And the point you are trying to make is......?

I personally have a few gripes against the so called academic sector. Most of the reports they concoct are absolutely useless which have almost no relevance to anything but academic pet projects.

Michael in Adelaide is right to ask so what? I suppose that unis such as Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney who have large bequests might be OK.

Although Adelaide has major debt to equity problems and there are plans to do a Sydney Uni style cull of academics who haven't published three refereed papers in the last two years.

Unis such as Monash, RMIT, QUT, Uni NSW, etc, who are exposed to up to 30 percent of their cash flow derived from international students will be worried as the killing of this student comes too close to the Indian student assaults. How long can some of these unis can keep trading on without sacking staff? That's the story

"The death of a Brazilian student after being tasered by NSW police in Sydney could not have come at a worse time for Australia's embattled international student market which last year lost $3.3 billion in revenues."

So, when would have been a good time to kill an alleged dangerous ginger biscuit thief?

Perhaps never? Hopefully never anyway, because anyone of us could be next.

Although Brazilians seem to attract police killings, particularly when ovrseas trying to learn English, this has nothing at all to do with Australia running a university system off the backs of foreign students.

That we rely on this to have universities is appalling enough, but to link the murder of this man to a danger of a downturn in moneyspinning is grotesque.

Our police cannot be trusted with guns as it is, fancy giving them another lethal weapon to hang off their self-important swagger belts!

Remember after the police murdered the man by shotting him hundreds of times with a Tazer? The next week the Qld police had a mentally ill person to apprehend, so, conscious of the bad press when their (NSW?) colleagues Tazered a man to death the week before, they shot this fellow with a gun instead, saying they 'knew he had a heart condition and didn't want him to suffer the possible Tazer effects'.

Oh yes, I think that came from the police intelligence unit.

...Malcolm. The obvious question to be asked here is why were “six” police on the scene when a thief stole a packet of biscuits from a convenience store? Obviously there is more to this story than meets the eye. Egg on your face is the risk you take with your stand with this issue.

..."Realism has it" the already established cause for the decline in foreign student numbers, is directly related to a negative effect of the relationship of the high Australian dollar, which is (in turn), connected to the economic heat generated by the mining boom.

The Blue Cross:

...A very entertaining and succinct post...

Malcolm,the identity of the Tazered victim was not known until after his death, so it was not a police attack on a foreign student as such. He could have been a Packer or a Murdoch for all they knew or cared.
The fact that the victim was a student from Brazil will now play out in a way that will require all of Bob Carr's alleged skills in diplomacy.
What is required is an independent inquiry into all branches of authority who carry arms and are authorised to use force on our behalf i.e police and the military.
In conjunction with that or perhaps arising out of such an inquiry should be a permanent standing body to investigate all matters relating to excessive or unauthorised use of force, acts of bullying, corruption and the fostering of cultures inimical to the proper functioning of armed institutions.
Bruce Haigh

Ah Cheryl - your type never ceases to put words in other's mouths. I did not say "so what". I asked what the point of essay was.

I agree with Bruce that the nationality of the victim was unknown. But now we know he was an international student.

King obviously has been working in the media too long as has failed to show requisite compassion in his haste to make a political point.

I do remmeber though that when the Indian students were being assaulted in Melbourne and Sydney, both the Oz Government and the tertiary education sector sat on heir hands for almost a month.

For one month Australia was portrayed offshore in the most hostile way as being a redneck nation who didn't give a fat rats about the welfare of its international students. I wonder if we'll see a rerun?

I hear that Swan is funding a Millionaires Tazer Squad to hunt down stray Packers, Murdochs and Palmers, particularly as they pinch our ginger biscuits from the ground without paying for them.

Go Swanny, GO!

Will Rupert ever come home?

A friend of mine last year confronted two policemen on his property with guns drawn.They were chasing an alleged graffiti artist through his property to the beach.

Why does it take so much force to subdue minor crime? This never happened in the past.

Quite so, two coppers?

One with an RPG would have done.

The Blue Cross.This is a must view site for the police and military in Western Countries.http://oath-keepers.blogspot.com.au/ If you believe in the survival of your family and those you love,have a long hard look at the reality that confronts us all.

It seems that the more multi cultural a country becomes the more violence it experiences. Expecting young police girls to take on ethnic gangs without weapons is not very realistic.

Runner, was this person part of an ethnic biscuit stealing gang?

Amazing what the police keep from us, eh?

What are they scared of I wonder?

Still, the young policewoman of today probably has a Brazilian lurking where we shouldn't think about, so you'd think they'd know how to handle them, I'd say.

Just to call it a "market" is the height of ignorance.

While I have sympathy for the Brazilians family, he may have done us a great service.

If in fact the foreign market is in tatters, we just may have some chance of reclaiming the universities we all fund.

Instead of being run a businesses, designed to fund a really nice life style for an elite portion of the population, they may be salvageable, & returned as places of learning for our kids.

Yes, we'd have to break down some of the old boy network, but as we have just seen with the Qld elections, the masses can get nasty, with enough provocation.

With most fee paying students, particularly foreign ones gone, we might be able to get back to results reflecting ability to learn, rather than ability to pay.

Of course this would mean our universities would be overstaffed even more than is current. Culling the deadheads could return the sector to something approaching respectability.

Now all we need is a law making tenure illegal in any institution receiving public funds, to enable that culling, & we will be starting to get some where.

If all this came to pass, that Brazilian may have lost his life, but in doing so, contributed to our future well being to a very great extent.

No problem in ending tenure. KIlling off the international student market would drop Australia's population by about 700,000 but it would cut revenues by about $10 billion. That's potentially a lot of jobs.

THat's easy to find Chryl by taxing the religion industry and their $30b of untaxed income streams.

Also, by dumping the system wheerby the armed forces order things that will never work, Colins Class subs and 1960s helicopters, rusty used battleships, aircraft carriers for which we have no aircraft, and stike force fighters that no one else is buying, and have yet to be flown for more than a test flight.

In fact, that lot should come to about $100b every year for ever.

Cheap at twice the price Cheryl, if it meant we could again believe the bits of paper, given out by our universities, actually meant something.

Great way of getting the population down, particularly in over crowded decaying cities.

Great saving, getting all those drop kicks off the public payroll. We can pat the dole to about 8 of them, for each academic salary we save. Talk about win win.