Diplomatist Magazine Diplomatist March 2019

SPECIAL REPORT “Australia and India are natural partners in IORA and we have worked well together to build it up. We are both at the ambitious end of what we wish to see IORA become.” niche sectors for Australia such as health, ﬁ nancial services, infrastructure, urban planning, sport and science, and innovation. The report also emphasises the role investment can play in expanding the relationship. I have suggested a target by 2035 to treble exports and to increase Australian investment in India by a factor of ten. Q Cooperation between Australia and India spans a range of areas like education, skills training, defense, technology, sports, tourism etc. Are you satisfi ed with the way things are taking shape? What more, according to you, needs to be done? We can always do better and the report sets out steps we can take to this end. Each of the ten sectors identiﬁ ed in the report contains recommendations on how to make more progress. It is a very detailed strategy ﬂ owing from the gap between supply and demand in the Indian economy which will only grow as the Indian economy grows. I have also recommended that each of the ten sectors has a ministerial champion in Australia who can help ensure that opportunities are identiﬁ ed and progress made. But the lead will have to come from business because trade is done by them not governments. So we need a stronger business to business relationship and it needs to be a two-way street. Q The Australia-India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement, a bilateral free trade agreement has been described as being “on the cusp” of completion for a number of years. What mutual advantages would a Free Trade Agreement bring? An FTA remains a useful objective. It will provide more legal certainty to trade and investment and enhance market access. It would also facilitate investment. As with all FTA negotiations each side has its wish list. But an FTA is unlikely to be concluded soon because our positions are still too far apart. That is why I have recommended that for now, we focus on the RCEP negotiations and once that is done we see what more needs to be covered through an FTA. There is a lot we can do without an FTA. Indeed the strategy in the report is not contingent on an FTA although obviously it would be made easier with an FTA. Q What role, in your opinion, Australia and India can play in order to pursue the common vision for a sustainable and prosperous future in the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA)? IORA is still in its early stages as a regional institution. The core challenge here is that it is not yet a deeply integrated region from a trade and investment perspective in the way that the Asia Paciﬁ c is. This needs to be the larger agenda of IORA. There are also synergies between IORA and the Indo Paciﬁ c concept although the footprint of the latter is, in my view, smaller than IORA. Maritime cooperation, tourism, and ﬁ sheries are other areas where IORA countries could do more together but all of this will take time. Australia and India are natural partners in IORA and we have worked well together to build it up. We are both at the ambitious end of what we wish to see IORA become. Q From the perspectives of ASEAN, kindly give us a sense of the past, present and future prospects of the trilateral relationship. I think trilateralism will grow more at the country level than with ASEAN as a whole. For instance, we now have an Australia-India-Indonesia dialogue and that is important. We both attach importance to ASEAN. Australia was ASEAN’s ﬁ rst dialogue partner and the countries of SE Asia are very important to both of our countries from an economic and strategic point of view. If we want to strengthen the institutions of the Indo Paciﬁ c and embed some core principles in the strategic culture of the region then ASEAN will have to play a key part. The concept of ASEAN centrality ﬂ ows from the fact that it can do things which the great powers cannot include an ability to convene. We need to work with this. But we also need to be realistic. Forging ASEAN consensus is a slow process and we have to work with the grain of the organization. That is one reason why in some areas we may make more progress with individual ASEAN countries than with ASEAN as a whole.  16 • Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Diplomatist • Vol 7 • Issue 3 • March 2019, Noida

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