16-Jun-09 11:00 AM CST

Future depends on Asian languages

AUSTRALIANS risk being marooned in the dated jobs and industries of the 20th century unless a $11.3 billion mass Asian language literacy plan is acted on within a generation, according to Michael Wesley, a leading expert on international relations.

Ahead of today's Sydney launch of a report documenting "a precipitous decline" in the study of languages at universities, Professor Wesley said it was not enough to rely on a fluent elite to project Australia's interests in theregion.

"Simply relying on an elite means the rest of Australian society - as our economy internationalises and becomes more knowledge-intensive - will be trapped in 20th-century industries, while other countries will be moving ahead and taking part in the 21st-century knowledge economy," he said.

The report from Professor Wesley's Asia Institute at Griffith University, titled "Building an Asia-Literate Australia", says Mandarin, Japanese and Indonesian should be given priority since they are the languages of Australia's two largest trading partners and closest neighbours respectively. [More...]