Australia's High Commissioner to India, Philip Green, is one of Canberra's most seasoned diplomats. Having helped shape Australia’s Indo-Pacific strategy, Quad engagement and key strategic partnerships, the former adviser to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd speaks with Jayanth Jacob on India-Australia ties, regional security and the evolving global order.
Here are the excerpts from the interview with him:
PM Modi’s Australia visit delivered the long-awaited uranium cooperation deal. What, in your view, are the biggest strategic takeaways from the visit?
We are substantially deepening our Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, which has now been in place for five years. The upgrade to our Joint Declaration on Defence and Security sends a powerful signal to Indians, Australians and the wider region that we are trusted partners in an increasingly complex strategic environment.
At a time of growing contestation and uncertainty, Australia is looking to partners with an even greater degree of reliability and engagement. India has emerged as a top-tier security partner, and the new Joint Declaration reflects our growing confidence in and reliance on each other. The Maritime Domain Awareness Roadmap highlights our shared security interests where our strategic geographies converge -- the Indian Ocean.
Beyond defence and security, our strategic technology partnership marks a major step forward. Cooperation in areas such as cyber, defence technology, subsea cables and critical technologies will define the future of our relationship and is central to our shared security interests.
We are also seeing strong momentum on investment. Australia's largest pension fund, AustralianSuper, has invested AUD 500 million in an Indian infrastructure fund, while Australia's leading data centre operator has announced plans to invest tens of billions of dollars in India.
Our partnership is expanding beyond economics and security into areas such as sport. India will host the Commonwealth Games in 2030 and may have even greater sporting ambitions.
Australia will host the Olympic Games in 2032. We have already hosted five Commonwealth Games and, by 2032, we will have staged three Olympic Games. That experience has given us valuable capabilities in organising major sporting events, creating another practical area where Australia and India can work together.
On the uranium agreement, can you clarify the timeline? When will Australian uranium start flowing to India?
It’s now up to commercial players. What’s this arrangement does is provide the subsidiary mechanism that allows our treaty on nuclear material done 12 years ago to be operationalised. Miners and sellers of uranium from Australia, buyers from India, to come together and find whatever deals they choose to have. This arrangement allows for those sales and transfers to happen under the strict safeguards that are very important for Australians and for Indians.
Have all of Australia’s concerns on safeguards and non-proliferation been addressed?
That’s resolved.
Defence cooperation has evolved from maritime security and joint military exercises to information-sharing arrangements. What do you see as the next major milestones in the security partnership?
Our Strategic Technology Partnership identifies defence technology as a key area of collaboration. As advanced defence capabilities become increasingly important, this opens a new avenue for cooperation between our governments and defence industries.
Amid intensifying strategic competition in the region, particularly China’s expanding footprint, how does Australia view India’s role in maintaining a free, open and rules-based Indo-Pacific?
All of us need to work harder, individually and collectively, to ensure that our region remains peaceful, prosperous and free. For Australia, that means increasing our own capability, but it also means engaging more deeply. India is a top-tier security partner. It’s a source of stability in the Indo-Pacific.
You have worked extensively on the Quad. As it expands into new areas and uncertainty surrounds the next Leaders' Summit, how do you see the grouping evolving?
Quad is on an extremely good track. You will be aware that the very first meeting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio took on being entrusted with that crucial role in the US was a Quad meeting. We had two meetings of Quad Foreign Ministers last year. We have already had one extremely good meeting of Quad Foreign Ministers this year.
There is a high-level of trust and commonality in viewpoints between the four foreign ministers, including Penny Wong and Dr S Jaishankar. When leaders choose to meet is a matter for them. The pattern of foreign ministers’ meetings, the refinement of the agenda and the outcomes two months ago, show that the Quad is in very fine shape.
So what is Australia's position when it comes to the Quad Summit?
Leaders will make their own announcement about when the next Quad Summit will be, and I can't speculate about that. What I can tell you is that the momentum and dynamism of the Quad that I have seen over the last year or so has been quite something. And the Quad meeting that I attended, the Foreign Ministers meeting that I attended just two months ago, showed a very high level of commonality between the Foreign Ministers and the Quad.
Many analysts see the US commitment to the Indo-Pacific as inconsistent. What does that mean for the region and the future of the Quad?
Secretary of State Rubio often talks about the significance of the Indo-Pacific and the role the Quad has in ensuring that our region remains free and open and prosperous. Rubio made it clear both independently and with his Quad partners, that this is an endeavour which is already strong and in which he wants to put even greater force.
Education has long been a pillar of India–Australia ties. With tighter visa rules and stricter scrutiny of student applications, how does Australia balance managing migration with attracting Indian talent?
I don’t see that those things are in friction. More than 500,000 Indians visited Australia last year. There are currently 140,000 Indians in Australia as students and that number is growing. We have made some adjustments to make sure that students have a quality experience. It’s enormously important to us and of course it’s enormously important to families in India that they know that the education that their children will get in Australia will be of the highest quality.
And if that means we take a little more care reviewing applications, then I think it’s worth it. My view is that the Australia-India education partnership shouldn’t be a one-way street. And when Prime Minister Modi opened the window for foreign branch campuses to open in India, the very first two that opened were Australian. And I was privileged three months ago to attend the first graduation ceremony of the first graduates from Deakin University. It was a joyous occasion for the students and their families and hugely reassuring to see those families enjoying the benefits of Australian education.
As part of Prime Minister Modi's visit, we put focus on the reality that there are now eight Australian universities that have committed to open campuses, including what was announced during the visit, Flinders University. They also include the University of New South Wales, which is in the top 20 universities in the world. And when it opens later this year, we'll be the top ranked university in India.
So the flow of students from India to Australia will continue, but it shouldn't be a one-way street. And we now have a vehicle through foreign branch campuses to make sure that Indian students and their families have a choice between sending young people to Australia or, for a rather lower cost, get the same quality of education in India.
From an Indian perspective, many students view Australia not only as an education destination but also as a pathway to employment and long-term opportunities...
Education visas are for education. Other pathways are available to Indians, and we have a buoyant pathway in skilled visas. But I think we issued something like 50,000 visas for skilled Indian workers to go to Australia last year. So those pathways are available, but education visas are for education.
Although there's one other important rider to that. Indian students who go to Australia are entitled… sorry, entitled is the wrong word. It's available to Indian students who go to Australia for study to stay on for a year or two, depends on the nature of the course, to be able to work. But if Indian students want to stay permanently in Australia, they would need to make a different sort of application in India.
What are the one or two challenges that need to be addressed to further enhance India-Australia ties?
Well, let me answer that question in a couple of ways. I mean, firstly, the challenge for me, frankly, is to harvest as much of the benefit as I can get out of the relationship as I can. There's only 24 hours in the day, but that's what my Prime Minister wants me to do here across all of the key domains, security, education, trade and investment, human linkages.
I think the other way to answer your question is this. We do genuinely live at a time where, well, speaking for Australia, our strategic circumstances are worsening. At a time when we need to pay more attention to strategic affairs than we have had to do, at least for a generation. Of course, that creates challenge for all of us.
But one of the ways in which we seek to reduce our risk going forward is to establish better partnerships with those important players in the region we can trust. And the strategic trust that we are developing between Australia and India is a hugely valuable commodity that we will need to draw on as we navigate through this complicated period of competition in our region.
I wanted to say that in the trade domain, it's very important that our first phase free trade agreement, we call it ECTA, which has been in place for only three years, two-way trade between Australia and India has increased by 55% in just three years, if you take out coal, which is a large lumpy item. And for your readers in Bhubaneswar, I want to draw attention to the fact that one of the outcomes of the visit will be that the government of Western Australia and the government of India have agreed to establish a centre of excellence in mining and mining services.
Western Australia is, of course, our major mining state with many of these skills. And they will be cooperating with the government of India to create a centre of excellence in Bhubaneswar, one of India's great mining centres, to skill up more people from Bhubaneswar and around the country to participate fully in the mining opportunities in India.