The measures, outlined in a report by a government-appointed taskforce, include offering thousands of scholarships to Asian students, new diplomatic posts across the region and requiring that a third of all company directors and senior civil servants have a “deep knowledge” of Asia. In addition, every schoolchild will be able to learn one of four “priority” languages: Chinese, Hindi, Japanese and Indonesian.
Ms. Gillard said the “unstoppable” rise of Asia and its massive new urban middle class was “a transformation as profound as any that have defined Australia throughout our history.”
Under the long-awaited plan all schools will be partnered with schools in Asia and television stations will be encouraged to present more Asian news and programs. “Children in kindergarten now will graduate from high school with a sound working knowledge of Asia,” Ms. Gillard said.
Australia has greatly benefited from the past decade of growth across Asia, which has triggered a mining boom and helped to shield the nation from the impact of the global financial crisis.  
Ms. Gillard said Australia should not seek to lower wages or working conditions to try to compete with the Asian workforce but instead should boost the country’s skills and promote tourism, education and agriculture to the growing middle class, particularly in China.
Critics largely welcomed the push for closer links with Asia but said it came too late. “The Asian century is already well underway—shouldn’t we have been planning for that quite a while ago?” Adrian Vickers, Asian Studies director at the University of Sydney, told ABC Radio.
“I think we’ve got a lot of catching up to do... The rapid advances in technology, in social change, in political change in Asia are things that we are struggling to keep up with as a nation.”
-www.telegraph.co.uk, 29 October 2012