I extend the warmest of welcomes to the Prime Minister of India, Mr Narendra Modi, or as I am discovering listening to the enthusiastic crowds that greet him everywhere he goes “Modiji”.
I don’t just say welcome to Prime Minister Modi, tonight I say welcome back because this is your third visit to Australia.
It may be the first visit by an Indian Prime Minister in 28 years but as Chief Minister of Gujarat you were an enthusiastic visitor to our country.
It is a momentous occasion, not just for the Australian Government but also for the Australian people as the crowds have turned out in their thousands for Modiji in Brisbane, in Sydney, in Canberra and here in Melbourne attest.
Now, I have to say, like many Australians I first visited India as a young man.
It is an ageless land – with an ancient spirituality that touches everyone.
Yet this ageless land has been transformed over the past 20 years.
And it has been renewed over the past six months.
It is a country renewed with the deepest of democratic traditions but now with an ethos that is not about perpetuation of power or past but about the advancement of all people.
One of the extraordinary things about modern India is that while it is indeed the most ancient of civilisations it is a remarkably young nation with almost 600 million people under the age of 24 and it was my great privilege to visit the University of Mumbai in September and you know it has 700,000 students in one university alone – and I thought Melbourne University was a big place.
Now, I have to say Australia has much to offer our Indian friends and India has much to offer us but again I want to thank India for the greatest gift it could give; the gift of so many of its people – some half a million Australians of Indian background.
The people-to-people relationship, I am pleased to say, is not just a one-way street. Today, Prime Minister Modi reminded us in the Parliament in his splendid and warm address to our nation’s highest assembly. He reminded us of John Lang the Australian journalist and lawyer who defended some of India’s early freedom activists in the courts of British India. As well as John Lang, tonight, if I may Prime Minister I wish to recall Doctor Sister Mary Glowrey who founded the Indian Catholic Hospitals Association.
She was born in Birregurra about 130 kilometres from here, she became a doctor in 1910, she left for India in 1920 where she lived out the rest of her life tending to the poorest of the poor.
Now, I am pleased to say Doctor Sister Mary has passed the first steps on the road to sainthood. So, if there ever is a second Australian saint, along with Mother Mary Mackillop, it is likely that this saint will be found in India.
Now, Prime Minister, we have spoken a lot today about business. We have spoken a lot about trade. Trade is not the end of friendship but it is often the beginning. Trade creates jobs, trade creates wealth and the more India trades the stronger India will be.
In January our Minister for Trade and Investment Andrew Robb will lead a mission of 300 Australian business people to India. Australia Business Week in India will be the largest business undertaking of its kind – the largest undertaking of its kind between Australia and India. The Minister will also attend the vibrant Gujarat Summit which Prime Minister Modi founded.
Now, I have to say, having spent time with Prime Minister Modi in India and now in Australia I can attest to the fact that this Prime Minister is a veritable force of nature.
When I said let’s do our free trade agreement in 12 months, he said, “no, quicker, quicker, quicker!”
I said let’s do it in six months, he said, “surely it is possible to do it in three.”
Well, if anyone can shake up the Indian bureaucracy it is Narendra Modi, but I have to say that it is this energy as well as this tranquillity which Prime Minister Modi radiates which is so central to the current resurgence of India.
As I have often said, India is the world’s emerging democratic superpower and I hope that in the months and years and decades to come Australia can help India to realise its destiny.
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