Incentives that encourage international and local students to live side by side will help prevent attacks on foreign pupils, an academic says.
University of Melbourne Professor Simon Marginson says affordable, subsidised housing for a mix of local and international students would "act as a circuit breaker".
"It would improve safety - students would no longer be attacked on public transport at night - and would foster closer intercultural relations with locals," he says in a speech to be delivered on Wednesday at the Asia Pacific Association for International Education conference on the Gold Coast.
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'Intercultural relations'
"It is the only clear way to move forward on intercultural relations."
He is also calling for full human rights for international students in Australia.
Prof Marginson says the main conclusion from a five-year study to be published next month, is the need for a new framework to normalise international education, which is now Australia's third largest export industry.
He argues student security is an issue of comprehensive human rights, including consumer rights, and international students should be given the same rights as Australians, except in a small handful of areas like the right to vote.
'Treated as outsiders'
"The country of education still treats international students as outsiders, and their rights as privileges that can be ignored or revoked.
"This attitude has been rendered obsolete by mass global mobility in education, and by the need of provider nations for these students."
And he says the issue of international student security needs to be moved up the policy agenda of national governments, multilateral forums and global agencies.
Protection, respect
"China, India, Malaysia and others ought to be seeking a systematic regime of protection and respect for their student citizens.
"Ultimately what is required is a set of global protocols involving all of the relevant nations.
"Here international education could lead the development of global approaches in relation to other, more difficult forms of cross-border people movement, not just labour and business migration, but political refugees, and the growing number of people displaced by global climate change."
The conference will be officially opened on Thursday by former prime minister Bob Hawke.
