Australia – India Roundtable meets in Sydney, Melbourne
The Australia-India Roundtable, the leading informal dialogue between the two countries, will be held this week in Sydney and Melbourne.
A high-level delegation of Indian officials, think tank experts and media commentators will visit Australia for the talks, led by the Secretary (East) of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, Ambassador Anil Wadhwa.
The talks will begin today (Monday 3 February) at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, and continue on Thursday 6 February at the Australia India Institute in Melbourne.
‘These frank and creative discussions will be a chance to consolidate one of Australia’s key strategic relationships in the Indo-Pacific region’, said the Australian chair of the dialogue, Rory Medcalf, the director of the international security program at the Lowy Institute.
His Indian Co-Chair, Dr C. Raja Mohan, nonresident Lowy Institute Fellow, said ‘The engagement with Australia is one of India's fastest growing and most significant bilateral partnerships and has the potential to contribute to stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific at a time of great uncertainty in the relations among China, Japan and the United States’.
The dialogue is convened by the Lowy Institute in partnership with the Australia India Institute and with prominent Indian foreign policy think tank the Observer Research Foundation. It is supported by the Public Diplomacy Division of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs and the Australia India Council of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
While in Sydney, the Indian delegation will also visit the University of New South Wales for discussions on scientific research partnerships and meet NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell. The delegation will hold talks with senior Australian officials in Canberra as well as meeting Commonwealth Government Ministers and visiting the Australian War Memorial.
About 40 Australian officials, scholars, parliamentarians, journalists and business representatives will share views with the Indian delegation during the roundtable discussions. The talks are aimed at producing practical recommendations to advance Australia-India relations in trade and investment, education, people-to-people ties, defence and diplomatic cooperation in such frameworks as the G20 and the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium, both being chaired by Australia this year.
The reports from previous rounds of the dialogue can be found here: http://www.lowyinstitute.org/programs-and-projects/projects/perspectives-india