the Premier has been saying, and other Premiers have been saying, yet the feeling still runs and runs deep. What else can you do now?
JULIA GILLARD: I think we can keep working with our international student community, with our local Indian community and I know police are working with community representatives to make sure that we can hear about any problems; we can respond to any problems. We can be talking to the community about safety, about what would make them feel safer, what more can be done. So that work continues and it’s very important.
JOURNALIST: Premier, you must be concerned that the protestors have taken to Harris Park again last night?
NATHAN REES: I just re-emphasise the points that we made last week when we convened a meeting with the Indian community leaders. The key issue here is the message that emerged from that meeting last week, and that is everyone is to keep a calm, cool head around this. If there are incidents, they are to be reported to the police. The police have escalated their presence and their monitoring of the situation in that part of Sydney, but everyone is to keep calm.
There is no place for this sort of violence. There is no place for this sort of anti-social behaviour in New South Wales or Australia. To those community leaders who are out there encouraging calm, I support them on that. That’s what needs to occur at this point in time, and if people do have an issue, I urge them to report it to police straight away.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible) these protests are going to continue. They’re going to continue every night (inaudible).
NATHAN REES: What the community leaders put to me last week was that they would be happy to feed directly back to us. I said that we would continue to meet on a frequent basis, formally, every quarter or so, but more frequently if required. The Commissioner was there, and we made it very clear that we want to hear any reports of violent behaviour.
To read full transcript, please click here.