Planning and support for overseas programs

Pre-departure 

Prior to your departure, you should have registered your travel plans on the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Smart Traveller website before leaving Australia. If you’ve forgotten to do so, it’s not too late, jump on now. 

Travel insurance for overseas programs

All Swinburne students participating in overseas programs or activities (including semester exchanges, faculty-led study tours, overseas internships and overseas placements) must be covered by an adequate level of insurance for the entire duration of their time overseas.

Swinburne currently provides comprehensive travel and medical insurance to students, free of charge. The insurance will cover you for the duration of the academic program as well as personal travel either side for a maximum of 180 days (including travel days to/from Australia). The academic program duration is your program start and finish dates as specified in your official acceptance documentation provided by Swinburne Abroad, the host university or third-party provider (depending on your program).

Note: This insurance is provided by Chubb and includes an excess of A$500 (excluding medical claims where no excess is payable). If you’re overseas outside of the coverage duration (in excess of 180 days in total) you will need to contact Swinburne Abroad for advice and instructions to organise further insurance cover.

Note: It is not recommended that you combine insurance from both Swinburne (via Chubb) and another provider, as there may be problems if you need to submit claims on your policies.

If you have any questions around insurance provided by Swinburne, contact Swinburne Abroad.

If you’re accepted into a Swinburne Abroad program, you will receive more information on insurance as you get closer to your departure date.

This will include information covering:

• World Travel Protection – your 24/7 contact while overseas
• pre-existing conditions
• high-risk activities
• full policy information
• how to make a claim.
   

Booking your flights

Once you apply for your program, we know you will be eager to book your flights- please wait until you have acceptance documents for your program and confirmation from Swinburne Abroad. Current global events have meant that travel now involves a higher level of risk. All students participating in a Swinburne University overseas program are required to book their flights through Swinburne's approved Travel Management Company, REHO Travel.

Benefits of booking through REHO Travel:

• Improved risk management, to support Swinburne's duty of care to keep you safe
• REHO offer years of experience and knowledge and can provide advice on the best airlines, routes and tips for booking seamless travel. They can also provide advice about any associated risks with travel routes, stop-overs and more.
• A real person on the phone: for initial advice about planning your flights, changing your flights, questions about luggage allowances, missed flights or anything else, you'll have a real person to speak with- instead of a bot or a 1800 number with a long wait time
• You can book more than just flights- if you want to add on some personal travel before your program, cultural experiences, a train trip across Europe- REHO can help you and book all of these things as well
• Fly carbon-neutral: As part of Swinburne's Net Zero 2025 Pathway, all Swinburne university related travel is now carbon-neutral, which means a win for the environment as well as your conscience.  

How we keep you and the communities you visit safe

Swinburne University is committed to keeping you safe while you’re overseas and there are a number of ways that we work towards ensuring this. One of these is our commitment to DFAT through the PSEAH policy [PDF 710KB]. In line with these values, Swinburne has developed the Swinburne PSEAH Statement of Practice [PDF 425KB], where we are committed to managing the risk of sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment in our activities and programs both for our students and those within the communities we engage with. Another policy adhered to is the DFAT Child Protection Policy [PDF 1061KB], to ensure protection of any child associated with university-related activity including mobility programs. Our Child Saftey Statement of Commitment and Practice [PDF 155KB] has been established as a procedural guideline for the Swinburne community.

We work closely with all of our mobility partners to ensure they work in line with the standards of the policies listed above.

Reporting

Swinburne has one official contact for reporting any Prevention of Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Harassment (PSEAH) and Child Protection-related incidents related to mobility programs. All reporting to  the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) is handled sensitvely.

The Swinburne contact for all PSEAH reporting to DFAT is:

Stewart Collins, Associate Director Global Mobility – sjcollins@swinburne.edu.au

For more information on reporting please read the PSEAH and Child Protection policies [PDF 100.9KB].