Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week I joined colleagues in a roundtable with the Australia India Business Council. We talked about bringing our nations of Australia and India closer together through trade, education, culture and friendship based on shared values, and we discussed the New Colombo Plan, which is giving thousands of undergraduate students around Australia, including over 100 so far in Brisbane, the opportunity to study and intern in countries around our Indo-Pacific region.

One of the Brisbane students I've met, Alexandra Alder, will be interning at a Singapore based NGO later this year, and some other Brisbane students, such as Sarah Sheppard and Michael Reynolds, are interning at private companies and learning the languages of business partners around the Pacific. These students are also researching at some of the most advanced universities in our region. So the New Colombo Plan is giving upcoming Australian leaders both cultural and business experience, key skills and, most of all, personal friendships and connections around our region.

I want to give one quick example. John Lin came to Brisbane from Taiwan when he was a student, and he fell in love with our city, naturally. Last month, I joined John at the opening of his family's new W Hotel, an exciting new billion-dollar five-star hotel offering in Brisbane. That shows the power of personal connections in our region and the potential value of programs like the New Colombo Plan.