PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you very much Lieutenant General Mohan for your very warm welcome and for inviting me here today.
We are honoured to be in your company and I want to acknowledge among my party the High Commissioner, Harinder Sidhu, the Australian High Commissioner and of course many other distinguished members of the government including the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Frances Adamson.
It is an honour also to be here and to recognise the long history of Australia’s involvement with this great institution.
Australian students have made the pilgrimage to study at the college almost every year dating back to 1966— among them, as Lieutenant General Mohan and I recollected earlier, Australia’s current Governor-General, General Sir Peter Cosgrove.
And today, Australia is represented here by Captain Simon Bateman of the Royal Australian Navy and we were discussing earlier that the last time we met was in Nowra, which is a long way from New Delhi, at HMAS Albatross.
For more than a century, Indian and Australian soldiers, sailors and airmen have worked alongside each other, fought alongside each other, in peace and in conflict.
On Anzac Day later this month we will remember the thousands of Indian soldiers who fought alongside Australian troops in every theatre, in Gallipoli, across the Middle East and indeed on the Western Front during the First World War.
This year sees the anniversaries of some of the major engagements of World War Two, where in Malaya, Singapore, the Middle East and North Africa, Australian and Indian troops fought together side-by-side.
It also marks 75-years since the war arrived to Australia’s shores, starting with the Japanese bombing of Darwin in February 1942.
We remember men like Flying Officer Manmohan Singh, one of the first Sikh aviators of the British Indian Air Force, who became the first Indian war casualty in Australia when his Catalina was downed off Broome in 1942.
Threads like these tie our defence histories together, and create long-lasting bonds that draw our nations even closer together today.
Now Captain Bateman is fortunate to be posted here in India at a time when the strategic interests of our two nations are clearly converging.
At the Indian Ocean Rim Association in Jakarta last month I discussed why a secure, stable, peaceful and connected Indo-Pacific is vital to the security and prosperity of Australia, as indeed it is for India.
Cooperation on regional stability sits squarely in the interests of both our nations. Our top five trading partners, for example, are all located in the Indo-Pacific and—like India—we depend heavily on the oceans for our trade. More than 98 per cent of our international trade by volume arrives in Australia now by sea.
Today more than ever, our economies rely on the maintenance of free and secure trade routes across the Indo-Pacific.
One of the more significant regional challenges we face, of course, is competing maritime claims in the South China Sea. But we also face common challenges in combatting terrorism and transnational crime.
As like-minded liberal democracies we can work closely together to champion international law, and ensure that challenges like these—and any threat to the rules-based order on which our economies so heavily depend—can be peacefully resolved.
Our bilateral Framework for Security Cooperation is a strong platform for collaboration. But Australia and India also need to engage our friends and partners to form broader habits of cooperation, develop each other’s capabilities, and shape the entire region’s common strategic outlook.
Our trilateral engagement with Japan is a good example of this, as are our respective bilateral engagements with the United States.
We’re both supporters of the ASEAN-backed East Asia Summit, and I know that India engages with a range of Indian Ocean states directly—especially in South East Asia—which we strongly commend.
Prime Minister Modi has described his vision for our Indo-Pacific neighbourhood as Security and Growth for All in the Region—a vision founded on a climate of trust and transparency, respect for rules and norms, sensitivity to each other’s interests, and an increase in maritime cooperation.
I share his vision for a stable and prosperous Indian Ocean region and Australia plans to work closely with India and others to make it a reality.
As the Indian Ocean washes at both our shores and our economies are defined by maritime trade, it makes sense that Australia and India’s defence links are strongest at sea.
Australia is already a significant Indo-Pacific naval power in its own right. We have one of the largest and most sophisticated naval forces in the region, with nearly 50 commissioned vessels and more than 14,000 personnel.
And we have just embarked on Australia’s largest peacetime investment in national security.
Our modernisation of the Australian Defence Force, in particular our nation building shipbuilding plan, will create thousands of new jobs and a sustainable, internationally-competitive sovereign defence industry.
Our defence industry investment is a truly historic national enterprise. It is the most significant modernisation, investment and construction in defence capability since the Second World War.
In particular, it focuses on the importance of our own capabilities right across defence and shipbuilding. Over the next generation we have committed to the construction of 12 future submarines, 9 future frigates, 12 offshore patrol vessels.
Our forces are closely integrated with our allies and our partners. We have much to gain, Australia and India from our navies working together, as we already do.
Our navies have, in recent times, engaged more and more in port visits and short-term passage exercises.
HMAS Perth was in Goa last October, and HMAS Arunta in November. And the INS Sumitra conducted port visits to Sydney and Darwin late last year as well.
In September 2015, our navies conducted their first Bilateral Maritime Exercise in the Bay of Bengal—a great success, which we’re aiming to repeat in our next joint exercise off the West Australian Coast in 2018.
The feedback from that first Exercise AUSINDEX showed how well the two navies cooperated. Many Royal Australian Navy personnel commented that when visiting Indian Navy ships they felt very much at home, with very similar shipboard routines, orders and command organisation.
I look forward to providing an opportunity for our Border Force to work jointly with the Indian Coast Guard.
Yesterday Prime Minister Modi and I witnessed the exchange of an MoU that will enhance our cooperation on a range of security challenges, including counter-terrorism, cyber-security, people smuggling and anti-people trafficking.
We’re also supporting each other in multilateral exercises—the Royal Australian Navy has been a regular participant in India’s Exercise MILAN and Australia encourages India’s participation in security, rescue and arms removal exercises in Australian waters.
I acknowledge India’s leadership in establishing the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium, which has become a vital channel for the frank flow of information between Chiefs of Navy across our region.
While our defence interests are undoubtedly most aligned at sea, Australia is highly invested in boosting our army and air force cooperation as well.
A modest but significant program of army bilateral training grew last year on the back of reciprocal visits by the Australian and Indian Chiefs of Army.
A growing area of focus for us is our cooperation on countering improvised explosive devices, and I look forward to seeing this cooperation grow.
The relationship between our air forces should also be built up. We will continue to operate common aircraft in the future, giving us the scope to exchange information and ideas.
There’s also scope for our air forces to develop humanitarian assistance and disaster relief exercises and with the right focus, this arm of our joint defence capability will be able to accomplish outcomes equally as impressive as our navies and armies.
So that’s just a snapshot of our shared undertakings but what it makes clear is that our defence partnerships are experiencing a great deal of positive momentum.
What Australia and India need to do now is to capitalise on that momentum, deepen the engagement, and increase the consistency and complexity of our activities.
The second iteration of our Army Special Forces exercise AUSTRAHIND is scheduled for later this year, and Australia looks forward as I noted, to hosting our next Maritime joint exercise, AUSINDEX, next year.
We are keen to finalise arrangements to better facilitate logistics for combined exercises and training.
And our engagement in materiel, science and technology will continue to progress thanks to the establishment, late last year, of the Joint Working Group on Defence Research and Materiel Cooperation.
Supporting a relationship as active and growing as ours requires the people to keep it moving, which is why we want to increase our defence representation in India over the coming years.
People-to-people links, either through senior-level engagement or education and training opportunities, are absolutely critical to ensure our defence forces develop the familiarity and trust that underpins a close and long-lasting relationship.
Just as our Australian officers have appreciated the opportunity to attend fine Indian training institutions such as this, the National Defence College, Australia has been pleased to host Indian officers at our own institutions.
Australia welcomes students to the Australian Command and Staff College and the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies. I look forward to meeting later today those of you planning to visit Australia on your study tour next month.
Our defence cooperation rests on the commitment and effort of our people and it always has.
Our countries share a history, our democratic heritage and a common love of freedom. We also share an ocean, rapidly converging strategic interests, and a future in this the most dynamic region in the world.
We are natural partners—today more than ever—and the Australian Government will continue to do all in its power to ensure that that partnership continues to flourish.
Thank you very much.
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