Guide with Australian visa for students

As part of the efforts to project it as a safe destination for Indian students in the wake of attacks on the community, Australia is planning to hand out a comprehensive guide containing up-to-date information about the country to students along with a visa.

The new booklet Guide to studying and living in Australia aims at ensuring that every student leaving India for Australia has up-to-date information on the life and society there “that helps them to mingle and gel with the new culture.”

A spokesperson of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) said that Australia is taking a very serious note of its image as a safe destination for international students, apart from portraying itself a high quality education provider.

The spokesperson said Australia has also pledged towards working to bring perpetrators of the attacks on Indians to justice, respond to these crimes and protect students and other members of the community.

The government has also decided to hold a two-day International Student Roundtable in Canberra on September 14 to hear directly from students about their views.

The concerns raised in the roundtable will then be considered by Ministers at the inaugural Ministerial Council on Tertiary Education in November.

The move comes in the wake of a series of racially- motivated attacks on Indian students.

It is widely believed that Indian students coming here had very little information of the country and its culture.