Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share 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.

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