Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Acting Prime Minister. How is the Albanese Labor government supporting greater opportunities for Australia through our partnership with India?

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question. Tomorrow is going to be a very exciting day as the coin is tossed at the beginning of the fourth test at the largest stadium in the world, the Narendra Modi Stadium in Gujarat. Right now on the field is a banner which proclaims 75 years of friendship between Australia and India through cricket. Indeed, Australia was the first country with whom India had formal diplomatic relations after independence, and cricket has been at the heart of our relationships since independence. Indeed, months after Indian independence, Australia and India played our first test match together when India toured Australia in 1947-48. It was the one series that Bradman played against India, and in the first test in Brisbane he scored 185 not out. I'm pretty sure that my father was there to watch it. When Prime Ministers Albanese and Modi walk onto the ground tomorrow there is every chance that they will do so in front of a world record crowd for a test match—a record which up until now has been held by the MCG, and has been since 1960.

Cricket is perhaps the best symbol of what we have in common as two countries. You can have an engrossing conversation with a taxi driver in New Delhi about Virat or Tendulkar in a way you can't really have even with a taxi driver in New York. Foreign relations is not very different to human relations and, as two countries, we are the very best of friends. Right now, that matters. Because India is becoming a superpower. India and Australia have greater strategic alignment now that we have had at any point. There is an enormous opportunity for us to be trading with India, and a large part of Prime Minister Albanese's delegation to India is as a trade delegation.

This is a relationship which matters because we share an ocean, we share a region and, increasingly, we are becoming security partners. Last year I had the enormous honour, when I visited India, of riding aboard a P-8 Indian Navy aircraft—the plane that we operate. This is a really sensitive platform which is engaged in reconnaissance and surveillance, and it says everything about the trust that India has in our country that they would allow an Australian defence minister to be aboard.

What transcends our relationship from one of being friends to family is the vibrant and growing Indian diaspora which is in our country today, and which will very soon be producing cricketers for our own test team. As our two countries consider our relationships with China, with the United States, with the region and, indeed, with the world, we are strikingly similar. We do live in an era of strategic complexity and threat. But, while the way forward is not obvious, some matters are clear. Now is a time to be close to friends and, in the community of nations, India stands in the very top tier of the very best friends that Australia has.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I call the Leader of the Opposition, on indulgence.

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to join with the Acting Prime Minister, endorsing his words and wishing the Prime Minister and the delegation every success in what is a crucial opportunity for both of our countries. As the Acting Prime Minister pointed out—I can't say 'Acting Prime Minister' enough, of course, Richard!—the relationship between our two countries is certainly based on our mutual respect for the game of cricket. But it's so much more than that.

When you look at the diaspora community here, there are young students who are escaping poverty and creating a life here in Australia that couldn't have been imagined a generation ago, or two generations ago. The opportunity that they're bringing to their children and their grandchildren, and the role that we play here in that story, is a remarkable one. I want to pay tribute to all Australians of Indian heritage, because they are entrepreneurial, they work hard, they educate their children and they're an integral part of Australian society. Prime Minister Modi points out in discussions the opportunity to export that talent from India into countries like ours.

We will be anxious about the first and second days. For all the cricket tragics in this place, we haven't seen too much cricket in days 3 and 4 in the recent past. I hope that we can tidy it up in the last session of the second day, but we'll see. But we do wish the Prime Minister every success in this opportunity between our two countries.