As Australia and India deepen their strategic partnership, the relationship is entering a new phase—one that extends well beyond trade, education and people-to-people ties.
From defence and critical supply chains to the Quad, sports diplomacy and space cooperation, the scope for collaboration between the two countries is expanding rapidly. India’s growing economic and military weight is also reshaping its role in the Indo-Pacific, while Australia is looking to build greater strategic resilience in an increasingly contested region.
In this exclusive interview with The Australia Today, Dhruva Jaishankar, Executive Director of the Observer Research Foundation America and the inaugural recipient of the Lowy Institute’s Dr Ram Sethi Fellowship for 2026 speaks with Pallavi Jain about the opportunities and challenges ahead.
Jaishankar examines what is holding back deeper economic engagement and how Australia can better understand India’s strategic and defence capabilities.
He also discusses the future of the Quad, the largely untapped potential of sports diplomacy, and the possibilities for a much deeper Australia–India partnership in the rapidly expanding space sector.
Exclusive Interview
Pallavi Jain: Australia and India often describe each other as “natural partners,” yet bilateral trade remains at around A$55 billion, compared with Australia’s trade with China of over A$325 billion. What are the biggest structural barriers holding the relationship back, and what practical steps should governments and businesses take over the next decade to accelerate growth?
Dhruva Jaishankar: I would actually look at the rapid growth of bilateral trade – especially since the conclusion of the Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (ECTA) – as a positive development. China is not a useful comparison, given the history with Australia and scale of resource exports, but India is already Australia’s fifth largest goods trade partner and is likely to surpass Japan and South Korea in the coming years to be a distant third behind China and the United States. That said, there are lots of opportunities to increase the business-to-business partnership beyond commodities, education, and low-cost services. For example, Australia should look to Indian manufacturers to diversify its supply chains, whether for pharmaceuticals, vehicles, refined petroleum, electronics, or machinery and more ambitiously for defense, drones, and semiconductors. There are also exciting new investment opportunities but little public awareness in Australia: indeed, compared to North America and Europe, India is relatively untapped from the point of view of Australian institutional investors.
Pallavi Jain: There remains a perception gap in Australia when it comes to India. Much of the conversation still revolves around migration, education and trade, while there seems to be less awareness of India’s strategic capabilities—including the fact that it has the world’s fourth most powerful military and a rapidly expanding defence-industrial base. How can Australia develop a more complete understanding of India’s hard power, rather than simply viewing it as a fast-growing economy with a large consumer market or a partner in forums such as the Quad?
Dhruva Jaishankar: My sense is that the opportunity is well understood in the Australian government, but less among investors or the Australian business community writ large, particularly those who had some familiarity with the Indian economy in decades past. On defense, there’s been a rapid expansion of cooperation on maritime domain awareness, military-to-military engagements, and training. Indian aircraft now fly to Darwin, just as Royal Australian Navy vessels more regularly dock at Indian ports. The two countries perform a variety of sensitive tasks together, from submarine rescue and air-to-air refueling to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. The opportunities do now need to be seized in terms of defense industrial cooperation and I believe agreements to accelerate that are in the works between the Australian Department of Defense and Indian Ministry of Defense. Questions of export controls, including those involving the United States, will need to be navigated in some cases.
Pallavi Jain: For decades, Australia’s security outlook has been anchored in the United States-led alliance system. As questions emerge about the long-term reliability and capacity of American security guarantees, what role could India play over the next two decades in contributing to greater strategic balance and resilience for Australia?
Dhruva Jaishankar: India should not be seen as a substitute for the United States as a regional security guarantor for Australia, but it can play a few important roles. One is in terms of helping secure critical sea lines of communication, on which Australia is dependent as a trading nation. Secondly, providing capacity in the form of equipment and training to smaller countries in the region, including in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. India is already doing some of that, but can coordinate more with countries like Australia, just as Australia is doing more to support India in the Indian Ocean littoral.
Pallavi Jain: The Quad has become a central pillar of Indo-Pacific cooperation, yet questions persist about the consistency of US foreign policy across administrations. How resilient do you believe the Quad is to political changes in Washington, and what must India, Australia and Japan do to ensure it remains an effective strategic partnership regardless of who occupies the White House?
Dhruva Jaishankar: Some aspects of the Quad – including Summits and ministerial meetings – are more political. But many other aspects involving the militaries and bureaucracies have proved more steady. These include combined efforts on maritime domain awareness, humanitarian assistance, and military logistics, as well as joint projects in the South Pacific. Naturally politics can alter the tenor and pace of cooperation, but so far the Quad has withstood two U.S. presidential transitions and change of government in Australia.
Pallavi Jain: Australia is arguably one of the world’s great sporting nations, while India is investing in sport, with ambitions stretching well beyond cricket. Do you see sports diplomacy as an underutilised pillar of the Australia–India relationship? Could deeper collaboration in elite sport, sports science and major events create a new form of soft power between the two democracies?
Dhruva Jaishankar: Absolutely! We think of Australia as a sporting powerhouse now, but a lot of its strengths grew in the aftermath of the 1976 Summer Olympics, when its underperformance led to investments in the Australian Institute of Sport and other centers of excellence. With India hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2030 and bidding for the Olympics, the possibility of tapping Australia’s world class training and coaching programs in a variety of sports is there. Sports featured prominently both in Prime Minister Modi’s agenda in Australia and in his speech on Independence Day. Foundational sports such as athletics, swimming, and gymnastics will be more important to India than those in which it has already invested significant resources, such as badminton, hockey, shooting, and wrestling. There is also past precedence for this, such as Dennis Lillee’s involvement in the MRF Pace Foundation, and its major contributions to India developing high-quality fast bowlers in cricket.
Pallavi Jain: India has established itself as a global space power, with a proven track record of delivering world-class missions at a fraction of the cost of many Western agencies. While India and Australia already collaborate on international projects such as the Square Kilometre Array, do you see scope for a much deeper bilateral partnership in the space sector?
Dhruva Jaishankar: Space is a really exciting sector in India, with the privatization push leading to hundreds of small start-ups involved in almost every aspect of the space industry, from launch and observation to de-orbiting. Australia benefits from its geography and integration with other advanced markets, so there are natural complementarities. It would be nice to see a greater Indian presence at venues such as the Australian Space Forum in Adelaide.
Support our Journalism
No-nonsense journalism. No paywalls. Whether you’re in Australia, the UK, Canada, the USA, or India, you can support The Australia Today by taking a paid subscription via Patreon or donating via PayPal — and help keep honest, fearless journalism alive.
