Reception to congratulate the 2013 intake of AusAID’s Australia Award recipients and to honour Australian scholarship alumni
Tuesday 20 November 2012
Address by HE Robyn Mudie, Australian High Commissioner
His Excellency Dr Mohamed Waheed Hassan, the President of Maldives
Honourable Ministers
Distinguished guests
Scholarship alumni
Australia Award recipients
Good evening
I am delighted to welcome you all to a reception to
• congratulate the 2013 intake of Australia Award recipients
• and to honour all our scholarship alumni.
The Australian Government has been funding international education for over 60 years – since the Colombo Plan in the 1950s – and has provided over 100,000 scholarships to citizens from countries around the world.
The Australian Government remains strongly committed to providing international scholarships. At the recent launch of the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper, the Australian Prime Minister, the Hon Julia Gillard MP, committed to offering 12,000 Australia Awards over the next five years to students from Asia.
Education is a flagship of the Australian Government’s development cooperation program across the world. And we are committed to supporting the growth of education in Maldives – both through the Australia Awards (which represent more than half of Australia’s official development assistance to Maldives) and through the Australian volunteer program.
Access to a quality education system, whether domestically or overseas, is vitally important to the economic growth of any country. Quality education delivers economic benefits by developing a more skilled workforce, increasing employment opportunities, and helping to drive broad-based economic growth.
Education can also deliver social benefits – by enhancing equity, contributing to healthy families and children, and instilling the skills, social norms and behaviours needed for a cohesive and peaceful society.
In recent decades Australia has been recognized as a leading provider of education opportunities through tertiary institutes. We are proud of the fact that thousands of overseas scholars are gaining a first-class education from Australian universities. Ten percent of Australian universities are ranked in the world’s top 100, and 43 percent in the top 500. This is a tribute to the strong quality of Australia’s education system.
I am especially proud to note that the Special Envoy to the President, the Speaker of Parliament, and a number of cabinet ministers and ministers of state, have all studied in Australia. And I’m very glad to welcome some of them here this evening.
I would like to congratulate this year’s 33 recipients of AusAID’s Development Awards.
You will be among a growing list of scholars from the Maldives who have had the opportunity to study at an Australian university.
You were chosen for these Awards because of your strong academic abilities, your desire to expand your career and life opportunities, and your commitment to the development of your country.
I am particularly pleased that five postgraduates were recognized for their outstanding leadership potential and have been awarded an Australian Leadership Award.
And as a strong advocate of gender empowerment, I am thrilled that 19 of this year’s awardees are women.
The 2013 recipients of the Endeavour Awards will shortly be finalized. I am very pleased that a number of Endeavour Awards alumni have joined us here tonight. There are currently a total of approximately 1500 Endeavour Award holders undertaking study in Australia or other countries.
Over the past four years, seven recipients from the Maldives have been successful in receiving an Endeavour Award - an impressive achievement in what is an internationally competitive open merit program.
I would also like to honour the alumni that have joined us this evening.
The Australia Awards bring together scholars from Australia and overseas to become part of a network of people bound by the common thread of having studied in Australia.
Many alumni of Australian universities maintain strong and close contacts with each other and with Australians at very senior levels – bridging professional, personal and community connections.
You have returned to your homeland and are contributing to the development of your country in a myriad of different ways.
In the coming months and years we would like to strengthen and enrich our engagement with you, and my colleagues will be in touch with you further in due course.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
Australia has shared strong and extensive bilateral links with the Maldives over many decades. The modern bonds between the two countries are the sum of many parts, and include a history of partnership in the areas of people-to-people links, development cooperation and education.
Every person in the room tonight has helped to build that partnership.
I look forward to further strengthening the bonds between our two countries.
I look forward to increased engagement between the alumni who have studied in Australia and have returned to contribute to the development of the Maldives.
And I wish this year’s awardees the very best of luck for their studies in Australia.
Thank you.