India’s High Commissioner to Australia, Manpreet Vohra, predicts a new era of clean energy co-operation between the countries, saying Australian critical minerals will be key to India’s “hugely ambitious” drive towards a greener future.
In an exclusive interview with The Australian to mark India’s 75th anniversary of independence, Mr Vohra said negotiations on a new free trade deal between the countries would soon get under way, but hailed an interim agreement struck this year as significant in its own right.
He said India’s close ties with Russia – highlighted during the Ukraine conflict – would not undermine Quad strategic partnership between India, Australia, the US and Japan, which he predicted would “go from strength to strength”.
Mr Vohra also pushed back at suggestions that Hindu nationalism, which has fanned anti-Muslim sentiment across India, posed a threat to Quad co-operation based on common democratic values.
Australia was one of the first nations to recognise the newly independent India in 1947, but the partnership became closer about 15 years ago, thanks to surging Indian student numbers and Australia’s decision to permit uranium sales to Delhi.
Now, as trusted Quad partners, Mr Vohra said clean energy co-operation would come to dominate the next phase of the Australia-India relationship.
Australia has reserves of critical minerals, such as lithium and cobalt, which are crucial for clean energy technologies such as batteries and electric vehicles.
Mr Vohra said India needed to rapidly develop its battery and clean transport sectors, which are currently hostage to Chinese supply chains.
“You’ve got upstream elements of those supply chains, and we’ve got the downstream demand for those critical minerals,” he said.
