Page 2269 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 16 August 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
University organisations have expressed a concern that, because international students have to live in a university and have no home to go to, the university has to provide them with everything they need. They rely more on facilities provided by the university than do local students. They have to stay on campus during their holidays and they are very unlikely to know about all the events in Canberra that they could be attending to broaden their lives. So perhaps there is a role for the ACT government in trying to increase the interaction between the university and the ACT community. My own experience since I became an MLA is that it is very hard to find a student at the ANU who reads the Canberra Times, for instance. So they are not likely to know much about what is going on here and what is available for international students. Friendly societies and the different international groups could make more effort to help students who live on campus.
As Ms Porter mentioned, the voluntary students union bill has impacted on those people who rely on university facilities just to have any life at all. Ethno-cultural clubs on campus are no longer receiving any assistance. I think there have been issues around food. I believe that there was an issue around the supply of halal food at some of the residences at the ANU. While there might be good vegetarian options at the colleges—and certainly most of them now have fantastic food—they need to go that extra mile to provide the appropriate diet for students from Muslim families.
This is one of those topics that the ACT government cannot really do a lot about. I have mentioned a few things. There are initiatives that we could take but, on the whole, I do not know that it is a burning issue for us here. Perhaps there could be a pat on the back for us somewhere—usually these kinds of motions are about that. But in this case the ACT government could consider the needs of non-English-speaking background students and think about accommodation. I am aware that international students who live in the so-called affordable accommodation in City West require a fairly large weekly allowance to enable them to pay their rent. We also need to watch that student residences are not privatised because if they are they will be run for profit and not so much as a service. So there are issues here for the ACT government to consider.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (4.57): As Ms Porter has said, international students make a significant contribution to our community and to our tertiary institutions. However, I take the point that Dr Foskey makes: there is little that the ACT government can do in relation to that. I therefore question the usefulness and the utility of the motion that is now before us. Much could be said about what the ACT government might do to foster international students. Many of the issues that arise when people come to university could be circumvented if international students were already used to the ACT system and to Canberra. I think one of the failings of successive governments is that we have not been all that switched on to encouraging foreign students to come here in their later years of high school in order to make their transition to studying at tertiary institutions an easier one.
I am a great advocate of the economic utility of encouraging students to study here. There are many people, especially in Asian countries, who do not have the opportunity of studying at high quality institutions because there is so much demand for them. We offer high quality education through our schooling system, our tertiary institutions and the CIT. If we are to provide better services, we need more students so that those
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .