It is a real pleasure and an honour to be here today and I want to thank everyone for being here in such numbers and with such enthusiasm to support the relationship between Australia and India.
I particularly thank Minister Sitharaman for her presence and for her words, I thank Mr Kapoor for his words and I hear, I hear, more importantly I am sure that some of the people sitting at these tables here as well.
Lindsay, Sam, Anthony, Peter more investment please – that is the message that is coming.
But it is a real honour to be here as Australia’s Prime Minister.
This is not my first visit to India. As a student, I spent three months travelling around much of northern India.
I was conscious of the historical links: the Indian soldiers who’d been with us at Gallipoli and in Palestine and who, in a later war, had passed with our own into captivity at Singapore.
I was excited by this land of contrasts; of the most ancient spirituality with the most modern technology.
I was fascinated by a country that was both exotic and familiar.
Not only was that a formative period in my life; it also left me with an abiding sense that India would soon make its mark in the wider world.
The India of today is the world’s second most populous nation; for most of the past three decades it’s grown at more than 5 per cent a year and, in purchasing power terms, it’s already the world’s third largest economy.
In short, India is the world’s emerging democratic superpower.
In India, as elsewhere in Asia, hundreds of millions of people are moving from poverty into the middle class; as successive governments have dismantled regulatory shackles and unleashed the flair and the drive that’s so obvious in the Indian diaspora.
I salute India’s achievement.
India has proven that economic transformation is quite compatible with robust free speech, independent courts, and democratic checks and balances on government.
My instinct is that India’s well entrenched democracy, commitment to the rule of law, and habit of lively debate will turn out to be its greatest intangible assets.
The purpose of this visit, as soon as possible in the life of the new governments here and in Australia, is to remind Australians never to neglect any of the emerging Asian great powers; and to reassure Indians that Australia is acutely conscious of all that our two countries might achieve together.
The election of new governments opens new possibilities for both our countries.
Australia is “open for business” – Prime Minister Modi is inviting the world to, “come, make in India”.
In Australia, over the past year:
- the carbon tax has been scrapped;
- the mining tax is gone;
- one-stop shop approvals for environmental permits are coming into place;
- $800 billion worth of big new projects have received the environmental go ahead;
- free trade agreements are being concluded; and
- the Budget is coming back under control.
India, for its part, has, so to speak, a new CEO, determined to bring to the whole country the problem-solving approach he brought to revitalising an important state.
As countries that believe in private sector-led growth, both Australia and India will be in a position to lead-by-example at the coming Brisbane G20 leaders’ summit, in committing to policies for an extra 2 per cent growth over the next five years.
Both Prime Minister Modi and I wish to be known as “infrastructure prime ministers” and the G20, fittingly, will focus on mobilising private capital to address the world’s infrastructure deficit.
Both India and Australia want to boost two way trade and investment and I hope that the comprehensive economic partnership – or free trade – negotiations between our two countries will be concluded, at the latest, by the end of 2016.
That way, top-quality Australian coal, for instance, will be available to power Indian households and businesses at the lowest price to consumers.
There has never been a better time to revitalise this friendship that has usually been warm but has often been under-developed.
We both need to be more ambitious.
These days, India is our largest or next-to-largest source of immigrants and our largest or next-to-largest source of overseas students.
As my CEO delegation attests, some of the half million Australians of Indian background are already very senior in business, culture, education and administration; and as I discovered yesterday, Australian cricketers are at least as revered in this country as at home – and this will only increase now that Brett Lee is to become the latest Bollywood star in a new Indian-Australian film co-production.
In a sign of the mutual trust and confidence that our two countries have in each other, Prime Minister Modi and I will today sign a nuclear co-operation agreement that will, finally, allow Australian uranium sales to India.
This was originally an initiative of the Howard Government; now brought to fruition by the Abbott Government.
Yesterday, I launched the New Colombo Plan in Mumbai which will mean, over time, hundreds of Australian students coming each year to India to complement the thousands of Indian students who come every year to Australia.
My Government is streamlining student visa arrangements and working visa arrangements to make it easier for Indians to study and to work in Australia.
If all goes to plan, next year, an Indian company will begin Australia’s largest ever coal development which will light the lives of 100 million Indians for the next half century.
But, as we have been reminded earlier today, last year, two-way trade between Australia and India was only $15 billion and Indian investment in Australia is well under $20 billion and the less said about Australian investment in India the better.
Trade and Investment is substantial – but it’s not what it should be – given our countries’ level of comfort with each other, our comparative proximity and the complementarity between our economies.
By contrast, two way trade between Australia and China is already running at $150 billion a year.
A reason for that is that Australia has spent three decades promoting trade with China while only recently re-discovering India’s economic potential.
So, with comparable time and effort, there’s no reason why the economic relationship between Australia and India should not resemble that between Australia and the major economies of North Asia.
Australia will not and should not neglect the economic gains to be made in North Asia; but we should not and must not pursue these at the expense of the mutual economic benefits to be had here in South Asia, especially as India’s GDP grows strongly.
My predecessor, John Howard, once said in respect of our historical ties and our economic ones, that Australia did not have to choose between its history and its geography.
Likewise, I’ve said of Australia’s relationships with the United States and with China, that you don’t make new friends by losing old ones.
I should add, in respect of our relationships with China and with India, that it’s possible to have more than one friend at the same time.
Over the past half century, Australian coal, iron ore and gas has powered the economic transformations of Japan, Korea and China.
We have been an utterly dependable source of energy security, resource security and food security.
My hope is that we can become an utterly reliable source of energy, resource and food security for India too.
Australia and India already have a formally-negotiated strategic partnership.
We already have an educational partnership comprising formal links between many institutions – mostly they’re Australian universities and institutes with campuses in India but a two-way street is starting to develop.
My hope is to develop an economic partnership commensurate with our countries, our two countries’ history and heritage and our people’s easy rapport with each other – a rapport that is evident today – mines and minds, if you like.
This doesn’t require governments to decree particular outcomes; more central planning is, I suspect, the last thing that either of our countries need.
The vital step is for more and more of our senior people to spend more time in each other’s company.
That’s why I’m so pleased to have with me a CEOs delegation from resources, finance, logistics, education, culture and sport.
We will discover, I’m sure, countless ways in which enterprises in one country could work well with enterprises in the other.
Furthermore, we’d also discover countless ways in which we share much the same approach to all the issues our countries’ face.
My business delegation likes Prime Minister Modi’s determination to ease the cost of doing business; for their part, our Indian business partners are looking forward to the $1 billion a year, every year, cut in Australia’s red tape costs.
The fundamental principle that we both live by is “treat others as you’d have them treat you”.
It’s not, get away with whatever you can, or do whatever it takes.
No, it’s the fundamentally ethical principle that every cricketer is supposed to assimilate – play by the rules and accept the umpire’s decision.
And it is this which explains why we can so easily work together and our two countries are so ready to trust each other on issues like uranium safeguards.
Around the world, Australia has many friends and few critics because we’re a strong ally, a reliable partner and among the most ready to help whenever trouble strikes.
Likewise, as a nation, India has always behaved scrupulously in accordance with international law.
We both deplore terrorism in all its forms and cooperate against it wherever it occurs.
We both take a dim view of border violations and believe that territorial disputes should be settled peacefully in accordance with international law.
The past 35 years have been a period of unparalleled material progress in the life of the world.
Especially in Asia, more people have come further, faster economically than at any other time in human history.
Nearly everywhere, including in countries without a democratic tradition, people’s lives are freer as well as richer.
Still, the further that countries and peoples advance, the more that’s at risk should there be conflict between nations.
Ultimately, we will all advance together or none of us will advance at all.
So, as economic weight shifts to the Indo-Pacific region, the strategic balances moves too.
I acknowledge India’s “look east” policy and I also acknowledge Prime Minister Modi’s very successful visit to Japan.
All the time, India’s potential is becoming more apparent.
Understandably, modern India is courted by many nations; and that is as it should be.
In the years ahead, India will have many friendships but few, if any, that will be as uncomplicated and as clearly mutually beneficial as that with Australia.
So, my friends, thank you so much for being here. I really do appreciate the presence of so many leaders in both our countries.
There is a future. It is bright and golden and it is there for us to grasp.
[ends]