Function in honour of Dr S. Jaishankar, Indian Minister of External Affairs
Remarks at a function in honour of Dr S. Jaishankar, Indian Minister of External Affairs, at The University of Queensland
Date: 3 November 2024
Good evening all and welcome to The University of Queensland.
It is wonderful to see so many of you here. Looking out at this audience, our students seem to be getting older which means we must be making headway with lifelong learning.
It is our great honour tonight to host Dr Subramaniam Jaishankar, India’s Minister for External Affairs. Welcome, Minister.
It is indeed fitting that we host Dr Jaishankar here on the campus of Queensland’s oldest university – a global top 50 university if I can sneak in a bit of self-serving advertising – because education is now such a significant part of the relationship between Australia and India.
For UQ, India is a country in which we have made a strategic investment. We see India as a long-term partner. We have already established a Joint Research Academy with IIT Delhi which now has over 100 students enrolled in a joint PhD program. And here at St Lucia we host some 1,300 Indian students, the majority of whom are postgraduates in STEM subjects.
Our highest priority is to develop deep research partnerships with leading Indian institutions. Partnerships which focus on the national challenges of each country, because innovation will be a key determinant of both our futures.
In this way, our education ties with India are reflective of the broader strategy between our countries. A strategy anchored in a growing convergence of interests; a recognition that we each have something to contribute to the other and a commitment to take this relationship to new heights.
In the last 2 decades the Australia-India relationship has been transformed and the headroom for further growth is considerable.
The strategic distance, even indifference, of the Cold War years are now behind us. We are each grappling with the big challenges of our times: how do we construct a new strategic equilibrium in our shared Indo Pacific region which can manage the contest for primacy between the US and China? How do we navigate towards a world which will be more multipolar, more divided on the merits of an open economy, more cautious about globalisation, and more focused on national resilience?
Our starting points are different. Australia is a close ally of the US, and a huge beneficiary of the global order it fashioned in the aftermath of the second World War. India is deeply attached to its strategic autonomy, rightly insists that international rules must be agreed not imposed, and aspires to be a pole in its own right in an increasingly multipolar world.
But while our world views may not be identical, they are certainly compatible. And so the stage is set for this to become a partnership of substance; a comprehensive strategic partnership anchored in that most solid of foundations: shared interests.
We see this in our expanding geopolitical partnership, foreign and defence policy dialogue, our military-to-military exercises, our shared membership of the Quad, the G20, the East Asia Summit and the global multilateral institutions. And we see it in an expanding and complementary economic relationship. Indeed, there is no single market anywhere which offers more growth opportunities for Australia than India.
Beyond strategic and economic interests, we are now also connected by a third force which in the long term may prove to be the biggest single influence on the texture and rhythm of the bilateral relationship: the Indian diaspora.
In the space of just 20 years, we have seen the diaspora grow from modest numbers to hit one million in a national population of 28 million. When my family moved to Brisbane some 60 years ago we could and did host almost the entire Indian community of Brisbane in our family home. Today that would require entertaining some 90,000 guests.
The Indian diaspora is a shared asset. It can go into the nooks and crannies of the relationship in a way governments cannot. It acts as both a business and cultural navigator for 2 societies which still have only a limited contemporary sense of the other.
The diaspora is already making a substantial contribution to Australia. They are well educated, successful, community-minded and politically aware. As I have noted elsewhere, only slightly tongue in cheek, they are likely over the next few decades to have the largest political influence on Australia of any diaspora since the Irish imprint on the Australian Labor Party.
By contrast, the Indian diaspora influence is likely to be across both sides of Australian politics. This diaspora embrace of Australian politics is a legacy of India’s secular liberal democratic character which remains a crucial element in the way in which Australia defines its interests in India.
Let me now say a few words about our guest of honour, from whom we will shortly hear.
Dr Jaishankar is the foreign minister from central casting. He has had decades of experience as a diplomat. He has held the most senior posts in the Indian foreign service. He is a deep thinker and an eloquent advocate for his country. Remarkably, he has found time as Foreign Minister to write books setting out the principles, objectives and drivers of Indian foreign policy. He is one of the most highly regarded and influential foreign ministers on the international stage.
Dr Jaishankar and I overlapped for a few years as heads of our respective foreign ministries. He went on to assume ministerial office, enter politics and deal with the high stakes of international diplomacy. I went on to be a university chancellor and, as Henry Kissinger once unkindly observed, the politics of universities are so intense because the stakes are so small.
Minister, it is wonderful to see you again. You are a most welcome guest at The University of Queensland. We all look forward to your remarks.