Melbourne:
The Streets of Melbourne are not safe for Indians and the government should spend money on policing and preventing racial attacks to improve relationship, Australia's Opposition Leader Tony Abott said on Tuesday.
The remarks came in the wake of the government's move to arrange accommodation for a team of Indian journalists touring Australia.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is spending $250,000 on flights and five-star accommodation for the journalists in a bid to clear up a diplomatic row over a series of attacks on Indians, the AAP reported quoting Herald Sun.
During their visit, the team of 25 reporters will tour the Melbourne Cricket Ground and attend concerts of Bollywood composer AR Rahman scheduled to be held in Sydney and Melbourne.
Abbott said the money would be better spent preventing the bashing which was the basic "PR problem" between India and Australia.
"I think it would be much better spending the money on better policing of our streets because that's the basic problem," Abbott told Fairfax Radio Network.
"Our streets aren't safe, particularly the streets of Melbourne, which appear to have been pretty seriously under-policed.
"If you didn't have these racially motivated attacks in unsafe streets, we wouldn't have the PR problem, so let's go to the heart of the matter."
According to the DFAT, about $10,000 would be spent on each of the visiting reporters.
Gautum Gupta, Spokesman of the Federation of Indian Students in Australia said that the visits were "just marketing junkets paid for by the taxpayer", tightly scheduled and designed to gloss over problems.