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After a series of attacks on Indian students in Australia, the Australian Trade Commission is on a damage control exercise with a publicity campaign in consultation with the Indian High Commission.

Peter Linford, senior trade commissioner-South Asia said, “I have been asked to collect statistics. We will speak to the companies operating in Australia. We will study whether any investor has pulled out as a fall-out of the attacks. We obviously expect majority of the comments to be positive. If not, we will have to do something dramatic.” At present, around 65 Indian companies are operating in Australia, with their presence growing at 10-15 per cent every year. “The growth in the mining sector will be more,” said Linford.

The campaign would be anecdotal, where the investors would be asked to narrate their experience in Australia. The Trade Commission would then go the media with the anecdotes. “We will get as many Indian companies as possible to do some public speaking. We also plan to take journalists from India to Australia,” said Linford.

Linford said, the problem was with people had not lived in Australia for long. “For those who have been operating there for the past 30 years or so, they are not bothered.” The entire exercise would be done in consultation with the Indian High Commission, though Linford felt that the attacks were not specifically targeted towards Indian students. “It could be any one from Bangladesh, Pakistan or anywhere else. These are just bad people doing bad things,” he said. When the Trade Commission collects the data, it would ask the investors to identify the location so that the government was able to identify the problem zones.