CHATTERJEE, Ms Sneha, First Assistant Secretary, Office for Multicultural Affairs Division, Department of Home Affairs McALLISTER, Mr Malcolm, Assistant Secretary, Special Envoy Support and Management Branch, Office for Multicultural Affairs Division, Department of Home Affairs RADFORD, Ms Karen, Assistant Secretary, North and South Asia Branch, International Policy Division, Department of Defence WHITE, Major General Martin, Commander, Australian Defence College, Department of Defence WILLARD, Mr Michael, Deputy Secretary, Immigration Programs Group, Department of Home Affairs Committee met at 10 : 45 CHAIR ( Mr Watts ): I now declare open the public hearing of the Standing Committee on Education's inquiry into building Asia capability in Australia through the education system and beyond. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands from which we all meet today, and I pay respect to the elders, past and present, of Indigenous peoples across Australia. This hearing will be audio broadcast, and the transcript of proceedings will be published on the parliament's website. I now welcome representatives from the Department of Defence and the Department of Home Affairs to give evidence today. This hearing is a legal proceeding of the parliament, and it has the same standing as proceedings of the House. The giving of false or misleading evidence is a serious matter and may be regarded as a contempt of parliament. The evidence given today will be recorded by Hansard and attracts parliamentary privilege. Do either of the departments wish to make an opening statement before we proceed to discussion? Mr Willard : No thanks, Chair. I welcome your questions. Major Gen. White : A very brief one, if my Chair. I thank the committee for the opportunity to discuss the Defence aspects of this important inquiry into building Asia capability. I think Defence will echo previous testimony that speaks to the importance of high levels of cultural, linguistic and people-to-people understanding of Asia and, in our context, understanding Asian security institutions. We think building Asia capability is fundamental to Australia's national defence strategy. My role is Commander of the Australian Defence College. It consists of a number of organisations, including the Australian Defence Force Academy and the Australian War College. We also comprise units including the Australian Defence Force Training Centre, which houses the Defence International Training Centre and the Defence Force School of Languages, which I think are germane to the inquiry today. I'd like to highlight that within the Australian Defence College we have more than 200 international staff and students today, most of whom are from Asian nations, engaging with their Australian counterparts daily on security issues. I think the scale of engagement with our Asian counterparts is longstanding, and I think the need to build Asia capability is in many ways hardwired into our military education and training system. Thank you very much for the opportunity today. CHAIR: Thank you for that. I'm conscious that we have both Defence and Home Affairs representatives here, so I'll ask my Defence questions first. I'd encourage others to seek the call on a similar topic in the same order, but I'm not going to be too rigorous on that. Just using the chair's prerogative, can I start with some questions for Defence. I put these in the context of thanking you for the very significant commitment that the Department of Defence and ADF have shown over some decades now to engagement with our region and building Asia capability within its own organisations. I think that your submission to this inquiry was extensive and really engaged with what we are grappling with here in a substantive way. So let me begin by saying thank you and recognising that. One thing that did catch my attention in the Defence submission was the point that you make that, in the Defence sphere: … language skills are acquired in an immersive adult learning environment in one-third the time of an Australian university. Can I delve into that a bit more? What are the methods and pedagogical approaches that Defence takes to learning languages in your context that lead to those outcomes? And what have you learnt from collaborating with the other language institutions you flag in your submission in peer nations? Major Gen. White : I would start by saying the Defence language capability really comprises two components: people who join Defence who have language skills—who have a language other than English as something that they have when they join. We run a census every three years. In 2023 when the census was last conducted, about 30 per cent of participants identified as being culturally and linguistically diverse, and about 16 per cent of the participants identified as having a language other than English. So a large part of our potential language skills is resident within people who join with those existing language skills. The other part is what we teach, and that's predominantly conducted at the Defence Force School of Languages in Laverton in Victoria. Language and cultural understanding are critical to achieving those strategic objectives that we have as part of our national security requirements. But the thing that I would highlight with those comments that were made in the submission is we focus specifically on military language skills. For example, we train for a range of reasons, but for operational reasons it might be that we teach someone to say, 'There's an enemy unit on that hill with machine guns, they're occupying that barracks, and it's heavily guarded, heavily fortified.' Largely, what we're trying to do is intensive training very much focused on the military skills that we try to pass. So in some ways, it's a little bit difficult to compare with what universities teach versus what we do. The intensive nature of the training has proven beneficial to Defence but is not perfect. CHAIR: Does that focus on practical outcomes let you innovate more quickly on pedagogical approaches? One of the things I'm interested in is the way that AI is being used as a learning tool, not as a supplement for language learning but to help people to practise conversational skills in a deliberate way. Has your pedagogy incorporated those kinds of AI training into language learning? Major Gen. White : It does. With technology such as artificial intelligence, Defence will always have a requirement to move with the technology and maintain the human-to-human skills as part of that. We do have methodologies that are in play within the Australian Defence College, such as training with avatars for intensive training as opposed to necessarily needing other people to do those types of things. But, largely, the cultural aspects can't be ignored for us, so having instructors who understand the culture as well as the language performs a really significant function for us. So there's a combination of both. CHAIR: I just want to acknowledge my deputy chair, Mr Birrell, who was speaking in the chamber when we began this hearing, has joined us. On 6 February, the Australia-Indonesia Treaty on Common Security was signed by Prime Minister Albanese and President Prabowo. I note that a key part of this treaty is building ties through a junior leaders forum and military education exchange. In that context, it reminded me of a May 2025 report from the University of Western Australia by Eleanor Power—that is, Mutual Trust and Reciprocity: strengthening the Australia-Indonesia defence partnership through cooperative training exercises. In that report, she noted that language learning is a core part of military exchange programs, arguing: By equipping cadets with additional language skills, particularly in Bahasa Indonesia, the ADFA would be better positioned to establish extended officer exchange programs with Akmil … Power also argues that speaking Indonesian is critical for our defence engagement with Indonesia, arguing: … ADF soldiers must achieve a basic level of proficiency in languages other than English to safely complete international deployments. That's going to the points that you were making earlier. She quotes an ADF interpreter during the 2024 Super Garuda shield who said: Language is not just words; it's the key to unlocking trust and understanding between cultures … Every time I use their language, Indonesians see me not as a foreigner but as someone who has taken the time to understand them. Presumably, you would endorse all of those quotes. In that context, I'm keen to understand the recent changes at ADFA that have been flagged in submissions to this inquiry. In its submission to this inquiry, the Embassy of Indonesia raised concerns about the cutting of the Indonesian major at ADFA. I understand that Indonesian is no longer offered as a major as a part of the Bachelor of Arts program at ADFA but that Indonesian studies can be taken as part of a broader Indo-Pacific studies major. Jump in and let me know after I've finished this. In the context of deepening our engagement with Indonesia through the Treaty of Common Security, can I understand the thinking behind what looks like reducing the ability of officers to acquire a deep knowledge of Bahasa Indonesia by cutting the Indonesian major at ADFA? Can you step us through what those changes are and what the rationale for them is? Major Gen. White : One of the things that our submission highlighted was that Bahasa and Mandarin were the two languages that have our most significant numbers of qualified people. Those numbers will probably retain or grow given the importance. The bachelor degree at the Australian Defence Force Academy that focused predominantly on languages did exist, and this is the last year where that will be completed. There was an opportunity for students to study for subjects that related to languages. As has been highlighted to this inquiry a number of times, the demand from students has decreased. In the last couple of years— CHAIR: Did you say 'increase' or 'decrease'? Major Gen. White : The demand decreases for languages. So in the last couple of years, two to three students were signing up to that program, so it was a very uneconomical way to do it. So, in conjunction with the University of New South Wales, the decision was taken to reduce the number of language-specific courses from four to two. But there remains the opportunity for students who attend the Australian Defence Force Academy to also take another two more additional subjects in conjunction with an agreement we have with the Australian National University. So within UNSW and the Australian Defence Force Academy, there has been a reduction in that, mainly demand driven. Where the demand has increased, though, is more in the geostrategic engagement with Indonesia. For students, there still seems to be a thirst for understanding and being educated in those geostrategic factors, so those courses, for example, are attracting over 20 students at the moment. That's what we're seeing through the Australian Defence Force Academy and UNSW. CHAIR: Are we worried about that falling demand? I mean, we have heard lots of evidence about that complex supply-demand relationship in language studies. But I would have thought that, of all of the domains that we're thinking of, the forward career progression for investing in Indonesian language studies is the most direct connection between obtaining those language skills and being able to directly use them in your career and advance as an officer. I mean, the Australian-Indonesian relationship in defence is extremely strong. I'm trying to understand this. Are we concerned about it? Are we trying to shift that level of demand amongst our students? Major Gen. White : That's a great question. One of the things that our census in 2023 showed was that 0.8 per cent of the folks who are joining Defence now had Bahasa language skills. That's a really important component of what we do. Certainly, in the aspect of what we're teaching, the Defence Force School of Languages remains our primary means to provide proficiencies, so our numbers within the Defence Force School of Languages that we're training remain fairly consistent. CHAIR: One final question before I'll pass the call to colleagues. We've seen a precipitous collapse in Indonesian language studies at the high school level in Australia. I hear what you're saying about the School of Languages, and I am proud to host it in my electorate in Melbourne's west. I know some of the teachers there, and they are world class. But presumably the system-wide decline in Indonesian studies does impact you in terms of your recruitment and that you'd prefer to be able to recruit young Australians with Indonesian cultural awareness and language skills rather than having to do all of that in-house once they arrive. Major Gen. White : Absolutely, Chair. CHAIR: Dr Garland. Dr GARLAND: I am going to declare my bias, as someone with a background in cultural studies. Understanding beyond language what the Asian capability focus means and looking at the way that you've embedded cultural studies and that focus within a lot of different streams, I was wondering if you could unpack that a little bit in terms of explaining what that means. It may be that it is that geostrategic focus that you're talking about, but I'd love to get an overview of what that looks like across a lot of these courses, including things that are perhaps less obvious outside of the Indo-Pacific studies, things like English and media studies. I'm just eager to understand what that Asian capability focus looks like. Major Gen. White : Thanks, Dr Garland, I appreciate the question. Within my own command, at the Australian Defence College, we have a significant number of interfaces, particularly with—is your question, sorry, based mostly on Indonesian or broader— Dr GARLAND: No, more broadly. What does that look like? Because obviously people can use Asian capability to mean a range of things. I'm just really interested, outside of the language that we've had a conversation about, what that looks like embedded in these courses that you offer. Major Gen. White : Perhaps I'll give you a couple of examples that may illuminate some of that. Our Australian War College runs a range of courses for mid-ranking and senior officers. Within those courses this year there are around 65 foreign officers, who are mostly from the Asian region, and they work with the Australian counterparts on a daily basis discussing security matters that are relevant to everyone. But, again, that level of daily interaction between our Australian officers and our foreign officers has consistently proven to be worth its weight in gold. There's an old but fairly famous example of General Cosgrove, who, as he was going in to lead the INTERFET contingent, knew his Indonesian counterparts and was able to engage with them, and it directly made that INTERFET mission very, very effective and less dangerous for the folks on the ground. One of the interesting things that the Australian War College has is an alumni network of several thousand people. Just looking through the folks who have been part of that alumni network, there are over 40 just from Asian nations who have occupied positions of service chief and higher, including defence minister. So, again, I think the soft power component of that is super important. CHAIR: You have royalty as well. Major Gen. White : We have. I think that aspect of the Australian War College is hardwired into not just the Australian military but also a lot of our colleagues across the region have a similar model where they have a high number of international students where it just means that you break down the difficulty at the start of our relations on a military-to-military level. I think the General Cosgrove example is a good one. Dr GARLAND: Just to clarify, I'm looking at your submission. On page 6, there are the enrolments in different degree streams with the Asian capability focus. Is that about the exchange, or is it about the course content as well? If I'm studying the arts English and media studies stream, what would I be learning that is about enhancing Asian capability? Major Gen. White : I see. That's specifically at the Australian Defence Force Academy. The content is quite broad within those degree streams. When we say, 'the strategic environment'—what are the security concerns that are shared between Australia and Indonesia? How do demographics make those play an impact? How does history and our culture make that difference? For students who are enrolled in those programs, that tends to be the focus. The ones who take language get that additional angle of cultural understanding in that sense. Mr BIRRELL: Just following on from that, and I think you've answered most of the question, but we have a thing called the Parliamentary Defence Exchange Program. Many of us participate in it. I participated in it a couple of years ago. It was part of Exercise Kakadu. It was about developing personal relationships between senior commanders of navies of Asian countries. It was incredibly successful. It was very profound for many of us that navies of countries that have been our adversaries in the past, like Japan and Vietnam, were all collaborating and cooperating. Are there plans to continue and expand those sort of exercises—not only the military exercises, but also what I might call the social exercises, which were really important in developing those relationships and showing other people that those relationships are strong. Ms Radford : I am assistant secretary for North Asia and South Asia, so I cover those relationships and, indeed, the Japan relationship. First, I would say that Japan is a good example of how relationships have changed post World War II. There is no other country in the region which we are closer to than Japan. That defence relationship has just grown and grown over decades, but, I would say, has particularly accelerated over the last five to 10 years, with military exercises bilaterally with Japan—doing more and more together—and, importantly, trilaterally with the United States. Defence ministers from the United States, Japan and Australia announced, in November 2024, an effort to trilateralise these bilateral exercises. Australia now participates in what were bilateral United States and Japan military exercises, usually in Japan, which adds a lot to our own capability, our interoperability—but, really importantly, how we understand each other, and how we work together. Australia and Japan have become close in so many ways. One of the differences the United States and Japan have is there are something like 50,000 US forces located in Japan, so, of course, they work together every day. Australia and Japan are doing more and more together so that we understand each other—not just how militaries operate together, but understanding each other's culture and language is an important part of that as well. I don't have the dates for Kakadu, but it's coming up soon. As you mentioned, Deputy Chair, it's an excellent example of those quite large multilateral exercises that bring many partners together—small Pacific partners with their capabilities and big navies, like Japan's, for example. Major Gen. White : I think the main thing is, it goes without saying really, but while we've got ways that we can surge our language capability, you cannot surge trust. That is something that you have to establish over a long period of time. So I agree with your sentiments that that is critical and remains critical as well. Mr SOON: Thank you again to my Defence colleagues for your submission to the committee. I might just return back to the language training component, and it goes to what you just mentioned, Major General. Firstly, it'd be good to know of any kind of feedback that you have from those that have gone through the training or have considered it, but decided not to, about their experience, particularly considering what seems to be diminishing demand from that side of things about what can be done. Obviously, we've heard it from outside of the Defence Force of that being the case as well. The second question—and you mentioned the surge capability in building language skills within the Defence Force—has there been consideration given to stronger incentives or even mandating, to a certain extent, the training in language schools in order to boost that foundation base. Major Gen. White : Perhaps if I talk to the to the second part first. I deployed to Afghanistan in 2001. When we deployed there, there was a very significant need for language capability. The way that we satisfied that gap was that we had some of our own people trained, we paid for some contractors to support us, we used US support, we used local forces and—as much as my kids wouldn't believe me—we used technology as well, at that time, to enhance. So we found a way to build capability fairly quickly, but, again, those circumstances can differ depending on the time and the situation. One of the things we find, though, to be most within our control, certainly, is building our own capability; it's always something that we can control. What we've found is that there's quite a high demand from Defence people to attend our language courses. Again, this may be something different that you're seeing, with other testimony to the inquiry. For example, we run a language assessment test at the start of someone applying to do language courses. One of the reasons that we do that is to see their aptitude—to say, 'Can you study this language or that?' Another is a simple triage requirement; over time, we've had multiple thousand applicants in any given year applying to undertake language training. So there is still, I think, within Defence, a demand to undertake that language training. One of things that everyone struggles with—it's very, very hard—is retention of those language skills if they're not using them. We've taken a number of measures to try and increase retention. In 2022, we found that, after four years, only 19 per cent had retained their language skills. We assessed that again in 2025 and found that that had improved to 34 per cent. So there are a number of things that we're doing to retain skills. I think there's still a demand, internally, to have them, but the challenge of retaining those skills is still very, very hard. Ms Radford : May I just add—I know that whole-of-government efforts are a focus of the committee as well—that Defence, the ADF and the APS certainly take advantage of the opportunities that DFAT provides, some of which are informal, like lunchtime sessions at DFAT twice a week with homework from a teacher to study an article and then come and have a discussion and so forth. Some of those informal opportunities are really useful, particularly in the retention of language and bringing people together to be able to have those conversations to keep up their language skills. But there are also more intensive language training opportunities that DFAT provides through the year that, certainly, people are able to take advantage of, including APS from Defence. CHAIR: I must say that I was impressed with His Excellency David Hurley's Bahasa Indonesia retention during his time as Governor-General. He deployed it very effectively in the national interest. Mr SOON: To follow up, then, if there were a concerted effort to increase that capability across the Defence Force, there would be that demand and appetite, provided that funding could be supplied in order for that to happen, as well as opportunities to maintain it through different kinds of conversation groups as well. There is that willingness and enthusiasm for that? Major Gen. White : I think that's fair to say. I do say that cautiously because, again, you're never sure exactly why that's the case. Certainly, the number of applicant decisions indicates that there is. And, exactly as you say, if we needed to surge capability, there are a range of measures we could take, which could include teaming up with universities to provide more support. It could be providing more military instruction so that we've got a greater number of instructors providing that. It could be, again, more investment in technology. I think there are a range of measures that, should we need to surge a requirement, we could take. We always find it to be a very imprecise estimate—how many people we need qualified in a certain language at a certain time. The range of contingencies that Defence would have to be ready to undertake is extraordinarily wide. But, yes, I think the premise of your question is correct. CHAIR: I might also note that I think the data collection in Defence on this, with the census and the planning, is admirable. In fact, I feel like you have a better feel for this than we do in the education space, so that's a model we could learn from. I might now move on to some questions for Home Affairs. We might come back to you. Don't run away! My questions for Home Affairs are primarily focused on the community language stream. We've heard a series of submissions to this inquiry from a range of bodies about the role that community language schools can play in supporting the base level of Asian language learning in Australia. I know that Home Affairs recognises the importance of community language schools through the Community Language Schools Grants Program, and I acknowledge that we've got stream 1 to invest in a range of things, including professional development and teacher training and that stream 2 will provide funding to support more students to become fluent in Asian languages in years 11 and 12. One of the things that comes through very strongly in the submission is the variance across our federation in the way that community language schools operate and their relationship with both secondary schooling systems and tertiary education institutions. There's a real absence of coordination across states and territories, and there are very different approaches to recognition of both teaching qualifications and student outcomes in community language programs. In that context, I want to get a feel for the way Home Affairs engages with this as a policy challenge. That's all to say that I know it's hard. Do you coordinate with the Commonwealth education department on best practice in community language education? If you do, what is your view of what best practice is? Do we have a coordinated approach for trying to propagate best practice across the states? Mr McAllister : I might start by talking about the engagement process we had with regard to designing the Asian fluency part of the community language schools program. We consulted not just with the Commonwealth education department but also the states and territories. We consulted elsewhere within the Commonwealth government. One of the challenges we found, going to your particular point—and we did find this to be a policy challenge—was how we could land at a priority list of Asian languages. The approach that we took was largely inclusive. The different states and territories had different requirements with regard to which languages to prioritise, so we've included all of them. We needed a priority list in order to form a view of what an eligible application was going to be. As a result of the consultation, we have ended up with what is probably one of the more inclusive lists of languages because we didn't want to unwittingly exclude particular languages. That's that component. The bit around the educational standards—we seek to use expert advice in the course of assessing how well a grant program is running. That's probably going to tie to an annual acquittal process, at the moment, with the new round. But it isn't tested yet, because the round is new. CHAIR: Let me take you to one of the submissions that has been made to the inquiry. It's from the University of Sydney. They seem to support the Sydney Institute for Community Languages Education, which provides pathways for community language teachers to further study and employment, tries to develop an evidence base for schools and language policy, and offers accreditation and education programs for community language teachers. That seems to have a structured approach to building institutional capacity here and allowing the community language sector to fill some of the shortfalls in Asian language teachers that we've heard about. Is that kind of structured approach something that's on your radar, or are these grants more ad hoc to try and sustain existing schools rather than build out a system? Mr McAllister : That's a good question. Stream 1 is, in large part, an extension of what had gone before. In that regard, that is basically sustainment. Stream 2 is Asian fluency, particularly to years 11 and 12. That's pretty much new territory for us; we haven't actually completed the assessment process yet. But in the course of doing that, I'd anticipate that we'd be doing things like encouraging community language schools, in particular, to work with communities of practice et cetera. We are also talking to peak body associations. CHAIR: Is there any coordinating mechanism for bringing together the various community language teaching associations or schools with state and territory education departments? How do these groups talk to each other about aligning each other's efforts and interests so that there's a consistent pathway for students? Mr McAllister : That's a good question. I actually don't know the answer. CHAIR: Our federation is a beautiful and unique thing. It creates challenges for our policymaking. Let me come back to this. I will throw to Dr Garland, who has some questions on this, and then come back to this later. Dr GARLAND: I'm going to continue with the theme of Federation, which I'm sure everyone's really pleased to talk about. In conversations that I have as a Victorian with community language schools and when thinking of the grant programs that are administered, it has been observed—and this has been reported to me, so I accept this is anecdotal—that there is inequity in the system. Different states and territories have different arrangements with community language school providers in terms of things like using public school assets for free on weekends—and it feels like people are very familiar with this one—as happens in New South Wales, whereas in Victoria that grant funding then gets absorbed into giving money back to the state government to hire public schools. To support teachers and for the delivery of language programs to be more equitable and accessible across the country, there is a view that it would be good to see more harmonisation. Now, I don't know exactly how that's going to be possible or how those MOUs, contracts or whatever they are get entered into with the different states and territories, but I would really appreciate hearing more about that. I know that a lot of the schools for some languages—Mandarin, for instance—are absolutely at capacity, and that's presenting challenges to people in the community. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Ms Chatterjee : Consistent with the feedback you're getting, I think that, with all communities, regardless of whether it's a community language school or any other community, it's about access to amenities—access to schools or access to community centres. We know there is a great deal of variation across the states. The way we've run our processes is with the schools directly. There are about 600 who are funded through stream 1, which covers very, very tiny language schools right through to Mandarin classes that, as you say, are at big capacity. We do try to deconflict with state education departments, but each of the arrangements do differ between the states. We defer to the department of education around those types of MOUs and arrangements they might have about access to facilities, but our grant agreement is directly with the individual school. Dr GARLAND: So they could have agreements with the school, and then there's a separate arrangement they would have with the departments of education—understandings between the states and territories and the Commonwealth. Ms Chatterjee : Yes. Dr GARLAND: Okay. Ms Chatterjee : I also note states and territories do fund community language schools, so there might be two streams of funding that they're receiving. Mr SOON: Some do. Ms Chatterjee : Yes, some do, and it does depend on the state. Dr GARLAND: I think they've got to make a choice in Victoria, for instance, about which stream they're going to access. Thank you very much. CHAIR: Just to confirm, there's no institutional structure to coordinate the Commonwealth, the community language schools and the states on curriculum, pathways, accreditation or funding models. It's atomised. Mr Birrell. Mr BIRRELL: I suppose we're trying to get to the bottom of why we don't have more Asian languages taught in schools. We're hearing about demand, but we're also hearing about the supply of teachers. I notice in your submission we talk a bit about visas. There appears to be a shortage of Asian language teachers in Australia. There are obviously a lot of people overseas who are educated who would like to come here and teach Asian languages. Could you talk about what you think the roadblock might be? Mr Willard : There are a few elements to it. What I would start with is pointing out that teachers more broadly—the education profession—have been a focus in the skilled migration program for three or four years now. In fact, educators receive priority processing, along with medical professionals. What we've seen is pretty strong growth in teachers in the broad when you look at primary school, high school and lecturers—all those sorts of categories. So what we see there is a skilled program that can deliver more teachers. We've also worked to promote Australia as a destination for appropriately qualified teachers, and that's been reasonably successful. We do that through some pretty subtle work in social media, LinkedIn and that sort of stuff, so we're not broad brushing it; we're targeting particular individuals who will have the qualifications but also are coming from a system where their qualifications can be easily recognised. So those elements are positive. We're also seeing within the points test that governs eligibility for skilled migration that there are additional points available for community language skills, so that's another element that favours people with community language skills. I think that the challenges go to where the language teachers with the right set of skills are coming from and how easy it is for them to be appropriately accredited, with whichever state or territory education department it might be, to be able to teach. That's an issue, but, if you look in the broad, the number of educators coming through the Migration Program is certainly growing. CHAIR: Mr Soon. Mr SOON: Firstly, I just wanted to say how great it is to see the Office for Multicultural Affairs in existence and to hear about some of the work that you are doing. My question is just returning back to the community language program side of things. In my electorate I have a number of community language schools that I've engaged with, and one of the things that they've outlined is some of the practical challenges that Dr Garland alluded to before. In New South Wales, public schools do offer their facilities to these community language schools, but it can be inconsistent and is reliant on the individual schools making that decision. Again, what I've heard from schools is that some are reluctant to take on a perceived or potential risk of having to share facilities and properties with community language schools. Is there any work that is being done or considered in terms of sending messages, to schools or local councils who have facilities, that say, 'Actually, this a national priority, and on the balance of probabilities, if you're unsure, this is something that you might want to stick your hand up for'? Often the practical barriers are the reason why things don't get off the ground in the end, and that's what I'm consistently hearing from community language providers. Ms Chatterjee : There's no particular line of effort around that proactive communication with schools, but, when we meet with our state education contacts and indeed with the state multicultural agencies or business areas in premier's departments, for example, we can raise it. I know that they also would raise it themselves, both with local councils and with individual schools, and we know that those arrangements do differ between states, particularly New South Wales and Victoria. But it's consistent with that wider conversation about access to community amenities. Mr SOON: The reason I mention it is that I do find myself having conversations with some of these groups and stakeholders in the community where we hear time after time from witnesses how important Asian language development and Asian capability are more broadly. But then when you see it translated into community, sometimes there is some frustration that the national sentiment is not shared on the ground because of real practical constraints. Ms Chatterjee : I also note that this stream 2 component of CLSG is a new part of the program. We'd want to evaluate it as we roll it out. We're doing the assessment at the moment, so 2.5 million for round 1. We do assessment and evaluate the outcomes of this particular grant program. Reflecting on the work we've done thinking about this inquiry also includes the learnings that we could take from this program and engage with state education departments on—not just in terms of the formal curriculum but also in terms of community language schools and grants that they might be giving as well. Dr GARLAND: In Victoria, we've had some VCE programs—Mandarin as a first language as well as a second language are well-established as part of our year 11 and 12 curriculum. That's less so for other languages. Having spoken to other witnesses as well, through the process of these hearings, the understanding of fluency and proficiency and attainment at that level has something that has not always been the objective of language programs in Australia. It would be really interesting to understand what that kind of fluency looks like and how that relates to first and second languages as well, in terms of those cohorts in years 11 and 12, because often people who attend community language schools have some kind of cultural and familial connection to language to begin with. Mr McAllister : It's a good question. I would have to say that as part of the stakeholder consultations and in our design, I don't think we envisaged that the community language school alone would get you to a point of fluency. It's a contributing factor, but I don't think we consciously designed the program to lead to a point of fluency in and of itself. Dr GARLAND: I'm just wondering about the five million to support them to become fluent. Is this complementary to what they would do at home and school or at school? How would we assess that? Mr McAllister : It's one of a number of factors. When we did the consultation and we were talking about the policy issue of the day, for want of a better way to put it—as Ms Chatterjee has pointed out, we will review and evolve with the next round of the process—we found that the two critical issues that we needed to address, and that's why we've changed our criteria, is the lack of enrolment at the year 11 and year 12 level. Beside that is the question about the ability of language schools to teach at that particular level. That has been the primary policy focus for this particular round. CHAIR: It has certainly been a consistent theme of this inquiry, the lack of joined up pathways for people to develop their language capability across the various institutions—primary, secondary, community language, university, defence—and to have a consistent pathway to people to build on over time. It's the joining fibres that are missing. And the joining fibres between community language schools and formal schooling education vary extraordinarily from state to state. In Victoria, we have the Victorian School of Languages, which does a good job in lots of ways, but one gap I see as a local member is between established language schools and emerging languages. I have the second-largest Indian-born electorate in Australia and I have spoken to plenty of parents that want their kids learning—not just Hindi but Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, Punjabi, Tamil. There are a lot of community language schools that have emerged in recent years, very new, some with as much cultural education as language education, but they haven't made that bridge yet to the VCE curriculum. I know there is an enormous latent demand there. How do we translate that latent demand and jump from these new and emerging language community language schools into formal curricula? Is that something that was grappled with in the consultations? Mr McAllister : That's why, when I started my first answer, I led with what a priority language is. We found, in our stakeholder consultation, that the retention of year 11 and year 12 students in a community language school tended to be higher if it was already in the national curriculum; it was actually contributing to scores to get into university. We did grapple. We also looked at the make-up of multicultural communities across Australia, at where what languages were spoken. And there was a definite divide. CHAIR: Bengali's a good example because that's in the VCE. It's an intensely passionate language—birth mother tongue day. This is a community that is intensely invested in language as an expression of culture, but I still don't see it coming through in the VCE programs. Ms Chatterjee : I went to a Bengali language school. I didn't do it in VCE either; it was a long time ago. CHAIR: Why didn't you? Ms Chatterjee : It was more than 20 years ago; I'm showing my age a bit. But I think that there is that kind of challenge. The other thing I'd just note is that, across the Office for Multicultural Affairs, we're engaging with a whole breadth of communities, particularly new and emerging communities. Community language schools, generally, are traditionally dominated by well-established communities who've got a long tradition of Saturday morning language classes. Mr McAllister : Or Sunday. Ms Chatterjee : Or Sunday or after school. They have an established infrastructure around that community. Where there are new and emerging communities we make sure, as they become more organised into community associations, they get information around programs that might be available. It certainly takes a number of years for that to wash through the system. We couldn't comment on the VCE or HSC component of the formalisation, but certainly there's continued growth in communities accessing the program. CHAIR: Mr Birrell. Mr BIRRELL: I'm the member for Nicholls, in northern Victoria. A big part of my electorate, and my home, is Greater Shepparton. I think Greater Shepparton has been acknowledged as one of the real success stories of multiculturalism in this country. I've got my own views, but I'm trying to find out from my community leaders and from all sorts of people why we've been so successful. I'm going to throw something out there just for comment, if you want to, about why we've had such success. An Albanian community leader told me that the lack of Albanian language in all of the resources in the sixties actually led to the Albanian community learning English faster and being able to develop businesses. That helped them to integrate—I'm going to say 'integrate'; I don't like the word 'assimilate'—into the community whilst having their own culture and faith. The Albanian community are such an important part, and I think that's happened on and on. I'm not saying that that's my view. But the priority to make sure that these new communities can speak and function in English, to become part of our communities whilst preserving their own cultures—could you just comment on where you see that going or what the view of the office is. Ms Chatterjee : Within the Office for Multicultural Affairs, we administer the Adult Migrant English Program. We also deliver settlement services for humanitarian entrants, many of whom have made their home in Shepparton, for example. So that's the humanitarian stream of the Migration Program. The settlement outcomes framework that we have does certainly place the importance of speaking English as a key contributor to a successful settlement outcome. Being able to speak English or being able to attend AMEP classes for adults or the English as a second language components in primary and secondary education is critical. I think Dr Garland earlier made a comment around the cultural and connection component of community language schools. There's that wider contribution that community language schools make to the multicultural community. It's not just about educational outcomes. That connection to the family culture is probably the added component. But, absolutely, speaking English is important. It's a pathway to employment, and employment is critical for another element of the successful settlement outcome. Mr BIRRELL: To follow up the priority of English—it's our national language—there are concerns in my community and in other communities about social cohesion. If we have lots of groups of people not learning English as the common denominator and generally sticking with their own languages and not developing that skill, is there a priority on making sure that people have those tools to be able to integrate into society, to get a job and start a business—all the great things that you can see have happened in Shepparton? Ms Chatterjee : Absolutely. Mr Willard : I think if you look at the scale of the investment that governments, for decades, have made in terms of the English language program, you can see there's a strong recognition of that and a strong focus on that. Outside of humanitarian programs, if you look at the way, for example, skilled migrants are selected, English language skills are a huge part of that selection process. They provide a big chunk of the points that go towards meeting eligibility as a skilled migrant. So I think that's recognised. There's also recognition of the importance of the community languages as well. CHAIR: I found that very interesting, and I don't envy the policy challenges we all face here. Thank you for your attendance today. You'll be sent a copy of the transcript of your evidence and will have an opportunity to request corrections to transcription errors. Please send your responses to any questions taken on notice during this hearing to the secretariat by close of business on Wednesday 18 March 2026. Committee adjourned at 11:41