Lowy Institute for International Policy | India-Australia Relations
Overview Australia’s relationship with India has undergone
considerable evolution in recent years, developing along a positive
track since a difficult point in 2009. Existing economic, security and
people-to-people ties will provide an important basis on which
Australia can build its relationship with this important Indo-Pacific
partner. India-Australia trade relations India is Australia’s
tenth largest two-way trading partner, with a total volume of
AUD$11.9 billion in 2013. India is Australia’s fifth largest export
market, with coal, gold, copper ore and concentrates and agricultural
products among Australia’s major exports. These figures have fallen
considerably in recent years, registering a 22% decline in two-way
trade in the year up to 2013. There are, however, strong prospects for
the trade and investment relationship to pick up again, with the
likely revival of the Indian economy and growing Indian investment in
Australia. India-Australia Security Cooperation Australia and
India have a growing number of shared security concerns in the
Indo-Pacific region. In light of this, relations between Australia and
India were upgraded to the level of a ‘strategic partnership’ in
2009. Australia and India issued a Joint Declaration on Security
Cooperation with the aim of enhancing relations in this area. This
policy initiative closely followed proposals by the Lowy Institute,
set out in the paper Problems to Partnership: A Plan for
Australia-India Strategic Ties, which remains a blueprint for the
strategic relationship. The opportunities for Australia-India
security cooperation are particularly strong in the maritime domain.
Following successful humanitarian assistance and disaster relief
cooperation in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Australia
and India briefly took part in joint naval exercises through the
Quadrilateral Security Dialogue in 2007 before the grouping was
discontinued following Chinese discomfort and political second
thoughts. However, following the visit to Australia of the Defence
Minister of India in 2013 , it was announced that Australia and India
would hold joint naval exercises in 2015 with the intention of
strengthening their strategic partnership. In addition, there is
significant potential for enhanced cooperation through multilateral
organisations such as the Indian Ocean Rim Association, and the Indian
Ocean Naval Symposium. India-Australia people-to-people links
Indian-born Australians are now the fourth largest migrant community
in Australia and in 2011-2012 represented the primary source of
Australia’s migration program. The 2011 census revealed that the
number of Australians born in India more than doubled since 2006,
and Punjabi has become Australia's fastest growing language. This
will provide Australia with unique opportunities to strengthen its
economic ties with India. Beyond recent setbacks: Student attacks
and uranium Australia’s previous reluctance to export uranium to
India acted as an impediment to closer India-Australia relations. In
2007, the government of then Prime Minister John Howard stated its
intention to sell uranium to India for civilian purposes; however,
this policy was immediately overturned following the election of Kevin
Rudd’s Labor government in the same year. In 2008 the United
States concluded a historic Civil Nuclear Agreement with India, which
allowed India to purchase nuclear fuel and technology from the US for
civilian purposes. In the same year, the Nuclear Suppliers Group
granted India a waiver which exempted it from rules governing civilian
nuclear trade. Following on from these developments, in December
2011 the Australian Labor party, led by then Prime Minister Julia
Gillard, reversed its policy to allow the export of uranium to India
at its 46th National Conference. Negotiations over a safeguards
agreement covering uranium sales began in March 2013 and have
continued into 2014. One of the most significant setbacks in
India-Australia relations was the student crisis of 2009 and 2010.
Following a number of assaults upon international students of Indian
origin in Victoria and New South Wales in 2009, concerns were raised
by the Indian media and government regarding the safety of Indian
students in Australia. In response to media-driven perceptions that
there was a racial motivation to some of the attacks, large-scale
protests over the welfare of these students occurred in Melbourne,
Sydney and New Delhi. While diplomatic and policy measures were taken
by the Australian federal and relevant state governments to address
the issue, the crisis had a profound effect upon both the education
industry and broader bilateral relationship, and Indian student
enrolments in Australian universities dropped dramatically in the
years following the crisis. The crisis did however prompt enhanced
diplomatic attention to the bilateral relationship, with 26 high-level
Indian visits to Australia and 39 Australian visits to India since
2008. Both governments and wider civil society now acknowledge
substantial improvement in the way Australia ensures the welfare of
Indian studies in Australia, as noted in the outcomes report of the
2011 and 2012 Australia-India Roundtable, a forum that has helped
repair damage to mutual perceptions. What Lowy Institute does The
Lowy Institute has an exceptionally strong record of analysis,
commentary, research, policy proposals and events on Australia-India
relations. The International Security Program works with external
partners to convene an annual high-level Australia-India Roundtable,
the leading informal dialogue between the two countries. This dialogue
brings together prominent figures from diplomacy, think tanks, higher
education, politics, business and media from both countries to discuss
the challenges and opportunities that exist within the bilateral
relationship. This dialogue is convened in partnership with the
Australia India Institute and Observer Research Foundation, with
support from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and
Trade’s Australia-India Council and Public Diplomacy Division of the
Indian Ministry of External Affairs. In 2013 the Lowy Institute, in
conjunction with the Australia India Institute, released the
India-Australia Poll, a groundbreaking survey of Indian public
attitudes towards Australia. Shyam Saran, former Indian foreign
secretary and the 2015 Telstra Distinguished International Fellow for
the Lowy Institute, visited Australia in November 2015.