Australian International Education Conference

I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we meet, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respects to their elders past and present.

[Acknowledgments]

As the Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs my job is to advance Australia’s interests beyond our borders.

Having done this job for more than two years now, I’ve seen first-hand the role that international education plays as a tool of Australian statecraft.

I’ve visited a lot of places around the world advocating for Australia’s interests, and there's nothing I like to see more when arriving at a meeting than a counterpart sitting across the table who was educated at an Australian university.

I know that they will have the skills and expertise that come with a world class education at an Australian institution…

… but more than that, I also know that they will have the kind of understanding of Australian society that comes from having spent years, often influential, formative years, living in our country.

I’ve met so many people in my role —whether leaders in government, in business or in the community—who are alumni of Australian universities.

When I was in Nairobi to open the Embassy’s new chancery building, Kenya’s then Cabinet Secretary for Foreign and Diaspora Affairs, Dr Alfred Mutua, regaled me with stories of completing his PhD at the University of Western Sydney.

In Bangladesh, I met then secretaries of government ministries who were Australian Awards alumni, with expertise ranging from public policy and administration to environmental science and climate change.

In Bhutan, I met with the Foreign Minister who was an Australian alumni, alongside half the members of Bhutan’s then Cabinet (as is the current Speaker of the National Assembly, and the Leader of the Opposition).

In Nepal, I met Dr Swarnim Waglé, a leading economist and MP, who pursued doctoral studies in economics at the Australian National University with the support of an Australian Leadership Award.  

I could share countless other examples.

Many of the Australian alumni I’ve met around the world have studied in our country under scholarships funded by the Australian government.

It’s a legacy that goes back to the Colombo Plan in the 1960s.

Over recent decades, many more people from around the world have seen the quality of Australian universities and made the decision to fund their own studies in Australia.

The experiences of these international students matter to Australia’s influence in the world too.

Millions of people, most from our own region, the Indo-Pacific, have had their perceptions of Australia shaped by their experiences of international education in our country.

The longstanding people-to-people ties we have built through international education have added ballast to our bilateral relationships and strengthened our connections to the world.

Today, Australian international education continues to evolve and Australian higher education institutions are exploring new ways of meeting the surging demand of a demographic wave of young people in our region.

It’s particularly pleasing to see Australian universities taking advantage of new trade and economic agreements in the region to open new campuses in the Indo-Pacific.

In the wake of the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, Monash University has now established its campus in Jakarta and the University of Western Sydney in Surabaya, where I visited last year.

Deakin University has become the first university in the world to open an international teaching campus in India, located at the GIFT City, Gujarat.

There are of many other more established international campuses operated by Australian universities too.

RMIT has long been a trailblazer in Vietnam across campuses in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

The University of Western Sydney and Swinburne University of Technology are also delivering their programs on campuses in Vietnam by partnering with local universities.

The University of Wollongong was among the first universities to establish a campus in the UAE.

And Curtin has a network of international campuses that stretch around the rim of the Indian Ocean from its home in Perth, to Malaysia, Singapore, Dubai and Mauritius offering expanded transnational education opportunities to Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia.

Each of these initiatives builds connections and deepens relationships between Australia and the region and I’m pleased that DFAT officials have been able to provide expert advice and support in country for these initiatives.

Now, we know that necessary policy reforms mean that universities are currently navigating a period of change.

Through these changes though, I want to assure you that we understand the role that Australia’s higher education sector plays in building Australian influence around the world and we want to work with you to maximise its impact.

Of course it’s not just inbound international students that matter here, we’re obviously interested in maximising the impact of Australia students travelling to the Indo-Pacific as part of their studies.

That’s why we’ve recently announced reforms for next year’s cohort of New Colombo Plan participants, and a consultation process to shape the strategic direction of the program for 2026 and beyond.

The world has changed a lot since the New Colombo Plan was founded in 2014.

It’s now often said that Australia’s external environment has never been more complex and consequential, and nowhere is this more true than in our own region, the Indo-Pacific.

Our region is currently being reshaped by rapidly evolving dynamics of climate change, technological innovation and disruption and geostrategic competition.

We need to harness every dimension of Australia’s national power to shape the outcome of these dynamics of change in Australia’s interests.

Realising our ambitions in the Indo-Pacific is going to demand more of our leaders and our institutions than ever before – across all spheres of Australian society.

It demands a deeper engagement with the countries of the Indo-Pacific, individually and collectively.

It demands that more of us have the ability to speak the languages of our region.

It demands a deeper understanding of the culture and the customs of our region.

It demands deeper connections between Australians and the people of the region.

Put simply, it demands that more Australians develop the capabilities needed to be effective, to be influential in our region.

This is particularly so for young Australians – our future leaders.

This is what we want the New Colombo Plan to deliver over its next ten years.

Over the first ten years of the NCP, more than 50,000 Australians have studied, learnt a language, conducted research or completed an internship under the program.

In this way, the NCP has had undoubted success in expanding overseas mobility opportunities for Australian undergraduate students, and with that, encouraging a deep shift from traditional destinations of Western Europe and North America to the Indo-Pacific.

But we also need to appreciate that, around two-thirds of New Colombo Plan participants have taken part in programs that lasted only two weeks.

These short-term mobility deployments have helped encourage widespread participation in the NCP, including by diverse student cohorts.

But at a time when we need to be promoting deeper engagement with our region, it’s reasonable to ask whether trips of this length are the most effective way to do that, and what longer term skills and capabilities participants are taking from them.

As the Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, put it in a recent speech, “we want NCP participants to bring back not just lasting memories, but new skills and capabilities that will broaden our national understanding of the region”.

In that speech, the Foreign Minister announced a series of changes for the NCP for the 2025 round to deepen the engagement of participants with the region including:

• the removal of the cap on the number of NCP scholarships, with the intention to double the number of longer-term scholars over time from 150 to 300 per year;
• the introduction of a dedicated language stream to encourage Asian language learning; and
• increasing the minimum duration of mobility programs from two to four weeks to create more immersive experiences.

The Foreign Minister sees these changes as a downpayment on deeper reforms we want to put in place for 2026 and beyond.

The Foreign Minister has asked me to Chair the NCP External Advisory Group to co-design the next phase of the NCP.

In this phase, I want to focus on how we can use the NCP to build the Indo-Pacific capabilities of participants in a deeper and more enduring way.

I also want to look at how we can sharpen the strategic focus of the NCP – in partnership with universities and private sector partners.

To move the NCP from being primarily conceptualised as a cultural or public diplomacy program to a strategic tool that builds Australians’ capabilities in the region.

The NCP is not a panacea to reverse the decline of language learning and Indo-Pacific literacy in Australia, but it should be part of the solution.

We need to ensure it is creating incentives for both individuals and institutions to go deeper in their engagement with the region.

We need to design the NCP to encourage a greater number of young Australians to pursue a deeper engagement in the region.

We want students to build cultural competency in our region by learning languages and immersing themselves in the countries of our region for longer.

We want more opportunities for participants to develop their capabilities in applied contexts, like in businesses, professional services firms and NGOs.

The External Advisory Group has already been meeting and public submissions are open for input.

I thank many of you here today who have already contributed to this process.

We have already had plenty of input and useful conversations with universities, private sector partners, and Indo-Pacific capability experts.

We’ve been particularly happy with the level of engagement we’ve received from NCP Alumni.

There’s been no shortage of ideas from a passionate group that deeply cares about the future of the NCP.

I encourage you all to continue to engage with – and to share with your networks – opportunities in the consultation process.

We are open for submissions until 1 November.

Further information is available on the DFAT NCP website.

We will be taking away your proposals and considering them over the coming months.

I look forward to engaging with you in the sector as we co-design the next, ambitious phase of our New Colombo Plan.

As Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs, I’m constantly struck by the importance of young people in this moment of time.

Forty percent of people in Indonesia are aged under 24 – nearly 110 million people.

Sixty percent of the world’s population aged between 15 and 35 – 213 million people – live in ASEAN.

Seventy percent of the population of sub-Saharan African and two thirds of the population of the Middle East is under 30 years of age.

India, is home to 300 million children. One million people turn 18 there every month.

Half of the population of the Pacific Islands are aged under 23.

Many of these young people look to an education in Australia to give them the skills and capabilities they need to reach their full potential in life.

This is a special responsibility.

Because it’s these young people that will determine the way the big trends reshaping the globe unfold.

The future of these young people is, in many senses, the future of Australian prosperity and security.

So I want to end today by thanking everyone in this room for the special role that you have played in nurturing young people around the world to date...

... and perhaps more importantly, for the role that I'm sure you will continue to play in Australia and the region's prosperity and security by shaping the future of young people throughout the region.

Thank you.