 Ladies and gentlemen, namaste and welcome to all the distinguished guests at the Institute, both those here in our beautiful headquarters at 31 Blyat Street and those joining us online for this special event and address and a conversation with India's Minister of External Affairs, Dr. Subramanyam Jayashankar. I'm Michael Fulilav, the Executive Director of the Loei Institute. Let me begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we are gathered, the Gadigal of the Eora Nation and pay my respects to their elders past and present. Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great personal pleasure to host my friend, Dr. Jayashankar at the Institute this evening. He and I were introduced more than a decade ago by his son, Dhruva, who was a colleague of mine at the Bookings Institution in Washington, D.C., in the late noughties. And Dhruva has been a non-resident fellow here at the Institute for some years. He's doing a fabulous job in Washington, of course, running ORF America. This year, Jayashankar couldn't be at the Ryzena Dialogue, but Samir Saran and Dhruva were kind enough to invite me to participate in Ryzena D.C. at a panel with Michelle Flournoy and Senator Bill Haggerty and Mira Raphoopa from the National Security Council that was beamed into Ryzena, and I was grateful for that courtesy. Ladies and gentlemen, I've known and admired Jayashankar for more than a decade. And in that period, I've called on him in Beijing and Washington where he was representing the Republic of India. I've called on him in Delhi when he was heading up India's Foreign Service as Foreign Secretary. And now, of course, we're delighted to host him as the minister. He spoke actually virtually at the Institute in 2020 during the pandemic. And last year, he was kind enough to invite me to give the Ahtal Bahari Vajpayee lecture, which was a great honor. Dr. Jayashankar and I are both great cricket fans, and today he's had a big day. He went up in a chopper. He inspected a lot of ADF assets, and he was at the SCG where he was personally escorted by Steve War. So let me say, Jay, I am fully aware that I'm playing second fiddle today. But I have always thought that the game of cricket is a lot like the great game of foreign affairs. Things are opaque in cricket as in diplomacy. Sometimes a draw is actually a win. The weather conditions in the state of the pitch are critical. The ball swings in the air and it jumps off the pitch. Sometimes it flies at your head. And in foreign policy too, the decision making environment is fast and fluid. And that's certainly the case today. It seems to me the relationship between New Delhi and Canberra, in a way, has the character of a long Steve War innings, if you'll allow me, minister. We started off slowly. We dug in. We got it. We got our eye in. But now that we've settled in, we're taking our shots and the runs are flowing. I might say I wish they had been flowing a little more in Australia's direction during the recent T20 series. Australia has many things that bind us together. We have deep historical and personal connections. There is a brilliant and talented Indian diaspora in this country. But increasingly, we also have a shared view of the world. Through organisations such as the Quad, Australia and India are demonstrating the shared conviction that all countries should have the right to make their own way in the world free of coercion. No country should be forced to live in another's shadow. So our world views are coming closer. Our bilateral cooperation is also growing. In 2020, we set up the comprehensive strategic partnership. In April this year, we signed the India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement. We've increased the pace of military exercises. There are also some welcome positive signs on the economic front with an uptick in two-way trade last year. Many of us still feel that the private sector has been a bit slow to catch up with these developments, but I'm sure that with visits like this by the minister and the work of people such as Ashok Jacob, those things will also speed up. Working together, I really believe that countries such as Australia and India have the wherewithal to help shape Asia's future, but first we need to believe in ourselves and in each other. Ladies and gentlemen, the former U.S. Ambassador to India, Richard Verma, described Dr Jai Shankar as one of the world's best diplomats, and I agree. Dr Jai Shankar was born into a distinguished family of high achievers. He is a graduate of St Stephen's College at the University of Delhi and he earned his doctorate from Jawaharlal Nehru University specializing in nuclear diplomacy, which is probably useful at the moment. He joined the Foreign Service in 1977. He served in capitals such as Moscow and Tokyo. He was ambassador or high commissioner in Prague, Singapore, Beijing and Washington. He also held a number of important posts in India culminating in his appointment as Foreign Secretary. After retiring from the Foreign Service in 2018, Dr Jai Shankar joined Tata Sons, but following the 2019 election, Prime Minister Modi appointed him Minister of External Affairs, the first foreign secretary, I think, to occupy Room 172 in South Block. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming India's Minister for External Affairs, his Excellency, Dr Subramanyam Jai Shankar. Jai. Good evening. Dr Michael Fulila, High Commissioner, dear friends. Let me begin by emphasizing what a great pleasure it is to be back here. I've been here physically once before and virtually a few times. I'm here really at the tail end of a visit to Australia, my second as a foreign minister this year, which I think in itself is a bit of a statement about the relationship. I also come here after not just a good day, great day at the SCG, but after also a splendid day in Canberra. I had very good conversations with Foreign Minister Penny Wong, with DPM and Defence Minister Richard Miles, with the Education Minister Justin Claire, spent some time over the Australian Defence Forces, but of course nothing tops the wall. Now, I think, perhaps Michael, we once discussed the idea of writing a serious book on diplomacy, which is disguised as serious book on cricket, because there are actually, you know, they're both very competitive occupations. And there's a lot really that one can learn from any kind of competition if you were to transpose its lessons to a different domain. And in fact, when I was walking around with Steve Oh, and you know, a lot of his conversations were about him and Sachin Tendulkar, it did strike me that he'd be kind of a useful guy to have around with you when you are strategizing, when you're looking at a difficult world at trying to you know, read bowlers and pitchers. And as he he was actually telling me what a difference having support from the crowd does. So, so you know, there were some interesting and instructive observations there. But let me come back to really the serious business, the India-Australia relationship, which has been the focus of my visit. I am the sixth minister of the Modi government to visit Australia this year, after the Labour government has come to power. And that in itself should tell you something about the seriousness with which we approach this relationship. During this period, of course, we've had the Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister visit India to a Premier and a Deputy Premier from Australia as well. We've had a Chief of Naval Staff from India. We've had two significant military exercises in which India has participated. And I cite all those examples to you as a sign of this changing relationship that we speak about. Now, what has led us to discover or rediscover each other more profoundly than before? I think it's a combination of factors. Some of it are the changes in our own societies. Some of it are broadening interests as we have both become more globalized. And in India's case, as we have started to look and act eastwards in the last quarter century. And some part of it, I think, is also an outcome of the larger geopolitical changes in the world. Changes which directly impact the region of which India is on one side and Australia at the other end of the pedigree. Now, my sense today is given the interest we have given the relevance that we have for each other's strategy and calculations. I clearly have the confidence that this relationship is going to pick up steam very, very rapidly. We passed one milestone with the conclusion earlier this year of a free trade agreement, which is currently under the process of ratification. It also included some changes in business practices, which will make it much easier for our companies to work with each other. This is in the domain of tax. I have seen a great deal of interest in Australia about enhancing the quality and the scale of the education interface between us. And when I look at other businesses which would be natural to Australia, minerals, energy, agriculture, I think there are possibilities here. And the six ministers who came, the five apart from me, a lot of their attention were actually devoted to exploring these opportunities in the relationship. Having said that, I would like to place this relationship in the larger context of global politics. I think in an immediate sense, we are grappling with what I would call a 3C challenge, which is COVID conflict and climate change. I think these are the three big issues which have disrupted world politics, disrupted the world economy. And in many ways, I think they frame the larger context in which India and Australia discuss world politics. But preceding those or certainly preceding the Ukraine conflict and the COVID are the longer term changes which have been unfolding really over multiple decades. Changes which perhaps had one big inflection point in the global financial crisis of 2008. The fact that we are looking at a much broader distribution of power and influence in the world that conversations and decisions are no longer as narrow as they used to be. I would say the global rebalancing in many ways is an even bigger picture in which we need to look at the relationship. So for me, whether it's the accumulated bilateral relationship or the geopolitical changes or the big global issues of the day, I think all of this in a way has been distilled into the emergence or the re-emergence of the Quad. I would argue that one of the reasons why the Quad worked in 2017 and subsequently, as opposed to the first attempt at it in 2007, a decade earlier, was the fact that India's relationship, bilateral relationships with the other three Quad partners had developed sufficiently by 2017 for us to actually take this initiative forward in a manner in which perhaps we couldn't do a decade earlier. In that, if you look at it chronologically, and I had the privilege of being associated with all these relationships, I would say the India-US had changed in the most dramatic and perhaps in the most profound manner. India-Japan evolved much more steadily, but the relationship which really had to play catch up was the one between India and Australia. I think today that catch up is happening, so it's a bit like falling behind in the first innings and trying to make up in the second, but certainly today, for me, the progress of the bilateral relationship, the ability to work together at a regional and global level and the interest in shaping really the evolution of the world order. I think these are different facets of the relationship that we're talking about today, so it is for me very much a priority, which is why I'm here the second time. So once again, really, thank you, Michael, for putting this together and I look forward to the conversation. Wonderful. Thank you, Jai, for those opening remarks. Thank you for having a conversation with me now and taking some questions from the audience in the room. I want to start at the global level and then I want to come back to the bilateral relationship that you spoke about. You mentioned the three Cs, COVID, conflict and climate change. Let me ask you about the second C, the conflict in Ukraine. A few days ago, President Vladimir Zelensky was on this very stage, albeit by video link. Let me begin by asking, what have you made as an observer of individuals and politics and diplomats and leaders? What have you made of his wartime leadership over the past eight months, I guess, starting with that critical first weekend after the invasion, when he knocked back an offer of safe passage out of Ukraine with that memorable phrase, I don't need a ride, I need ammunition. What have you made of Zelensky as a president? You know, in any situation, you're partly shaped by your impressions which are inherited or which pre-exist. And the only time I've seen him up close was actually at Glasgow on the sidelines of the COP26, when he and Prime Minister Modi had a very interesting discussion about a range of issues including business cooperation, investment trade, what could Ukraine do to build up its relationship with India because it wasn't really as substantive as it could be. That was my first impression. I must also confess, I really not focus that much on the leader, individual leaderships of different countries in that part of the world, even though I'm very familiar with that part of the world, largely because we've never had a crisis or we've never had the stakes out there to be that intensively engaged. Having said that, I think a lot of what are the perceptions of the world have been shaped by obviously the events which have happened. For us, from an Indian perspective, our particular challenge was that we had 20,000 students in Ukraine. They were caught in the middle of the conflict, most of them studied in Eastern Ukraine and extricating them required not just diplomacy in the normal sense, but actually having Prime Minister Modi call up Zelensky, call up Putin, engage me talking to Kuleba and to Lavrov and at various other levels. So I think there's a kind of a cumulative picture out here and certainly our expectation would be that here's somebody we will continue to be engaged with. In fact, Prime Minister Modi spoke to him last week. In what we believe is the need to return to the path of diplomacy and dialogue because we honestly don't think this conflict is helping anybody at all. As an analyst, how do you think the war in Ukraine is altering the balance of power in the world? A lot of people say that it is exposing authoritarian states as brittle and weaker than we thought they were previously. What would you say? You know, it's a bit like that French Revolution question which was asked of Chuanglai. I really honestly think it's a bit early in the day to reach very strong conclusions. I mean, this is a conflict which has gone in many ways in unanticipated directions. So if your first six months were not exactly predictable, I'm not sure I've been a hurry to reach a conclusion right now. And that's not a dodge. It's a genuine, I would say, withholding of judgment because I don't think anybody serious right now can quite predict where this conflict is going. We've seen dreadful images out of Ukraine over the last 24 hours. Can I invite you to comment on those missile strikes? Look, we actually, like many other countries, we issued a statement yesterday on that and we really think that targeting infrastructure and causing civilian deaths in any part of the world anyway. And I mean, obviously, you're talking specifically about Ukraine. I mean, this is not something that is acceptable. And again, I think our effort has been to keep pressing for a return to diplomacy and dialogue. Speaking of diplomacy, in President Zelensky's remarks to the Institute, I asked him, what would you like Australia to do to Ukraine? And he asked that Australia use its influence at the United Nations to convince as many countries as possible to vote later this week for a resolution in the General Assembly, condemning Russia's annexation, alleged annexation of four Ukrainian territories. Can you tell us how India will vote in that in that vote? You know, I was asked this question yesterday at a press conference. So I have to give you the same reply. You can give us a different one if you want to reveal more information. Well, I could give you this a different one with the same message, which is normally you look nobody, nobody puts their vote out, you know, the decision to vote out in front. I mean, you take the call when you have to. And we continue to be guided by the need because look, you have to understand something. A large part of the world today is hurting because of this conflict. It's hurting because their daily lives are impacted in a very, very damaging manner. And these countries with whom we identify ourselves, most of these are countries of the global south. They are actually feeling frustrated because they feel that their problems are being neglected. They're not being recognized by the global debates. And that for them, you know, some kind of a speedy remedy to the challenges that they feel face in terms of energy security, food security. Those are really very, very pressing challenges. If you, you know, as someone who talks to a lot of my peers and engages many of them personally, and I've just come out of a UN General Assembly where I'm close to about 100 foreign ministers, I can tell you the large body of opinion out there is to try to find a way of bringing this conflict to a speedy end and getting back to the negotiating table. And I think it's important that that sentiment should be factored in and that in the, you know, it's understandable or perhaps to be expected that, you know, different countries in different regions would pursue their priorities and their approaches to this conflict. But if they, if it is pursued in a manner in which a big part of the world, I would, if I can use a metaphor, in a way you can look at it as an east-west conflict, but it has a north-south dimension to it. And I think if the south feels increasingly that the north is tone deaf, that, you know, that their suffering, their anxieties are not being addressed. I think that's something which will create a new set of problems and we can sense that very strongly. Let me change tack and ask you about China, if I may. As you know well for two years, Beijing had Canberra in the diplomatic deep freeze and since the new Australian government took office in May, lines of communication have been reopening in different ways. It did seem to me that communications were never interrupted to quite the same degree between Beijing and Delhi, even in your most difficult periods when there were bloody clashes between your two militaries. Can you give us, I know you're very diplomatic, but can you, given that Australia is going through a transition period in our relationship with China, what would be your advice to Australia about how you establish, re-establish a stable productive relationship with a country that is so different from our own? You know, I am especially after I became foreign minister, I'm very careful about giving advice. I'm even more careful about giving advice publicly. What I can share with you is that we've had a two and a half very difficult years in our relationship with China, which has included the first bloodshed we've had on the border after 40 years and where we actually lost 20 soldiers. But our endeavor, my endeavor has been to keep the communication lines going. In fact, the morning after that I called up my counterpart Wang Yi and urged him to ensure that there are no escalatory moves or complicating moves on the Chinese side. So for me, diplomacy is about communication. You know, it's not just in relationship to China, even in relationship to your earlier set of comments about Ukraine. You know, if diplomats do not communicate with each other, then what kind of diplomacy do they do? So I really feel, you know, shutting down, talking, burning bridges, and I say this as a general principle, I would not recommend it to anybody. There can be very testing times. I mean, we have another neighbor with whom we have a very difficult relationship. But at the end of the day, countries have to deal with each other and you have to find some way of keeping that going. Let me ask you about India's relationship with the United States. In the past few years, the US has overtaken China, I think as India's biggest trading partner, there have been a number of steps that have been taken even in recent years with intelligence sharing and so on. What sort of changes have you noticed in the relationship since President Biden was elected? How has it changed in different ways as Biden came in? Well, you know, India, the India-US relationship started changing, I would say, from Clinton's second term. Clinton came to India in 2000, literally the last year of his presidency. He sort of started something moving, then really George W. Bush, I think the big moves thereafter. But it's interesting, you had five American presidents, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, can't think of five people more different from each other, who have disagreed amongst themselves on a whole lot of issues at home and abroad, but who've actually been singularly consistent in the manner in which they have sought to engage India and to enhance our relationship. So, you know, when you are faced with, when you look at that kind of consistency, you realize that in many ways, this is deeper than the politics of the day, that this is something which is structural, where there is actually a kind of an establishment consensus, if you would, because remember, they've alternated politically as well. So, now in the case of President Biden, because he's been around for a long time, you know, I mean, I've been around a long time and I can say, here's someone who's been around very much longer. He's actually been involved in the growth of the relationship at different points of time. I remember seeing, going to see him along with my boss in 2005 to at that time, I think if I remember right, he was a ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Dick Lugar was the chairman and, you know, seeking his support for the nuclear deal. So, he's known this relationship or he's seen the evolution of this relationship and as Vice President, you know, when Prime Minister Modi came to the US in 2014, I was the ambassador then, he was one of, he was Vice President and he was strongly supportive of what we were trying to do. But there's a larger point, I think, about the Biden administration. In one way, it's an extraordinarily experienced administration. If you look at the, you know, Secretary of State, the NSA, the Director CIA, the DNI, even the Secretary of Defense, I mean, these are people who work multiple administrations, know the world, you know, they're not new on the job. I mean, they really put it together, you're really looking at, you know, 100 plus years of experience out there. Secondly, you know, collectively, I think this is an administration which is very determined to get along with the world, which is willing to make the adjustments in many ways to find, maintain and develop partners. So, I, and, you know, I do not mean it in any way as disrespect. It's not easy if you're the most powerful country in the world to be necessarily sensitive and necessarily artistic. To me, the big change and one of the reasons, I mean, one of the reasons in my opening remark, I said that, you know, the Quad has is working well because the bilateral, the pillars of the Quad are all well developed and are working well. But I think one other reason the Quad is working well is actually the United States is showing the flexibility and the understanding to make the Quad work well. And this is a big evolution to my mind, really, in America's approachable party. How can we make the Quad work better? What else would you like to say the Quad do? Right now, I don't see any big obstacles. But to my mind, for, you know, in a way, the Quad's, Quad's novel, I mean, it's novel in the sense that typically, you know, the post-45 world has the post-45 world, which you know better, which we have less experience of. It's a world of, you know, treaties and alliances and sort of legally, strictly underpinned commitments. You actually have a grouping very easy, you know, formal. There's no agreement. There's no secretariat. These are practices. We make it up as we go along. So it's just a much more loose, limped way of an open-minded way of actually working together, which by the way, suits us when I think today suits the other three countries as well. So for me, it's not like we have a barrier and impediment. What we probably would need to do is to keep, you know, a bit like your phone, need to keep pressing the refresh button and getting new ideas and, you know, how do you keep growing the agenda? I have my senses. I've dealt with Quad this time around as both as foreign secretary, as the permanent secretary before, now as the minister. I've seen it now grow to the summit level. But the more we work together, the more we will find areas for cooperation. This is actually a kind of exploring and doing at the same time. All right. Let me come to the bilateral relationship. When I interviewed you two years ago, you said to me that if there is one relationship I take great satisfaction in, it's the India-Australia relationship. As you mentioned, since the change of government event, a whole string of Indian ministers visit Australia. What you were making interesting comments earlier about how the US-India relationship is changing for structural reasons as much as personal reasons. You talked about an establishment consensus. Is that how you characterize the changes in the India-Australia relationship too? Or to ask the question in a different way, has it changed since the change of government, change of prime minister, change of foreign minister? How much of this is personal and how much is structural? I am increasingly getting the impression that it's structural here too. Because quite honestly, we are just as comfortable with this government as we were with the previous one. And a bit in mind, because again, if I were to pick an inflection point in the case of the US, I took Clinton and then Bush as the two inflection points. I think here it was really the, it was that Tony Abbott, Modi exchange of visits in 2014, which really set the ball rolling. And since then, we've had multiple prime ministers in Australia. But I think all of them showed a commendable level of interest in growing the relationship. And my own involvement at a political level is pre-election and post-election. And I would say and actually it so happened that for your current government, the first day on the job was to spend time with us in Tokyo because we had a Quad summit. So I frankly think it's been a very, very smooth transition. I see just as much interest, same enthusiasm, whatever was worked out in the last days of the previous government, the trade stuff, the financial stuff is moving along. I think there are a lot of new ideas on the table which will get picked up. I think particularly education offers a lot of possibilities. Possibilities not just at this end, actually to internationalize and modernize the Indian education system as well through greater global exposure. So I think I'd be fairly confident saying that this has now become structural here. What about the relationship between the leaders, Mr. Modi and Mr. Morrison famously had a good relationship? I don't know whether Albo is such a deft hand with the curry or not, but what have you noticed in that, especially in that first Quad meeting between Mr. Albanese and Mr. Modi? I thought that they got along but visibly well and I think some of that, my recollection of that meeting was, I think the Prime Minister, your Prime Minister spoke about his visits, personal visits to India and I think there was some interesting stuff he said there which caught our attention in a good way. So I'm pretty confident that this relationship is going to go well. They've done a virtual meeting as well after that. So I think the chemistry will be good. Let me ask you about AUKUS which, speaking of innovations, is a huge innovation in Australian foreign policy, especially the commitment to acquire a fleet of nuclear propelled submarines. I understand from the interviews you gave yesterday that India supported the recent IAEA assessment that the plan doesn't represent a proliferation risk. Can I ask you, is that the case? Are you comfortable with it from that point of view? But also, what do you make of AUKUS as a nuclear power yourself? How would the acquisition of this kind of capability change India's perception of Australia as a strategically capable actor? Look, these are capability decisions and, in a sense, strategic calls are for the countries concerned to make. It's not reasonable and frankly, it's not sometimes even fair for another country to pass judgments on it when you don't have necessarily a full and informed picture of the whole issue. So we have been quite prudent about voicing our view on the decisions which you took and that's understandable. My point which I made yesterday to your press was that the matter did come up. I think there was some prior speculation on this matter. The matter did come up at the IAEA General Conference. We took the position because I can speak for myself here. We took the position that we would respect the judgment of the IAEA Director General, Rafael Grossi, which many of us know him. I know him personally. We have a great deal of regard for his objectivity and his professionalism. And therefore, that's it. Now, it would appear that this sense was shared by a number of other countries and that's really what happened out there. All right. I dealt with that one very deftly. I thought, ladies and gentlemen, we have a few minutes for questions from the audience and then I might come back with one more perhaps for the minister. But let me go to the audience now and I see Penny Wensley, who is a Lowy Institute Board member but also a former Australian High Commissioner to India. I'll ask the questioners to wait for the microphone and then put their question to the minister. Thank you. Thank you very much, Michael. And minister, thank you. I was very interested to watch your address to the UN General Assembly a couple of weeks ago and you referred to reformed multilateralism and you acknowledged that reform of the Security Council was at the core of that. But that's a really hard nut to crack. How, in fact, do you think India can advance its purposeful agenda for reformed multilateralism? And I asked you this against the background of your strong commitment to diplomacy and paying more attention to diplomacy but also as a former ambassador to the UN and committed multilateralist. I think if India can help to lead the way on this then it would be a very good thing in the current circumstances globally. Well, I agree with you that it's a hard nut, but hard nuts can be cracked. And if I look back and say, well, this one is too difficult, I wouldn't be doing too much in my life. I mean, life has been a set of challenges particularly for a country like India. So I would not let the difficulties of that challenge deter me or discourage me. In fact, I'll put it the other way around. Ask yourself, I will put India aside for a moment. Look, there are whole continents today which actually feel that the Security Council processes do not take into account their interests. I mean, I spoke earlier about Ukraine and a sense in the global south that their problems of food and fuel and fertilizer are being just brushed aside. And frankly, if you go to a UN general assembly and talk to countries, there are countries in Africa and Latin America and the small island states quite apart from Asia and India who feel very, very strongly that this is not their UN in a way. And I think that's hugely damaging to the UN. So one of the developments this time in fact has been a very explicit recognition by President Biden of the need to actually reform the UN, which is not a small development. But we need to get, because we all know why reform has been blocked for so many years. So I think it's important to keep up the pressure. There is global sentiment out there. We completely understand. I mean, this is not something which is going to be done easily and necessarily speedily. But it's something which has to be done finally. Otherwise, we will end up frankly with an increasingly irrelevant United Nations. Thank you. Let me call on Peter Hatcher from the City Morning Herald in the age. Thank you, Dr. Jaishankar. You used the metric of ministerial visits earlier as an indicator of the intensity of the relationship, which is a good input into relationships. What metric would you want to see in terms of outputs over say the next five years? What would you like to see the Australia-India relationship achieve specifically over say the next five years? I think one part of me would like to see better numbers, better trade numbers, better investment numbers, better tourist numbers, better student numbers. One part of me would definitely like to see better chemistry, comfort, that on the difficult problems in the world and difficult problems that we individually face, we have a better ability to work together. And for me, chemistry is something which is and not just leader level chemistry, sometimes institutional chemistry. Quite honestly, if I were to look back over the last six, seven years and think of my Australian counterparts and reflect on how much more openly we talk today to each other, that's to me a big change because that at the end of the day is a very, very important indicator of how good or not good your relationship is. Perhaps in some senses, the ambition, the scale of the impact that we make. So what it really means is you give me better trade, better investment, a stronger quality, deeper defence. All these are examples of how I would measure progress. Thank you. I see Senator Simon Birmingham, the Shadow Foreign Minister. Thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. And thank you to Lowey for hosting this event, to Dr. Shai Shankar. Thank you very much for the commitment you have shown to the Australia-India relationship, the manner in which you have helped to build it and the seamless way in which you have dealt with the changes of leadership, ministers and governments in our country through that time. You spoke of the three Cs in challenges that you identified and it's nice to think about even though they're all challenging ones, but nice to think about a different set of three Cs than the ones that culturally often highlighted in the Australia-India relationship. Can I take you to the sea that perhaps hasn't been dealt with in the remarks tonight? Michael and others have touched on the conflict one. COVID we hope we are putting behind us and moving beyond, but climate change remains a very significant one for global dialogue moving forward. What do you see Australia and other nations like Australia needing to do and not to do in terms of helping to ensure that together we can tackle a challenge like climate change and to help India be able to fulfil your ambitions and missions in growth, but also to decarbonise through that growth agenda? It's now close to a year since we had COP26. We are moving to COP27 next month. If you look back at this year, I think pretty much across the world, the sense of alarm about climate events and climate emergencies has increased very sharply. You know, the parts of the world which have had much more rain than they ever had, and I think I'm probably sitting in one right now, the parts of the world where you had, I mean Europe, for example, had a complete shortfall of rain. I mean it was a very hot summer. You were seeing, you're seeing floods, you're seeing heat waves, you're seeing mountainous events, coastal events. So there are two issues here. One, how serious are we about pursuing our commitments? And the heart of the issue is really the ability to, the willingness really to deploy the finance necessary for it. We, you know, the cops have been kind of repetitive cycle, you know, groundhog day conversations. Every cop is the same. You know, there's an argument, how serious are you? How much money were you willing to put up? Where does it take us? We have it again, the next cop. There are solutions. You know, after all it's not like the world can't find money. I mean the world's, you know, I was in the U.N. and somebody pointed out to me that 100 billion was the commitment made in Paris for climate change per year. The commitment made for the Ukraine conflict is close to 100 billion dollars. So it's a question of whether we really see it as existential or we really willing to act on it and to say that, you know, the money will come from the private sector. Look, the private sector is not going to lead. Governments have to lead. You know, multilateral institutions have to lead. I don't, you know, this is not a failure of imagination. It's actually an unwillingness to really, to put the necessary resources out there. I mean, at the end of the day, I'm not completely convinced the people who say this is existential believe that. So, we really think that it's important to step up on India's part. I mean, what we have done is we've said, look, we are prepared to do what it takes in India for, you know, because, you know, climate change is not something which is we can keep away through negotiation. I mean, it's going to happen anyway. So you look at the changes in India in terms of our renewable programs, energy efficiency programs, the smart city programs, the lifestyle adjustment campaigns which we believe, we will do our part in terms of climate action. But we do believe that there is a climate justice part to it. There are countries who may not have the capabilities and resources that we have and that they do deserve, you know, more than a helping hand. So I would say it's important for the global debates today, not to be consumed by any single issue, however important those issues are. You know, we can't run the world as a one agenda world. I'm going to take the last question, minister, and change tack one more time. You mentioned at the UN recently you met, I think, with 100 foreign ministers from around the world. Let me ask you, when you look at those foreign ministers or if you want to be diplomatic, look at other foreign ministers you've observed in the past or leaders, is there one individual that you've encountered that you really admired as a professional, as a minister or diplomat in his or her ability to prosecute their country's interests and push their values, is there someone that really you learned a lot from? You know, that one I have to dodge because if I said that, I will lose a lot of friends. So, but you know, I, what about someone from history then? I've actually had, made some discoveries. I'm a student. In my country, typically, and I guess in yours too, our system of politics, you have politicians who become ministers and so mostly foreign ministers are people who spend their entire life in politics. I'm an exception in a way in mind. There's been one other diplomat who's been a foreign minister. When I became foreign minister, I actually discovered a very large number of foreign ministers, actually diplomats, where diplomats who got kind of promoted progressively and this is the tradition in their countries. And you know, when you work with people, you frankly each one of them, there's something you kind of take away. I know that sounds terribly diplomatic, but actually, you know, I give you, it's a bit like cricket, okay? You bowl at anybody. There's nobody you play against from whom you don't have, you are studying them all the time saying, okay, this is the weakness, this is the strength. Don't, you know, don't bowl outside the off stump to this guy. So, it's a bit like that. You keep assessing, you keep probing, you keep learning, you know. There are people, you know, with whom I take chances, there are people with whom I wouldn't. So, there's not a Steve War of diplomacy that you want to nominate tonight? Not publicly not. Okay, all right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is a limited overs match tonight. So, we're going to draw a line under it. I think he had a pretty good innings at the Lowey Institute tonight. I did my best to bowl up a few googly's and even the odd doosher, but he just with pretty effortlessly, I think, hit them to the boundary. I did hear him commit at the beginning to a co-authored book between Jay Shankar and me on cricket and diplomacy. So, I think I have witnesses for that point. I think you made some important points tonight. And for me, the one that I took away was your conclusion that the warming and the thickening of relations between Australia and India is now structural, that it goes, that it builds on the work of individual ministers and diplomats, but it goes beyond that. And I think that's something I hope is the case. I recall the 2021 ORF survey, which found that two thirds of young Indians trust Australia. And the Lowey Institute survey in the same year that found a very similar number of Australians trust India. And that's a very good basis from which to work. You've told me before how satisfied you are with the bilateral relationship and by visiting twice in a year and spending two weeks in Australasia, you're really walking the walk. We always have to look for new ways of thickening the relationship. We hope that Mr Modi will be visiting Australia next year for the Quad Leaders meeting. And of course, if we wanted a practical way of thickening, then getting Mr Modi on the Lowey Institute stage, I think would be an important one. So we can take that away as a joint exercise. Ladies and gentlemen, it's been, I think, a real treat to have so much time with the minister tonight. So please join me in thanking his Excellency, Dr Subramanian Jai Shankar. Thank you very much. Thank you.