Utter nonsense. Anyone knows that to make yourself understood in any foreign country, should you be so foolish as to travel to one, all you have to do is shout.

If they still cannot understand you, shout louder.

Any business that has to be done with foreigners, can be done by fly in fly out workers or import some foreign speaking people on 547 visa's as skilled speakers.

Dear Banjo Patterson,

I agree with your take on government involvement in
language teaching as does Joseph Lo Bianco - Professor
of languages and Literacy Education at Melbourne University
and former director of the National Languages and Literary
Institute of Australia. You may be interested in the following
summations from the link given below:

"If you look across the world in English-speaking countries
they struggle to get languages taught but in non-English
speaking countries there's an immense amount of language
often including English. So it is because English is like
an auxillary language across the world. Bulgarians who
study English as a second language imagine they will be able
to use it in Zimbabwe, in Thailand, in Singapore and Japan."

"So while English does have this ability, the problem that this
produces is a laziness and complacency about language studies."

"Part of the problem is that "People think if English has this
function in the world why should I learn other languages?"

"That causes a big problem for us because we need other
languages."

Prof. Bianco states that "We don't need everyone to do
Asian languages. English is a very important language
worldwide, it gets people around. However we need to be
able to enter other people's communities and societies on their
own terms and that means knowing their languages. Obviously
most of our trade and commercial relationships are with
Asia so we have to focus very heavily on understanding our
region and the countries in our region better."

"While English does have this capacity it limits you to just
certain kinds of functions. We need to know societies well.
Imagine trying to know Chinese Society just through English.
Sure, English allows you to get into hotels and get
through airports but it won't help you with many things in
China."

In any case Professor Bianco does not think that a "quick
fix," attitude is the solution to the teaching of languages
in this country - the following link tells us why:

http://thediplomat/2014/07/australias-foreign-language-deficit/

Oooops - my mistake - the link should read:

http://thediplomat.com/2014/07/australias-foreign-language-deficit/

English has a place in our schools as a compulsory subject, like basic mathematics it is needed in everyday life.
Any other language studies should be by the students choice and with access to the internet that choice should only be limited by availability, for example Konkani is well catered for even though it is spoken by only 2.7 million.

I think it would be a much better idea if we made English a compulsory language in our schools.

Of course, first we would have to make sure the teachers could actually use the language, before they became teachers.

If we want a second compulsory language, lets make it an important one like math. If more people, particularly the ladies actually understood math, they would be much harder to scam. If everyone had adequate math the scam of global warming could never have got off the ground.

Hasbeen, "I think it would be a much better idea if we made English a compulsory language in our schools"

An outcome of the indigenous policies (combined with multiculturalism) of the Whitlam and later Labor governments is that generations of aboriginal children did not receive English language education and are functionally illiterate and unable to participate fully in the world outside their communities.

Of course they are most likely functionally illiterate in their mathematics too.

General Comment
The OP proposed Asian language as a compulsory second language in schools. The opposition is to that and not to languages per se. So the strawmen of some posts is dishonest.

Asians already make up a sizeable rump of cities and there are also large numbers of international students and workers on temporary visas who are Asian (and many of whom are trying to win citizenship).

Arguably, Australia already has plenty of exposure to Asian culture.

Study of languages at primary and secondary levels does not produce any fluency at all. However a forced second language that MUST be Asian as the OP demands, will discriminate against most students, and favour Asian students in obtaining the necessary OP for tertiary entry.

It is more social reengineering, where such social tweaking has a sorry record for its unforeseen negative consequences.