Declaring that Asia’s rise is “unstoppable”, Australia on Sunday unveiled an ambitious plan aimed at forging deeper links with India and other booming economies of the region, including through teaching languages like Hindi and Mandarin in its schools.
“While Australia was changing, Asia was changing too. Whatever else this century brings, it will bring Asia’s return to global leadership, Asia’s rise,” said Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who was recently on her maiden official visit to India.
“This (Asia’s rise) is not only unstoppable, it is gathering pace,” Ms Gillard said, releasing a sweeping policy blueprint entitled “Asian Century White Paper” aimed at maximising links with Asia which will power Australia into the world’s top 10 wealthiest nations by 2025.
Above all, success for an open Australia in a middle-class Asia starts in the classrooms, training centres and lecture theatres of this nation, the Prime Minister said.
All Australian schools will engage with at least one school in Asia to support the teaching of a priority Asian language — Mandarin, Hindi, Indone-sian or Japanese, she said.
“Unlike in ages past, we will not settle for a student sitting at the back of the class not learning and then drifting away from school early. We can no longer tell ourselves this is all OK because a manual job will materialise for the child who cannot read, write or count,” she said.
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No promotion for d. Purandeswari
Hyderabad: In spite of announcing on Satur-day that the PM had informed her about her “promotion,” Union minister of state D. Purandeswari’s name was missing from the Cabinet promotions list on Sunday. One of the reasons for not promoting her might be the fact that Ms Purandeswari had gone public and announced her impending promotion on Saturday morning.