New international student policy on cards
David Hanna, Deputy Secretary, Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development (International Cooperation), Victoria and Paul Evans, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Victoria, were in conversation with Adam Halliday of Newsline in Ahmedabad. They said an international student policy is in the pipeline in addition to a multi-cultural police force. Excerpts:
David Hanna
In his address to the Australian Parliament on June 1, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd spoke about developing a pan-Australian policy that would look into these attacks.
The physical safety of people is the responsibility of the police. That’s a state matter. But the Prime Minister has certainly made it clear that he expects all the states to operate in that way. Frankly, none of these were required to be told. We were all trying to do that anyway. In the Council of Australian Governments, which is where the Prime Minister and the chief ministers of all the states get together, there was a meeting on July 2 and there was an agreement that we would jointly develop a new international student policy that would be implemented across the country. We will operate collectively and collaboratively to do all these things.
What about the allegations that the police are being racist in reporting cases relating to immigrants — workers and students both? Will you be looking into those?
We have been looking into these for a long time and we will continue to look into them. As far as we are concerned, there is no reason for not treating a person who reports a crime the same way you treat everybody else. Let us take, for example, the case of the boy who was attacked with a screwdriver. They were having a party and people gate-crashed into it. Now, we have a helpline called ‘Party Time’. People who know about it, phone the police station whenever they have a party. If you phone the station that we are having a party at a particular time and address, then the police make sure that the normal patrol frequently passes by your house to keep any problem in check. These boys, who were having the party, didn’t know about this. So, we have to make sure that they know about these things and then they can make a choice about how to keep themselves safe.
In recent times, the Australian government has been perceived as racist, especially in the case of visa cancellation of Mohammad Haneef although he was proved innocent. Also, in an interview to the BBC, former head of Australian media giant Telstra, Sol Trujillo, accused Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of being racist because he said “Adios!” when Tujilla, who has a Hispanic origin, was returning to the US.
If the Prime Minister is racist then you have to ask why his daughter has married a Chinese man from Hong Kong. The Prime Minister is not racist and he’s not the Prime Minister of a racist country. Sol Tulija had Mexican connections and he played that up a little bit too. That’s it. There’s no excuse for casting him in any disparaging way as a Mexican or anything else. “Adios!” is only a way of saying goodbye. Lots of people say that. I’m absolutely confident that Mr Rudd said that in good faith. I can’t imagine anybody in Australia is less likely to be racist than Mr Rudd. He actually spent a long time learning how to speak Chinese fluently. He was even able to address the Beijing University in Chinese. There are people in every country who have racist attitude. There was a time when Australia was distinctly racist. We had the White Australia policy that made it difficult for people outside Europe to migrate, but that’s history.
Multi-cultural cops to help students: Paul Evans
What special measures are being taken, especially in the western suburbs of Melbourne, where most of these attacks have taken place?
We are expanding our presence in the universities and in schools. We got multi-cultural police officers. We have been doing this for sometime but we are making sure that all students get to talk to the police. We need to show them that they can trust us. We played a cricket match with the Indian students the other day and the Indians won.
We have started the Western Police Indian Consultative Group, which was started in January. So that’s being built in places like the western suburbs, which have a larger Indian population. We increased the police presence, extra patrols, more police with uniforms in stations, and better video recording systems. As a result of that, the robbery rates have gone down. Last month, we had just five, and that’s in an area that has the lowest socio-economic group. And we use canine patrols to search for drugs and more mounted patrols.
What is your response to the allegations that the Australian Police have shown partiality in reporting cases involving foreign nationals?
The police are required by law to report all crimes. We treat any crime equally. In case such things happen, there are as many other avenues to complain and action will be taken.