Australia cosies up to India to balance China, but is the relationship overrated?
- The Quad partners ended a 10-year deadlock to seal a trade deal and are getting closer, bound by a mutual interest in countering Beijing’s influence
- But their economies are not ‘especially compatible’, and India’s desire for strategic autonomy means it won’t support the US in a conflict with China
The boost in relations helped end Canberra’s decade-long deadlock with New Delhi, notorious for its protectionism, over the terms of their first free-trade agreement, which Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government speedily sealed last year.
For a long time, “Australia had never been in the first rank of India’s international priorities”, said Peter Varghese, Canberra’s former ambassador to Delhi and the architect of its key Indian economic strategy, in a report published in 2018. The strategic and economic interests of the two countries “rarely intersected”, he added.
During the visit, Modi will not only engage in talks with Albanese but also meet an estimated 20,000 members of the Indian diaspora at the Sydney Olympic Park, echoing a similar event that took place in 2014.
While these engagements and the Australia-India Economic Cooperation Trade Agreement is a sign of deepening ties between the two, experts and business insiders say it remains to be seen whether there will be a rush of Indian firms coming Australia’s way.