"It will take time for these graduates to get up to speed with their English - we know that," CPA Australia chief executive Geoff Rankin said.

"But let's not ignore that there is a positive story here about the value that bilingual and multilingual accountants can bring to Australia. The increasing convergence towards global standards in accounting and auditing means multi-lingual accountants will have an advantage."

CPA Australia issued its statement in response to last week's HES coverage of new data confirming low levels of English competence among former overseas students who have secured skilled migrant visas as Australian-trained accountants. Very few of these graduates have been able to secure work as accountants.

Accountancy as an easy route to permanent residency has been especially attractive to the weaker English speakers among mainland Chinese students, according to work by Monash University researchers Bob Birrell and Ernest Healy.

Arguing that a score of seven on the English test known as IELTS should be a minimum for professional level communication, they show that more than a third of international students given a visa as accountants in 2006-07 could not attain a score of six. The figure for mainland Chinese, an especially weak group, was 45 per cent.

Mr Rankin expressed his faith in reforms, including a new professional year, crafted by the federal Government in concert with industry and reiterated his support for a higher level of English competence.

But he was silent on the failure of the professional year - a likely path to permanent residency for graduates with weak English - to set an English language requirement.

Meanwhile, a paper by an accounting academic at the University of Southern Queensland, Kieran James, and Setsuo Otsuka, recently an education lecturer with Charles Sturt University, asserts that ethnic Chinese accounting graduates are victims of racist hiring practices by employers who demand Australian work experience and "Australian English".

They base their conclusions on Marxist theory and the perceptions of 10 Chinese-born graduates from Charles Sturt University.

One Beijing-born graduate, who sent out more than 100 applications for professional jobs and ended up working in a petrol kiosk, says: "I think it's because I don't have work experience in Australia; especially this is important for accounting job.

"At the final stages (of one selection process) they said you have to speak in the local language, (so you can) talk to the local people. I don't have this skill."

Dr James told the HES "many interviewers were asking questions as to where the graduate went to high school which implies that it is not formal language skills (as measured by IELTS) that is the main employer concern.

"The employers seem more interested in cultural fit, understanding local nuances of language, accent and culture, as well as socialisation skills."

Eight interviews were done in English. The fact that two students preferred to talk in Mandarin or Chinese "should not be viewed as prima facie evidence of their poor business English," James and Otsuka write.

"Clearly, the interviewees wanted to be as relaxed as possible (and) to impose a full English-language interview upon them against their will would have amounted to authoritarian and patronising behaviour."

They paraphrase one student as saying that "many Chinese graduates are so desperate and discouraged in finding that crucial initial job that forged reference letters are often used and circulate freely through graduate networks."

The academics defend the students: "It is hard to be unsympathetic to the graduates' predicament here: every employer demands 'Australian working experience' but, on the other hand, few appear to be willing to offer it to a fresh graduate''.

Dr Birrell and Dr Healy say: "Some employers may be using the cloak of poor English skills to mask prejudice towards overseas students (but it) cannot be denied that a substantial proportion of former overseas students who seek to gain accounting positions do not possess the requisite English skills."