Oceania | Diplomacy | Oceania

Modi in Melbourne: Wide-ranging Australia-India Cooperation Deepens

The contemporary Australia-India relationship is built on an increasingly interconnected web of institutional cooperation.

As has become the norm in countries with large Indian diasporas, this week’s visit to Australia by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was more a festival than a diplomatic exchange. Alongside meetings with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and business leaders, there was an event at Melbourne’s Docklands Stadium, which attracted 35,000 people, and included music and dancing alongside speeches by Modi, Albanese, and Victoria’s premier, Jacinta Allan. 

Such events are part of India’s soft power projection, and a way for Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to cultivate links within (and attract donations from) diaspora communities. But these events are also increasingly seen by Australian politicians as a way of gaining support among Indian Australians, who have rapidly become Australia’s largest foreign-born group. They are now an electorally significant force. 

Yet among such showmanship and politicking there was serious bilateral engagement being conducted as well. Rather than producing a single headline announcement, Modi’s visit delivered a coordinated package of agreements spanning defense, economic security, energy, education, science, technology, and cultural links. Taken together, these agreements demonstrate that the relationship between the two countries is now reaching a level of institutionalization that has previously eluded them.

Given the increasingly fragile global environment, security cooperation was the centerpiece of these agreements. The new Joint Declaration on Defense and Security Cooperation was presented as a “step-change” in bilateral ties, with the two countries agreeing to establish an Annual Defense Ministers’ Dialogue, deepen interoperability between their armed forces, and expand military exercises under the Mutual Logistics Support Arrangement. There was also a commitment to expanding defense industrial collaboration, defense science and technology, military education, wargaming, and exchanges of military personnel.  

With both countries keen to be major security providers in the Indian Ocean, maritime security was a core feature of these new arrangements. The two prime ministers announced an India-Australia Maritime Security Collaboration Roadmap to strengthen information sharing, capability development, and operational coordination, as well as a Memorandum of Understanding between Australia’s Maritime Border Command and the Indian Coast Guard that will support cooperation at sea. 

The second major pillar of the visit was enhancing economic engagement. Building upon Canberra’s New Roadmap for Australia’s Economic Engagement with India, the two governments identified clean energy, education and skills,........

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