Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm delighted to speak on the delegation report, and I again thank the deputy chair for tabling this in the House. The visit of the representatives from the Standing Committee on Environment and Energy to India last November was of enormous value. The primary purpose of the visit was to inform an inquiry we had at the time looking into the prerequisites for introducing nuclear energy to Australia. As a country with demonstrable expertise in that field, the committee learnt a great deal from India. We also learnt about the challenges India faces in its own transition to a cleaner energy mix as well as some of its challenges in the areas of waste management and recyclables.

As any of these international delegations prove to be, there were surprises in this one. There were three big takeaways for me. Firstly, India, like Australia, is facing its own challenges when it comes to issues of climate change and indeed the energy debate. Of course their challenges are very different from ours because of the magnitude of the economies, the population, and we come from a different starting place. But India, like Australia, is a very rich democracy, and it would come as no surprise to members of the House that when we visited some agencies and institutions, government ministers and members of civil society we heard a diverse range of views, including on the issues of energy and of course of nuclear power.

The second big takeaway for me was with regard to India's view of Australia—in particular, the very high regard in which Australian resources are held and the arrangement that we have with India with respect to uranium and an acknowledgement of the depths of Australia's reserves in that regard.

The third big takeaway was technology. India is investing the most enormous amount of technology to improve its energy. Again, its challenges are very different from ours, yet here's something we definitely do have in common and in abundance—that is, a reliance on technology. And when our own minister introduced the Technology Investment Road Map earlier this year, India was very quick, because, again, we had an example in a country that is investing in technology—technology right across the field—from renewables through to the use of fossil fuels. In the area of nuclear energy, something we learnt a lot about, Indian institutes are reducing nuclear waste through the closed cycle systems through explorations. It really is world leading, and it was a great privilege for the committee to learn firsthand from some of those experts.

If I can close with a comment about India and Australia more generally. Along with other members of our House, I feel deeply about some of the challenges faced by India today through this pandemic. We share such a rich common set of values as democracies, and the relationship between the leader of our country and theirs, I believe, is symptomatic of the fondness that Australians feel towards the people of India. As our small parliamentary visit indicated, the relationship is not just at a parliamentary level but indeed with members of India's civil society. Hopefully, that relationship through trade, people to people and cultural exchange can only continue to expand as time goes on. Thanks very much.

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