New colombo plan reforms - Consideration in detail

Speech
October, 2025
Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026 - Consideration in Detail
Parliament House, Canberra

I was very pleased to welcome the recent release of the Albanese Government’s latest round of reforms to the New Colombo Plan that I led consultations on with an External Advisory Group during the last term of government.

More than ever before, Australia’s future security and prosperity relies on our ability to make our way in our own region.

Today, Australia faces the most complex and consequential external circumstances at any time since the Second World War.

The Indo-Pacific is still a region of opportunity, home to the fastest growing, most dynamic economies in the world…

…but it’s also a region of intensifying geo-strategic competition in which many of the fundamental assumptions that have long underpinned our foreign policy are being challenged.

This challenging context will demand more of our leaders than ever before.

It demands that Australia go deeper in developing our Asia capabilities – that bucket of skills and expertise needed to be effective in our region – a useful level of language skills, knowledge of the histories and cultures of our region, and personal networks and practical experiences in the region.

This is the context for the recent review of the New Colombo Plan, and the new direction for the NCP we have recently announced.

Since its inception a decade ago, the NCP has supported 55,000 Australian undergraduates to undertake study, language training, internships, research and practicums at more than 2500 institutions across our region.

This is a worthy achievement and as building Australia’s Indo-Pacific capability is a generational challenge, it’s important that it’s a program that has been supported by governments on both sides of politics.

But as it has evolved over the last ten years, the NCP has lost its strategic focus.

The NCP has averaged about 8000 participants per year from a total cohort of around 800,000 domestic university students in recent years.

The vast majority of these participants, over 70 per cent in fact, have taken part in short term mobility placements, generally of only two weeks, and usually accompanied by an Australian lecturer.

Despite regular requests, no one was able to show me any data in the EAG consultations that these short courses translated to more students studying or working in the region longer term.

Indeed, I recall one submission in particular that cited as a success story of the mobility program, a participant who was inspired by her two weeks in India under the NCP to study in Europe.

Some argued that the NCP had to allow for students to attend two-week programs to enable their Australian lecturers to accompany them on these trips.

This isn’t what the NCP was established to do.

Amusingly, a former Liberal MP who participated in the EAG’s consultations declared that it was “at odds with Labor values” to shift the emphasis of the NCP away from these two-week tours because this would prevent disadvantaged cohorts from participating in the NCP.

I want to be clear that the facts tell a different story.

All EAG members saw data that showed that in 2024, NCP Scholars – that is the longer term participants in the program – came from more diverse cohorts than the students participating in the shorter-term mobility program.

But putting these stats aside, as a Labor MP, I want to make another fundamental point in response to this critique.

Labor values aren’t served by giving equal access to a program that doesn’t achieve its objectives.

The NCP is a DFAT program.

It was established to serve the foreign policy objectives of the Australian government.

To meet Australia’s foreign policy objectives we need the NCP to be putting participants on a pathway to deepening their Indo-pacific capabilities over the long term.

The two-week mobility programs just weren’t delivering that.

That’s why we’re shifting the focus of the NCP to enable students to spend more time in the region and to go deeper in developing their Indo-Pacific capabilities, particularly in developing their language capabilities. 

In the new tranche of reforms announced by the Foreign Minister we will increase the number of New Colombo Plan scholarships to 500 per year by 2028, creating more opportunities for Australians to live and study for longer in the region.  

We’re also introducing a new ‘Semester’ stream in the NCP leveraging Australian universities partnership arrangements to support one to two semester length experiences.

We’re focusing more on developing language skills with targets for numbers of participants studying priority Asian languages in the NCP.

We’re responding to the way our higher education institutions have evolved, by extending funding eligibility to allow Australian universities to utilise the network of groundbreaking transnational campuses they have established across the region in their NCP offerings.

We’re also encouraging institutions to work together by establishing consortia to give NCP students access to language programs regardless of the university they study at.

At this point it’s important to say that these NCP reforms occur in the context of a much bigger challenge for our nation.

The reforms come at a critical time to support our universities to teach Asian languages, Asian studies and adjacent subjects, as enrolments in priority language studies drop and universities scale down their offerings.

It further noted that “the decline in learning Asian languages in Australia is well documented, with many universities no longer offering some Southeast Asian languages”.

Indeed, the decline has been precipitous, with Southeast Asian language learning falling by 75% in Australian universities between 2004 and 2022.

Experts have warned that on the current trajectory, no Australian universities will be left teaching Bahasa Indonesia by 2031.

In this context, the first recommendation of the Moore Report, Australia’s Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040 recommended that:

“National Cabinet should consider developing a whole of-nation plan to strengthen Southeast Asia literacy in Australian business, government, the education and training system, and the community.”

Nicholas Moore was absolutely right to frame Asia Capability as a whole of nation challenge.

Building Australia’s Asia Capability requires private sector employers to value these skills and reward job applicants and employees who possess them.

It requires governments to prioritise the study of these languages and to better coordinate educational offerings so that students have consistent pathways across primary, secondary and tertiary education.

It requires workforce planning to ensure that we have the teachers needed to teach these languages as well as the curriculum planning and professional development needed to ensure we’re keeping up with best practice for language teaching around the world.

It requires us to better connect the substantial latent language capabilities within our diaspora communities to our formal education system and to create pathways for these communities to develop these capabilities in subsequent generations and have them formally recognized.

The NCP and the reforms announced by the government can only deal with one slice of this national challenge.

But these reforms have been designed help to support universities to keep offering the languages and Asian studies courses needed to build students’ capabilities as part of the NCP, by allowing universities to retain a portion of NCP funding for these purposes.

Earlier this month, the University of Techology Sydney announced it would pause student intake for more than 100 courses mid-next year – including its Bachelor of International Studies.

The UTS International Studies program with a built-in year-long study abroad program at a university in the country of the student’s language major is exactly the kind of program that the reformed NCP is intended to support in the future.

In this context, I want to personally appeal to UTS to explore how it could work with the reformed NCP offering in the future in order to retain its International Studies program.

I understand how difficult the environment has been to offer programs of this kind in recent years, but once lost, it’s far harder to rebuild the institutional capability that supports these programs – so please, hang on while these reforms are implemented.  

Finally, I want to take this opportunity to thank the expert members of the External Advisory Group from across the higher education sector, industry and alumni cohort for their important contributions to the development of these NCP reforms.

Thank you to Grace Corcoran, Prof Nicholas Farrelly, Prof Jessica Gallagher, The Hon Phil Honeywood, Renae Lattey, Ashok Mysore, Luke Sheehy, Peter Varghese AO, Elena Williams and Hayley Winchcombe.

Last week marked the eighth anniversary of the Myanmar military’s attack against Rohingya communities and the exodus of this community in Bangladesh.

Today, this situation remains an ongoing challenge to the resilience and stability of the northeast Indian Ocean.

In August 2017, Myanmar security forces launched a widespread violent assault on hundreds of Rohingya villages.

More than 700,000 Rohingya women, men, and children fled from northern Rakhine State to neighbouring Bangladesh.

The Myanmar military’s campaign of systemic violence against the Rohingya has led to mass displacement, widespread human rights violations and abuses, and indescribable suffering.

For almost a decade, more than 1.1 million Rohingya have been displaced in the world’s largest refugee settlement in Cox’s Bazar.

Devastatingly, today more than half of the displaced population in Cox’s Bazar are children.

Hundreds of thousands more are displaced across the region and internally in Myanmar.

This is a complex and intractable humanitarian crisis – the largest and growing in our own region.

On 25 August, the Australian Government issued a statement marking the anniversary and the Australian High Commission in Bangladesh also issued a joint statement with other diplomatic missions in Dhaka.

We expressed our deep appreciation for the ongoing generosity of the Interim Government and people of Bangladesh for hosting and providing invaluable shelter and safety to the Rohingya.

Together with partners in the region, Australia reaffirmed our steadfast commitment to supporting the Rohingya and seeking sustainable solutions to address the crisis and its root causes.

Australia continues to call for an immediate cessation of violence, the release of those unjustly detained, and safe and unhindered humanitarian access.

Australia remains deeply concerned by the destruction of civilian infrastructure, targeting of civilians, and forced recruitment into the Myanmar military.

We are also concerned about credible reports of discrimination and abuse against Rohingya committed by other armed actors.

Displaced Rohingya want to return home, but the conditions in Myanmar do not currently allow for a voluntary, safe and sustainable return.

These conditions can only be met by addressing the root causes of the crisis.

Australia and the international community are committed to finding pathways for their repatriation and to supporting efforts for creating a conducive environment to do so.

We call for the regime to engage in genuine and inclusive political dialogue with all actors.

We urge a peaceful transition of power to a civilian democratic government which reflects the will of the people.

We continue to support ASEAN’s efforts to resolve the crisis and the full implementation of ASEAN’s Five Point Consensus.

We remain deeply concerned by the knock-on effects leading to further loss of life when the Rohingya desperately flee the protracted, eight-year humanitarian crises in Myanmar and Bangladesh to seek safety.

We saw this play out in May in the most devastating of circumstances: more than 400 Rohingya lives were lost when two boats sank in the Bay of Bengal.

With a growing displaced population living in deteriorating circumstances Australia remains committed to supporting the humanitarian needs of Rohingya in Myanmar and Bangladesh.

The joint Myanmar-Rohingya crisis is Australia’s largest single humanitarian funding commitment with our total support exceeding $1.26 billion since 2017, including a three-year program of up to $370 million starting next year.

This funding supports the critical delivery of education, food, hygiene and healthcare.

Earlier this year, the Albanese Government announced a further $10 million in assistance for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and displaced people on the Thai-Myanmar border.

This was on top of an additional $9 million through the Australian Humanitarian Partnership, to support communities and conflict-affected populations in Myanmar.

Australia is working with local, regional, and international partners to deliver practical support to the people of Myanmar, the displaced Rohingya in Bangladesh and the communities who host them.

This is a vital contribution to the resilience of both the northeast Indian Ocean region and Southeast Asia.

When visiting the region I’ve heard first-hand how much Australia’s contribution is valued.

The conditions in Myanmar and Cox’s Bazar are worsening at the same time that humanitarian budgets are stretched across a growing number of crises in the Middle East, Africa and Europe – to name just a few. 

The United States previously provided 50 per cent of the response’s total funding.

The funding shortfall from the international community for the Rohingya crisis has grown with donor withdrawal leaving immediate gaps. 

In June this year, UNICEF was forced to close thousands of aid-run education centres.

The World Food Programme has said full food rations could only be maintained with additional funding of US$120 million by November.

Australia and our regional partners cannot afford to forget the plight of the Rohingya. 

Australia will continue to work with the international community to focus much-needed attention on the situation in Myanmar and the related humanitarian crisis in Bangladesh.  

It is in all our interests that the region we share has a resilient, peaceful and stable future.