MELBOURNE, Sept 10: Australia-India ties will become more robust under Prime Minister-elect Tony Abbott, who had once described India as an emerging super power that should not be taken-for-granted, analysts here have said.
“I strongly believe that relations with India will become much stronger during the Liberal Government,” said Amitabh Mattoo, Director of the Melbourne-based think-tank Australia India Institute (AII).
He criticised the outgoing Labor government for having a policy towards India that ranged from “cold to warm to lukewarm”.
“Sustained bilateral partnerships are not built on grounds of political expediency, but a recognition that India and Australia have much more common in terms of values and interests than most other countries in this region. I think the Liberal leadership understands that well,” he said.
Calling the poll results largely good news for India, experts said they believe Australia-India ties will become more robust under the coalition led by Abbott’s Liberal Party.
The previous Liberal Government of John Howard made the decision to actively engage India, and this policy is expected to be continued by Abbott’s administration.
Last year, Abbott told a business leaders’ meeting that he would take India seriously and work for stronger ties. “As Prime Minister…I would take India seriously as I have always done,” he said.
“There are three categories of countries that are particularly important to Australia – our neighbours, our major trading partners and our key strategic allies…And India falls into all three categories,” he said.
India is an “emerging English-speaking super power” and “this means it should never be the emerging super power that’s taken-for-granted or neglected”, he said.
Describing Indians who come to Australia as “model citizens”, Abbott pledged himself to building an “even stronger friendship between our two countries”.
Experts also pointed to Abbott’s early 1980s visit to India, when he was 23 and spent three months in Mumbai, Delhi, Kashmir, Rajasthan and Bihar as a backpacker.
Abbott has praised Indian democracy, and has happy recollections of spending several months in the country as a young man, said Rory Medcalf, programme director of reputed foreign policy think tank Lowy Institute.
“The good news for India is that Saturday’s election of a conservative Government under Tony Abbott marks the best kind of continuity when it comes to strengthening ties between the Indian Ocean democracies,” he said.
“This matters, given that Australia is becoming increasingly important as a trade and investment partner as well as a strategic friend for India in the shared maritime region of Indo-Pacific Asia.”
Medcalf noted that India is Australia’s fourth-largest export destination. “Secure energy supply – from coal to natural gas to uranium – looks set to bind the nations more tightly, alongside defence cooperation, education, joint scientific research and migration,” he said.
“Hinduism is now Australia’s fastest-growing religion. Indians, including the business community and the policy establishment, should feel comfortable knowing that Canberra’s new Government will continue to improve on bilateral ties,” he said.
“For a start, Abbott would do well to affirm the Indo-Pacific nature of Australia’s outlook and the important place of India in that worldview,” Medcalf said.
“An Abbott-led Government will be well disposed to pragmatic partnership with India. It lacks the ideological baggage that delayed and initially distorted Labor’s relations with New Delhi, and will have strong collegiate relations with conservative State Governments in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane, where much of the real business of Australia-India relations is now done,” he said.
However, Australia, as a “self-respecting middle power”, will also be looking for reciprocity, Medcalf said. “On uranium, the Abbott Government is likely to give new impetus to negotiations on safeguards to open up commercial opportunities for exports,” he added.
The Liberal Party has consistently supported uranium exports to India since 2007, he pointed out.
Congratulating the Prime Minister-elect on his landslide victory, Australia India Business Council representative Ravi Bhatia said the Australia-India relationship had started blossoming at the political level since the time of John Howard and followed by the two Labor premiers.
“I am sure that the political level and trade relationship will continue to grow even more rapidly under the stewardship of Abbott and Foreign Minister-in-waiting Julie Bishop,” he said.
“Both the Liberal leaders and their colleagues in the coalition have very warm feelings towards India,” Bhatia said, pointing to the growing participation of the Indian diaspora in the recent election.
“The successful Indian diaspora is undergoing a political awakening as evidenced by the number of candidates of Indian origin in the recent election,” he said.
Welcoming the change of Government, Vasan Srinivasan, Interim Chairman of the Confederation of Indian Australian Associations, said the election of the Liberal Party under Abbott promises to deliver on crucial policy areas, including immigration policy and trade, which are of great interest to the Australian Indian community. (PTI)
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