Consular assistance is being offered to 1,300 Australians whose English-teaching company in Japan is going bust, Foreign Affairs minister Alexander Downer says.
Mr Downer said some of the teachers would return to Australia, while others would simply get another job.
Last month, the Osaka-based Nova Corporation reassured their 7,000 staff, 5,000 of whom are foreigners, that the company was not going out of business.
However, Mr Downer said on Friday that although the company had not “completely fallen over yet”, it would “fall over”, leaving 1,300 Australians financially stranded in a “very expensive” country.
“We’ll provide them with consular assistance if they need it,” he told ABC radio. “If they get into real personal difficulties, then we’ll obviously help them out.
“Otherwise, if they cannot find another job in Japan, then they’ll return to Australia.”
Mr Downer said there were no broader implications to the company’s collapse, it was simply going out of business through poor management.
“It is not as though people in Japan no longer want to learn English, or there has been a complete shift in the whole market, that’s not right,” he said.
