Launching the white paper Australia in the Asian Century yesterday, the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, said the curriculum changes would be compulsory in return for state and territory governments and private school organisations receiving Commonwealth funding for education which was soon to be boosted.The white paper recommendation, adopted by the government, says every child must have the opportunity to learn one of Mandarin, Hindi, Japanese or Indonesian and every school must be linked to a school in Asia to support the teaching process. In some instances this would require the national broadband network.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/target-asia-education-the-key-20121029-28dsq.html