High Commissioner Philip Green's Keynote Address at NewsX's NXT conference - “Reliability as a virtue”
(checked against delivery) 13 March 2026
Let me start with a simple proposition. You don’t need to be a security policy expert to know that our contemporary world is sharper and more contested. More people are displaced. More people are hungry. And there is more conflict – not least the perilous situation in the Middle East, on top of an illegal and immoral war waged by Russia in Ukraine.
We live in a rapidly changing world. A world where the major powers more frequently flex their muscles – through military action, economic coercion and cyber attack. Relatedly, we are experiencing an increasingly challenged world order. The change in the regional landscape is permanent. The disruption – the contest – is permanent.
In these uncertain times, reliability is a virtue. No longer is reliability a given. Reliability achieves a greater salience in a world that is more disrupted and it's on the subject of reliability, that I want to speak to you today.
I have been a diplomat for 40 years. During that time, I would have identified a number of characteristics of Australian diplomacy. Active… problem solving… creative … innovative. And Australian diplomacy still is these things. But in a different global context, being reliable is a virtue – a more salient one.
It’s a virtue that has implications for all our important partners. For those closet to us, our family in the Southwest Pacific.
For our partners in Southeast Asia, where respect for the rule of law has never been more important, and to our shared economic security and to our prosperity.
And for India, which has more regional and global agency than many of our other partners. But which also, I confidently identify, values reliability in its partners.
India is a leading power in the region and in the world . And Australia is a proud middle power. The world we want today – and the world that we want our children to inherit – is not only a matter for the great powers. Middle powers must be active and exercise their agency to secure a strategic balance, even as the majors more often and more intensively express their influence. We want a region of balance. A region where no country dominates, and no country is dominated.
Against this backdrop, the Australia/India partnership has never been more consequential. Nor has the Australia India partnership ever been in such good shape to engage in constructive regional diplomacy. To put it simply, no other Australian foreign partnership has come so far and so fast as Australia’s relationship with India has over the past five years.
That has not happened by accident – there are three key drivers that impel our partnership. ONE. Our increasing strategic alignment – the convergence in our security interests and actions. TWO. Our economic complementarity – which has been potentiated as both our countries seek greater diversification and India pursues greater economic openness. AND THREE The human dimension of our partnership – that has more salience now, as the Indian population of Australia tops 1 million.
But despite these tailwinds, as the tectonic plates shift – we cannot afford to stand easy. In these uncertain times, we need to work even more closely together. We need to sweat these drivers and make them work harder for us.
Allow me explore to the three drivers in our relationship in turn, and demonstrate how we can turn them to broader strategic benefit.
First – our strategic convergence.
The Indo-Pacific – our region where both India and Australia reside – is the world’s future. It’s where the world is being shaped. And it’s where we have the most on the line. Its also where we can have the most effect.
Our relationship is crucial for the region. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that we have an overriding responsibility as middle powers to support peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific.
We can help build the region we want. A region in balance, where sovereignty is respected.
Australia and India are using all tools at our disposal to do so – working bilaterally, through the Quad and other minilaterals, and through regional institutions.
We have increased our security and intelligence cooperation. Just looking at defence, the frequency of military exercises Australia and India conduct together has tripled over the past 10 years. India is now one of our very few ‘top tier’ defence partners.
Through the Quad, we are supporting maritime domain awareness in the region and working to build up our capability to respond to regional challenges.
And our Prime Ministers have challenged us to produce a Maritime Security Collaboration Roadmap bilaterally to advance our maritime cooperation. Australia and India have many interests in common, but where our interests most intersect, is where our geographies overlap, notably in the Northeast Indian Ocean. Where there is a lot of air and sea to monitor in this vital economic highway, and we can best do that if we work together.
The second driver in our partnership is our economic complementarity.
As some states weaponize trade and undermine supply chains, our work together to support economic security must continue to strengthen.
For the past eight decades the world has relied on architecture like the WTO, trade agreements and the rules-based order to underpin growth. But these institutions and norms we worked so hard to build are being questioned and the rules we wrote are being challenged.
Australia is a medium-sized, open economy — we rely on being able to send our produce, resources and human capital to the world. Our response to these challenges has been to double down on our trading networks, not resile from them.
We are fortunate to have already strong connections via our 19 free trade agreements with 31 partners, covering 80 per cent of our two-way trade. But there’s more work to do – including with India.
Our Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement, which was signed four years ago between Australia and India, is driving growth in our economic relationship. ECTA is saving hundreds of millions of dollars in tariffs for Australian and Indian businesses.
And the first of January this year represented a landmark in our trade relations. From that day, 100 per cent of Indian goods enter Australia completely duty-free. No asterisk. No fine print. Everything produced by India enters Australia with a zero-tariff cost, that you can rely on.
We both benefit from trade liberalization. For Australia, if you take out lumpy items like coal, our exports to India have risen by around 90 per cent since ECTA came into force.
And India is benefitting. Think about this. Over the past five years, India’s exports to the world have grown by multiple more than 40%. Sounds good right? But in that same period, over the last five years, India’s exports to Australia have grown 200%.
That means that India’s exports to Australia are growing five times faster than India’s exports to the rest of the world.
But given the scale of the opportunity presented by our economic complementarity, there is much more we can do.
That’s why we are now negotiating to upgrade ECTA to a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA). There are many ways in which things can benefit us both but let me just highlight one.
India is on track to become a green manufacturing powerhouse — from batteries and solar to the wider clean ecosystem — but that relies on minerals and metals that Australia has in abundance.
Australia is the world’s largest lithium producer with the second‑largest reserves in the world of nickel, copper, and cobalt. We are uniquely positioned to support India’s transition.
Let’s take copper in particular. Australia’s high‑quality copper concentrate can power India’s accelerating growth in EVs, renewables, manufacturing, and infrastructure. But at present copper products from Australia face tariffs of between 2.5 and 10% on entering India. That’s the sort of drag on our new economy that we can ill afford.
The third and final driver behind our reliable partnership is what our Prime Ministers call the “living bridge”– the more than 1 million people of Indian origin who now call Australia home.
For Australia, our domestic resilience, including our economic strength and our multicultural democracy, contributes as much as our diplomatic efforts and our military capability to our national strength.
Modern Australia is multicultural Australia. They are the same thing. At a time of increasing global uncertainty, we need to protect and strengthen social cohesion while we navigate divergent views. Diversity strengthens us at home. That's why we're delighted to have people of Indian origin who are making Australia a richer and more diverse place.
Let's look at the economic relationship and how that benefits us both. Australia is pleased to have over 140,000 Indian students at our tertiary institutions this year. That builds friendships, long-term connections. Good for Australia. It’s good for India.
But education shouldn’t be a one way street. And that’s why Australia has led the world in responding to India’s invitation for high quality foreign universities to establish branch campuses in India. Two Australian universities, Deakin and Wollongong, were the first to set up world quality campuses in India, with another five, that will be seven in total, committed to opening campuses in India. That’s more than any of India’s other partners.
So, across the strategic, economic and human domains in these uncertain times, reliability is a virtue. More than ever. It’s a virtue we should prize. Something that is increasingly rare in this contested world.
Whether that’s in our work in the Indo-Pacific, supporting our shared economic security, or nurturing the connections between our people that make us stronger in the face of all the challenges that we face today.
I’m optimistic that Australia and India, working closer together, can protect each other's security and economic prosperity and make benefit for the region and the world. I thank you for your attention.