8 active areas of cooperation, as of 9 October 2023. Click any card for the full brief.
01 TRADE & THE ECTA DEEP
India-Australia ECTA in force since December 2022 Trade ties were complicated for decades by Australia's White Australia policy (in place from 1901 and dismantled only through the 1960s-70s), which India's government saw as racially discriminatory and which coloured the broader relationship even as limited commercial exchange continued; Cold War-era alignment differences - Australia in the Western camp, India non-aligned and closer to Moscow - kept the relationship modest through the 1970s-80s.
Economic ties began opening up meaningfully only after India's 1991 liberalisation and further warmed once Australia's sanctions over India's 1998 nuclear tests were lifted by the mid-2000s. Formal free-trade negotiations took over a decade to conclude: talks opened in 2011, stalled repeatedly, and were finally concluded as the India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (ECTA) - a deliberately named 'early harvest' deal - signed in April 2022 and in force from 29 December 2022, ending double taxation for Indian IT companies from FY2023-24.
Trade responded immediately: bilateral trade grew 41% from $22.2 billion (2021) to $31.4 billion (2022), with India's exports up 38% to $8.7 billion and Australia's up 42% to $22.5 billion, making India Australia's 6th-largest trading partner. Negotiations continue toward a fuller Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), supported by the Joint Ministerial Commission (18th session, March 2023) and CEO Forum - though CECA talks have progressed more slowly than the original early-harvest deal.
ECTA IN FORCE $31.4BN TRADE (+41%)
Read brief → 02 DEFENCE & SECURITY DEEP
AUSINDEX, Malabar and expanding joint exercises Defence cooperation was essentially nonexistent through the Cold War given the two countries' opposing alliance postures, and even the first, short-lived Quadrilateral Security Dialogue - launched in 2007 alongside the US and Japan following Australia's participation that year in the Malabar naval exercise - collapsed within a year after Australia withdrew under Chinese pressure and a change of government, setting security ties back for nearly a decade.
Real momentum returned only from the mid-2010s: a 2014 agreement extended cooperation into defence R&D and industry engagement, and the bilateral naval exercise AUSINDEX began in 2015, growing into a substantial recurring exercise alongside the newer army exercise AUSTRAHIND (first held in Rajasthan, 2022). The revived Quad held its first Leaders' Summit in 2021, and Australia rejoined Exercise Malabar in 2023 - effectively completing the security relationship's journey from a failed 2007-08 experiment to a durable institutional partnership, reinforced by a Mutual Logistics Support Arrangement concluded in 2020.
Recent milestones include the first-ever extended-range deployment of an Indian Scorpene-class submarine, INS Vagir, to Australia in August 2023, the General Rawat India-Australia Young Defence Officers' Exchange Programme launched March 2023, and now-routine reciprocal P-8 maritime patrol aircraft deployments between Darwin, Goa and Chennai.
AUSINDEX/AUSTRAHIND/MALABAR MLSA
Read brief → 03 CRITICAL MINERALS & ENERGY DEEP
KABIL-CMFO co-investment, Green Hydrogen Task Force Energy cooperation is a genuinely new pillar of the relationship, with no significant precedent before the 2020s - Australia's role as a major uranium and mineral exporter had limited relevance to India for decades given India's exclusion from global civil nuclear commerce until 2008, and clean-energy cooperation as a category barely existed as a diplomatic priority before the mid-2010s.
The Australia-India Energy Dialogue, running since the 2010s, laid early groundwork focused on cutting the cost of ultra-low-cost solar and clean hydrogen (4th round held February 2022), but the decisive institutional step came as India's electric-vehicle and battery ambitions collided with Australia's position as a top global lithium and critical-minerals producer: a Critical Minerals Co-Investment MoU between India's KABIL and Australia's Critical Minerals Facilitation Office was signed in March 2022, backed by a dedicated Joint Working Group.
Momentum built quickly from there - the India-Australia Green Hydrogen Task Force's terms of reference were signed during PM Modi's May 2023 Sydney visit, alongside a Solar Taskforce and Renewable Energy Partnership announced at the first-ever Annual Summit in March 2023 - making critical minerals and clean energy one of the fastest-growing, if newest, areas of the entire relationship.
KABIL-CMFO MoU GREEN HYDROGEN TASK FORCE
Read brief → 04 QUAD & MULTILATERAL COOPERATION DEEP
Core Quad partner alongside Japan and the US Multilateral cooperation between India and Australia has a genuinely rocky origin story: the two countries, alongside Japan and the US, launched the first Quadrilateral Security Dialogue in 2007, only for Australia to withdraw the following year under Chinese diplomatic pressure and a change of government, effectively killing the format for almost a decade and leaving India wary of Australia's reliability as a strategic partner.
The Quad was quietly revived from 2017 as China's regional assertiveness grew, culminating in the first Leaders' Summit (virtual) in March 2021 - this time with Australia firmly committed, and all four countries, including India and Australia as founding members, participating in every subsequent summit. That renewed seriousness was reflected bilaterally too: a first India-Australia 2+2 Foreign and Defence Ministerial Dialogue was held in September 2021, a format India extends to only a handful of its closest partners.
Cooperation has since broadened into a dense web of trilateral and multilateral formats - dialogues with France, Indonesia and Japan, joint work in IORA, the ASEAN Regional Forum, the International Solar Alliance and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure - with Australia now a consistent supporter of India's candidature for an expanded UN Security Council seat and India's APEC membership bid, a marked reversal from the estrangement of the 2008-2017 period.
QUAD FOUNDING MEMBER 2+2 DIALOGUE
Read brief → 05 SCIENCE & SPACE ACTIVE
AISRF research fund, ISRO-ASA space cooperation Science cooperation predates the current strategic partnership by nearly two decades: the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund (AISRF), established in 2006 - while the broader relationship was still recovering from the 1998 nuclear-test sanctions - became one of the few substantive cooperation channels that continued functioning through the otherwise cool 2000s, funding joint research on energy, food and water security, health and environment.
AISRF has run continuously since, including a special COVID-19 research round in 2020 during the pandemic and Round 15 grants announced January 2023, making it one of the longest continuously operating tracks in the entire relationship. Space cooperation followed a similar slow-build pattern: a 2012 civil space cooperation MoU between ISRO and its Australian counterpart set the groundwork, well before Australia established its own dedicated Australian Space Agency in 2018.
That groundwork paid off once India's Human Space Flight Mission (Gaganyaan) needed ground infrastructure: ISRO and the Australian Space Agency signed an Implementing Arrangement in December 2021 to establish telemetry terminals on Cocos Island, giving India a critical Indian Ocean tracking station for crewed missions and marking the most concrete deliverable yet from a space relationship that had quietly built up over the preceding decade.
AISRF RESEARCH FUND ISRO-ASA COCOS ISLAND
Read brief → 06 EDUCATION & MIGRATION DEEP
118,000+ Indian students, Migration and Mobility Partnership Education ties trace back generations - Indian students have studied in Australia since at least the mid-20th century under Colombo Plan-era scholarship schemes - but stayed a comparatively minor part of the relationship until India's own outbound-student boom of the 2000s-2010s, when Australia became one of the top global destinations alongside the US, UK and Canada.
Institutional scaffolding caught up more recently: the Australia-India Education Council, established to formalise the relationship, was renamed the Australia-India Education and Skills Council (AIESC) in 2022 to reflect a broadening focus beyond higher education into vocational training. A Mutual Recognition of Educational Qualifications mechanism, signed March 2023, addressed a long-standing irritant for Indian graduates whose Australian qualifications weren't always recognised at home, and the Migration and Mobility Partnership Arrangement (MMPA), signed and exchanged during PM Modi's May 2023 Sydney visit, created new post-study work and mobility pathways.
By July 2023 about 118,869 Indian students were enrolled in Australia - the second-largest international student cohort in the country - and Deakin University announced plans to become the first Australian university with a campus at India's GIFT City financial hub, signalling a shift from one-way student mobility toward Australian universities establishing a direct physical presence in India.
118,869 STUDENTS MMPA SIGNED
Read brief → 07 CIVIL NUCLEAR COOPERATION ACTIVE
Uranium supply since 2015 Civil nuclear cooperation was impossible for decades: Australia, one of the world's largest uranium exporters, refused to sell to India for years specifically because India had not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a policy that hardened further after Australia imposed sanctions following India's 1998 nuclear tests.
That position only became untenable after India's 2008 Nuclear Suppliers Group waiver - itself a consequence of the 2005 US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement - which recast India as a de facto responsible nuclear power eligible for global civil nuclear commerce despite remaining outside the NPT. Australia's own domestic debate took several more years to resolve, with the governing Labor Party reversing its long-standing anti-export policy only in 2011-12 under PM Gillard, before formal negotiations produced a Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement signed in September 2014 and brought into force in November 2015.
Australia's Parliament passed the Civil Nuclear Transfer to India Bill in December 2016, formally enabling Australian uranium mining companies to supply India for civil use under IAEA safeguards - closing out a policy reversal that took the better part of two decades and turning a former point of friction into a routine, if still relatively modest, commercial relationship.
URANIUM SUPPLY CIVIL NUCLEAR AGREEMENT
Read brief → 08 CULTURE & DIASPORA DEEP
976,000-strong community, artefact repatriation Indian migration to Australia was actively suppressed for most of the 20th century by the White Australia policy (1901-1973), which explicitly aimed to keep non-European migrants out and left the Indian community tiny and marginal for generations despite India and Australia's shared Commonwealth and cricket-playing heritage providing an easy cultural bridge whenever individual contact did occur.
The policy's dismantling through the 1960s-70s, followed by Australia's shift to a skills-based immigration system, opened the door to a wholly new wave of Indian migration from the 1990s-2000s onward - professionals, students and skilled workers who transformed the community's size and profile within a generation. Government recognition followed the community's growth: the Centre for Australia-India Relations, based in Parramatta, Sydney, now runs the Maitri Scholarships, Grants and Cultural Partnerships programmes, and cultural-heritage cooperation has grown to include the repatriation of 40 Indian artefacts since 2014, including 29 returned in a single batch in March 2022.
The Indian community now numbers about 976,000 (2021 Census) - the second-largest migrant group in Australia after England - and increasingly visible symbolic recognition has followed, including a Little India Gateway and the renaming of Perth's 'Sailani Avenue' to honour Nain Singh Sailani, an Indian soldier who served with Australian forces in the First World War, a marker of just how differently the relationship treats Indian-origin contribution today compared with a century of restrictive immigration policy.
976K DIASPORA 40 ARTEFACTS REPATRIATED
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