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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-12-01 Daily Xml
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International Education

The Hon. G.A. KANDELAARS (14:46): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Employment, Higher Education and Skills a question about international education.

Leave granted.

The Hon. G.A. KANDELAARS: The government is committed to growing the number of international students studying in South Australia, as well as encouraging stronger links between South Australia and other international education institutions. Can the minister provide an outline of the government's recent mission to Indonesia that will assist in achieving these objectives?

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Employment, Higher Education and Skills, Minister for Science and Information Economy, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for Business Services and Consumers) (14:47): I thank the honourable member for his question. Indonesia is obviously an incredibly important strategic partner for South Australia, both culturally and economically. It is one of our closest international neighbours. Last week I was very pleased to be able to lead a delegation on a visit to Indonesia to focus on exploring business—

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: Lost your luggage I heard.

The Hon. G.E. GAGO: We did lose our luggage; we all lost our luggage for three days. I tell you what, it was a hot and steamy Indonesia we arrived in, and were in the one set of clothes for almost three days, so it was not a pretty sight. Nevertheless, we did our best and soldiered on and made do.

That delegation was about exploring business opportunities and promoting the expertise of South Australia in the international education sector. South Australia has a long history of engagement with Indonesia. In 2014 around 5,000 Indonesian tourists visited South Australia, and our education and training providers hosted more than 400 Indonesian students. Indonesia is also a very important trading partner for South Australia, with the total two-way trade exceeding $595 million in 2014-15.

During my visit it was evident that there was a great deal of opportunity to grow our relationship with Indonesia. Indonesia is the only South-East Asian country to be represented in the G20, and Indonesia's middle class is expected to double to 141 million people by 2020. Indonesia is also the ninth largest source market for international students in Australia, and it is clear that it is a market with great potential to see future growth.

While the main focus of my visit obviously was on international education, I was pleased to be able officially to represent the South Australian government at a number of Indonesia Australia Business Week events.

Business Week is an Australian government initiative which aims to promote Australia and Australian capability. With a program tailored to major industry sectors, it provides an ideal opportunity for delegates to understand the market and network with potential partners to deliver trade opportunities. Not only did IABW provide me and my delegation with the opportunity to network with education and training providers, it was a valuable opportunity to be briefed about some of the targets that the Indonesian government has set to achieve the level of growth required for skilling its workforce.

I was delighted to have the opportunity to meet with the Indonesian education agents and alumni of South Australia's education institutions to promote the benefits of studying in Adelaide. Events such as this one provide an opportunity to profile South Australia as an international study destination and support the ongoing recruitment activities of Adelaide's educational institutions in Indonesia.

During my visit to Jakarta I met with the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Finance, with a representative of all three public universities here in South Australia and also Carnegie Mellon, to present South Australia's capabilities and encourage more students to study in South Australia under the Indonesian government's SPIRIT and LPDP scholarships. It is an amazing opportunity. The Indonesian government gives out thousands of the scholarships to their students to study overseas, and they plan to increase that significantly, up to about 5,000 over the next couple of years. Currently, only one of our universities is technically listed to be eligible for the LPDP scholarship, so one of the things we did while we were there was to lobby to have all three listed and meeting the criteria necessary to access those scholarships more readily.

I also travelled to South Sumatra with Scope Global, the South Australian government-owned company, to further progress an MOU signed by Scope Global and the South Sumatra sports committee. During my visit with the Governor of South Sumatra, we looked at ways that South Australia could assist South Sumatra in human resource capacity building and accrediting sports training people for the ASEAN Games in 2018 and the 2019 Asian Games that are going to be held there. I think there is probably lots of work that we can do there.

I also had the pleasure of travelling to South Australia's sister state, West Java, where I visited the Bogor Agricultural University. It is recognised as one of Indonesia's leading universities and has a very close relationship with Adelaide University, which I was pleased to promote and work at ways of enhancing that.

During my visit, I was pleased to be able to give a presentation at the International Centre for Applied Finance and Economics conference and again generally promote South Australia's educational capabilities and future cooperative partnerships there in Indonesia.

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