Despite all the significant economic, human rights, environmental, social and security issues which are important in our future relations with our neighbouring countries, the issue of a few thousand asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat each year is the one which is dominating most Australia media coverage of the Prime Minister’s current visits around the region.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has finished her first East Asia Summit, had bilateral discussions with the Vietnamese government and has been to Malaysia for discussions there. Indonesia comes next.  This transcript of the media conference she gave in Vietnam after the Summit shows that fully half of the questions related to asylum seekers, with most of the other split between the issue of human rights in the region and a local political story in Australia. 

The issue also dominated the coverage by ABC radio of the Prime Minister’s Malaysian talks, with just a brief mention at the end of the story about the possibility of a Free Trade Agreement.  By contrast, this article about the visit from a Malaysian news agency makes no mention of asylum seekers or people smuggling at all, focusing instead on economic opportunities and how this links with tertiary education and training opportunities offered in Australia.

The number of students from the region coming to study in Australia has been in decline in the last year or so. No doubt the Australian government is looking to turn this around. Ms Gillard announced the creation of 7,500 scholarships for students from East Asia Summit countries to study in Australia over the next four years.  

Her Vietnam visit also coincided with the opening of the Hanoi campus of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology – the first foreign owned university in Vietnam.

However, they will need to do more than marketing and scholarships.  Studying in Australia is extremely expensive for international students. They also need to demonstrate they have very significant financial reserves, whilst having restriction on the numbers of hours they (and their spouse if they have one) can work while they are in the country. Changes to the rules around student visas have also made Australia less attractive – particularly the fact that when the rules were changed it affected students who were already here and had spent large amounts of money on the basis of rules which no longer applied.  If people cannot be confident that the rules will not be changed midstream, they are far more likely to look elsewhere. 

Apart from the economic benefits to Australia from international students, it also potentially has economic benefit for the region, and for strengthening engagement at business, as well as civic society level. This is far more significant for the future of Australia and the other countries in our region than having to process and potentially settle some refugees.