The head of one of Australia's largest transport companies wants governments to do more to address education standards as local students continue to fall behind their Asian counterparts.
Linfox chief executive Michael Byrne says education should rank above even improving infrastructure as a national priority.
"I think we need to do even more on education than we do on architectural infrastructure," he told AAP on Wednesday.
Mr Byrne told a business lunch in Sydney that Linfox, which has a large logistics presence in Asia and deals with clients from across the world, was increasingly hiring from overseas.
"Most of our graduates are now coming out of Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and China because they are just so well educated," he said.
"I can get someone from the National University of Singapore who speaks four or five languages, who is mathematically proficient in four or five languages. Why wouldn't we employ them instead of someone who comes from the University of NSW and speaks one language?"
The Abbott government has made building new infrastructure a priority and is encouraging state governments to privatise assets to fund new projects.
But Mr Byrne said while new and better infrastructure was important, education was the greater problem.
"Our problem is that our country is not keeping pace with globalisation," he said.
"Our politicians won't take on the real challenges in education...we are still not very focused on being bilingual at high school."
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