GREEN PAPER ON DEVELOPING NORTHERN AUSTRALIA
Submission from Curtin University
Western Australia
August 2014
In its Green Paper on Developing Northern Australia, the Government has identified six possible policy
directions. Given Curtin University’s mission and capabilities, this response is focused on the fifth policy
direction :
5. Fostering education, research and innovation including through developing research
networks, improving local workforce and industry skills, and boosting access to
international education and training markets.
The submission responds to this proposed policy direction under the following categories of:
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Building capabilities and skills
Partnerships with world leading institutions
More international students
Effective engagement with international development in the region.
The Curtin University Sustainability Institute (CUSP)’s Jemma Green, Peter Newman and Johanna
Mitchell submitted a report entitled: “Pilbara 2050: Ensuring the long term viability of the Pilbara” to the
Joint Select Committee on Northern Australia and also testified at the hearing of the Joint Select
Committee on Northern Australia on 7 April in Perth. We understand that the Inquiry is running in
tandem with the Government’s commitment to produce a white paper on Northern Australia of which
this green paper is part. For completeness, we have attached the document to this submission.
Building capabilities and skills
DISTRIBUTED LEARNING MODEL
The Distributed Learning Model enables access to educational opportunities for students in remote
locations by leveraging different technologies to provide synchronous and asynchronous learning
opportunities. This approach is designed to provide rural and remote students with an equivalency of
learning experience to Curtin’s Bentley campus-based students. It allows students to stay in their
communities to learn and upgrade their skills and, as a consequence, helps to improve the ongoing
sustainability of the local workforce (for example in health and education), and the community more
broadly. Learning sessions are interactive, giving regional students the capacity to participate fully in the
sessions, as opposed to, for example, simply accessing an online recorded lecture.
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Curtin successfully gained funding through the Western Australian State Government’s Royalties for
Regions (RfR) to pilot a distributed health and medical education program in the Pilbara, in partnership
with the Pilbara Institute. The funding was used to refurbish and equip a learning centre at the Pilbara
Institute with video conferencing facilities.
Pilbara nursing students are now overcoming the tyranny of distance through their involvement in the
distributed learning model that allows them to take part in tutorials via a ‘virtual classroom’ despite
being 1600km away from Perth. High-end video conferencing technology at the Pilbara Institute means
that students in Port Hedland have real-time access to the Bachelor of Science Nursing, Enrolled Nurse to
Registered Nurse Stream program.
Until now Pilbara-based students could only participate as external students. The benefit of this
additional support and interaction creates an ‘on-campus’ learning experience not previously available to
regional and remote students. Following the success of this pilot in the Pilbara, Curtin is keen to replicate
it through the establishment of Distributed Learning Model facilities in other WA regions.
Curtin is also now in a position where it can deliver Foundation year courses in Engineering, Health and
Commerce online, utilising the Distributed Learning Model facility. The Foundation Year builds a solid
base of the fundamental concepts common to all areas of each of these three courses, which allows
students to explore their options before selecting an appropriate focus for their studies towards the end
of their first year.
Curtin has a long standing commitment to Indigenous education and culture and a significant history in
the provision of Indigenous education and research with programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander people operating at the University since the mid-1970s. In 1983, the Centre for Aboriginal
Studies (CAS) was established as a self-determining and self-managed academic school to support the
growth of the Indigenous education and research programs. Curtin has the highest enrolment of
Indigenous Australians of any university in the country and was the first university in Australia to sign a
Statement of Reconciliation.
The CAS has established a policy of Aboriginal control and leadership with a firm foundation of
community involvement: a two-way circulation of ideas, influences and practices that ensures culturally
appropriate education and research. The Block Release Model has been effectively used by Curtin to
deliver the Indigenous Community Management and Development Program (ICMDP) – a two year
Associate degree or three year Bachelor degree – to students across Australia, particularly those in
remote communities. Block Release is a mixture of two week intensive sessions at the Bentley Campus
with the remainder of students’ time spent studying and working in their community. It provides
Indigenous students with the opportunity to learn without having to leave their communities for lengthy
and expensive periods. It also creates supportive networks for the students across Australia.
CURTIN MEDICAL SCHOOL
Curtin’s proposed Medical School aims to train more medical students in Western Australia in order to
meet the needs of the growing population. Doctor shortages have been a significant issue in Western
Australia for some time, especially in rural and remote areas, where more than half of all doctors are
overseas-trained. Curtin will selectively recruit and train students for areas of unmet medical need.
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Curtin’s proposed Medical School will have a strong focus on primary care (GP training) and outer
metropolitan and rural and remote health. Part of this process will be a selective student intake policy to
increase to 50% representation from rural and remote and low SES communities including a program for
bonded scholars.
The health status of Western Australians is dominated by the population of relatively wealthy, older,
non-Indigenous people living in the larger metropolis and thus is similar to that of Australians as a
whole. However, in Western Australia there are huge areas of sparsely populated remote country. The
average population density is 0.94 persons per square kilometre, the second lowest in Australia and
compared, for example with Victoria at 24.5/km2. Western Australia has significant numbers of
Indigenous people (3.4% of the population, compared with 2.5% in Australia overall and Victoria at less
than 1% (ABS statistics, 2007).
Thus, there are sub-groups of the Western Australian population with health status and health needs
much worse than the Australian average – those in rural and remote areas, some young people, and
Indigenous people. This is due in part to environmental and social factors and also to the availability of
health services, including access to doctors.
Rural Western Australians, including Indigenous people, have higher rates of suicide, traffic accident,
falls, cardio-vascular disease (stroke and heart attack), type 2 diabetes, lung cancer, obstructive
pulmonary disease (COPD) and kidney failure than the general population and are more in need of health
care.
In 2009, persons aged 10-24 constituted 21.1% of the Western Australian population. Indigenous young
people form 5% of this total. Sixty per cent of these people live in rural and remote areas. The young,
remote Aboriginal person is particularly at risk of poor health. The unmet health need in these people is
enormous and one the proposed Curtin Medical School seeks to address.
MARINE AND COASTAL ENVIRONMENT
Just as the terrestrial environment is widely diverse across Northern Australia, so is the marine and
coastal environment. Baseline data in the marine and coastal space are often poor or non-existent. The
West Australian Marine Sciences Institute (WAMSI) – of which Curtin is a key member – is already
undertaking work in the Kimberley region to develop a far better understanding of the marine and
coastal environments. This approach might prove to be a useful blueprint for other aspects of Northern
Australia’s marine and coastal environments.
INTEGRATED LAND-USE PLANNING AND CUMULATIVE EFFECTS
The Integrated Land-use Planning and Cumulative Effects (ILPCE) project conducted by the International
Insititute of Agri-Food Security (IIAFS) will enable stakeholders to visualize the key dynamics of landuses, such as for crops, livestock, mining, forestry, oil and gas, transportation, tourism, and residential
and natural disturbance (e.g., fire, insects, climate, climate change, and urbanisation). The land-use
models can track the historic transformation of Western Australia, current land-use/landscape status,
and future land-use scenarios/projections. In this way, different growth strategies can be explored in
order to understand and prepare for alternative futures. This project will have great applicability for developing
the northern region of Australia.
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Partnerships with world leading institutions
In 2013, Curtin signed 40 international agreements that included articulation agreements, research
MOUs, sponsored student agreements, and student and staff exchange agreements. These agreements
focused on collaborative research, student exchange and student recruitment pathways through
articulation to Curtin campuses. Nine new student exchange agreements were signed, including
agreements with Nanyang Technological University, in Singapore. These agreements allow for increased
participation in exchange and study abroad programs across Curtin by students in each faculty.
A total of 837 international students sponsored by the Australian Government’s AusAID program (now
Australian Aid), foreign governments and universities, and international companies, were enrolled at
Curtin in 2013. Australian Aid student numbers have continued to hold firm. The main source countries
for these students are Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, Iraq, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Bhutan,
East Timor and the African continent.
Curtin was successful in securing $320,000 in AsiaBound program grants from the Australian
Government during 2013. This funding will see around 110 students across 12 projects travel to Asia as
part of their studies. The projects range from short-term study tours in India, China and the Philippines,
to semester-length study at Curtin Singapore and clinical placements in Cambodia.
More international students
Curtin has a strong commitment to international engagement with one of Australia's largest international
student populations. We maintain campuses in Malaysia and Singapore while also conducting face-toface teaching in a number of countries. This cultural diversity adds a rich and valuable dimension to our
campus atmosphere and also prepares our graduates to live and work in an increasingly global
environment. Last year internationally, Curtin had 16,560 international students with 8,742 of these
studying in Australia. There were nearly 3,000 students at Curtin Sarawak, in East Malaysia, and close to
2,300 at Curtin Singapore and a further 2,500 students enrolled across other offshore locations.
Central to Curtin’s International strategy is the building of bridges to Asia and beyond through its
teaching and research activities. Curtin courses continued to be offered in collaboration with partners in
China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Mauritius, Vietnam and Sri Lanka.
Effective engagement with international development in the
region.
UNESCO
Curtin is working to develop a strong linkage with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
organisation (UNESCO). Many higher education institutions (HEIs) are using ICT to develop course
materials, deliver and share the course content, lectures and presentations; facilitate communication
among lecturers and students; conduct research; and provide administrative and management services.
However, information on how ICT has been, and can be used to enhance the design, delivery and
management of higher education programmes in the Asia-Pacific region is not readily available.
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To encourage innovation and maximize the use of ICT for higher education, UNESCO has implemented a
project, ICT for Accessible, Effective and Efficient Higher Education, funded by the Japanese Funds-inTrust, to harness the potential of ICT in delivering higher education educational goals. It is targeted at
ministry of education officials and specialists responsible for higher education, administrators and
faculty members of HEIs, and higher education and ICT providers. Curtin is working on initiatives linked
to this project.
As the Millennium Goals are renewed and renamed the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in 2015,
Curtin is seeking to align its centres and research groups with the main SDG areas. Curtin is also working
on the Challenges Program with UNESCO. The concept is to establish long-standing focused merit
scholarships and aide packages for university study that young people anywhere in the world can access
and work to attain through the Curtin Global Challenges (international collaborative problem-solving
teams of 4 to 6 students that address UN Sustainable Development Goals and submit artifacts and
evidence for judging).
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