Based on an Australian study creating sociolinguistic profiles of nine languages other than English (LOTE) commonly used in Australia, the report examines implications for public language policy and planning. The languages are: Arabic; Chinese; French; German; Modern Greek; Indonesian/Malay; Italian; Japanese; and Spanish. The report begins by giving an overview of the history of commonwealth language policy and outlining state and territory language policy initiatives. It then describes the current state of LOTE and English language policy and offers some background on the theory of language planning. A chapter is devoted to language policy in the context of business and trade. Explanations of trade patterns with the countries represented by the nine languages are offered here. The final chapter explains the project in which the sociolinguistic profiles were created and summarizes them, focusing on three aspects: the individual languages' role in relation to migration and Australian society; quantitative data resulting from the study; and qualitative data emerging from the study. Results of a student attitude survey are also summarized. Contains 172 references. (MSE)