Education Minister Bill Shorten wants the country's universities to become the "Oxbridge of the Asia Pacific", after declaring Australia is not as ready as it could be for the Asian Century.
Australia was well-positioned to take advantage of "the biggest opportunity since the Gold Rush", Mr Shorten told the Victorian and the Asian Century Conference in Melbourne.
However, he added Australia was not entirely ready for when Asia becomes the epicentre of the global economy, and despaired that more local students were not studying an Asian language.
Spruiking the government's Better Schools plan and its focus on Asian languages, he said less than six out of every 100 Australian students study an Asian language in their final year of school.
"More Aussie kids were studying Indonesian in the early 1970s - back when Ian Chappell was captaining the Australian cricket team - than there are now," Mr Shorten said on Thursday night.
"Australia has learned the hard way that you can't expect to win the Ashes unless you get runs on the board."
Mr Shorten said Asia was "not a dollar sign or a market", but a place with different histories, cultures, religions, languages and expectations.
"You can't expect to win in Asia unless you understand the region's languages and cultures," Mr Shorten said.
"We won't succeed with a fly-in, fly-out mentality towards Asia."
Australia should aspire to become the Oxbridge of the Asia Pacific, "attracting the best and brightest scholars of the region".
"The chances are the next Galileo will be born in Asia - imagine if we could educate that child in Melbourne," he said.
"Why not develop an Asia-specific grant scheme - a 21st century Rhodes scholarship-in-reverse?"
Asia made up nine of the top ten countries for international students in Australia, he said.
And while only 10 per cent of Chinese students studied abroad, in five to ten years that figure would leap to 68 per cent.
"This will create enormous opportunities for the higher education sector - and strengthen Australia's links with the region," Mr Shorten said.
