The Foreign Pollcy White Paper

came out yesterday.
I put in a submission when public submissions were called for. It wasn't something I intended to do but a colleague emailed me and asked me to "say something about the languages issue".
Right. I could have said a lot. I said very little. From experience I know it is better to say very little - and have those you are addressing actually read it.They might even remember what you said.
What I had to say could be summed up as follows:
(1) We are not a linguistically able nation. 
(2) We have concentrated on teaching Chinese, Japanese and Indonesian in the belief that these are the languages we need for trading purposes
(3) We have failed to recognise the need for other regional languages and languages of global importance.
(3) There is a need for much greater linguistic ability and diversity if we are to even maintain our place in the world. Without increasing it we will fail.
Many Downunderites are monolingual. In a sense I am monolingual. I can use a few social phrases in many languages. If I have a dictionary to hand I can struggle and put a sentence together in a few. I know something (but not nearly enough) about many more languages - even, again with a dictionary, read some of them. What I can't do is speak another language fluently. I never had the opportunity to learn a language at school - apart from Latin. (I only did three years of Latin... it barely got me past the first declension.) 
All that came about  because I went to rural "area" schools until the last year of school. Languages were not taught in them then. The teachers were simply not available. 
Even then I was reading about other languages. Different ways of saying things fascinated me. It still does. I have gone on reading about language and languages. What all this has taught me is the importance of knowing at least two languages. I became increasingly conscious that throughout Western Europe almost everyone speaks at least two languages, sometimes three or more. 
When I write a communication board for someone who comes from Denmark or Sweden, Holland, Belgium or the like I often get told, "Do it in English and...." whatever language they are going to be surrounded in out in the field. They know that if it is in English instead of Norwegian or German or Italian or something then more people will almost certainly be able to use it.
I also know that, while English may be seen as the "universal" language by many, it isn't the only language on the planet. Too many native English speakers tend to be arrogant about this. They tend to assume that "everyone" speaks English or should be able to speak English.
So, I put my short submission in. Did they read it? Did they take note? There's a hint there that they might have noticed it. I suppose that's something. 
But I am still worried about my lack of linguistic ability - and that of so many others.