India News Chairman Dr Ram Mohan attended the briefing and was given the opportunity to ask PM Morrison a question on the scope of business and trade cooperation in science and technology. This is how the PM responded:
Dr Ram Mohan: Good morning, Prime Minister. India presents growing opportunities for Australia’s critical minerals, especially the nation, looks to India, looks to build its manufacturing sector, defence and space capabilities. How do we see that unfolding in the next few years? And what is the immediate potential? Can we see our lithium or minerals into our Indian cars or our Indian autos and Indian scooters and stuff like that using the critical mineral resources from Australia?
Prime Minister: Yes, is my wholehearted answer. Yes, yes and yes. And that is exactly what the partnership that we’re forging is designed to do. But we’re practical, we’re realistic about it. And you have to have a supply chain here that can enable that and links up. Narendra has a great phrase, which I quoted at the Quad. That supply chains today are not just about cost, they’re about trust. This changes how liberal market economies, I think, need to think about supply chains, and we’ve learnt that during COVID, we’ve learnt that the least cost supply chain has fragilities. It has vulnerabilities that have previously not been priced in. And it’s important that supply chains are not monopolised and Australia has an opportunity to work with, particularly India and the manufacturing capability and all of the technologies you’re talking about, to actually provide that secure and trusted supply chain. And it’s not going to happen overnight. This is a very complicated economic task that just doesn’t involve the work between governments, it involves the work between businesses and industries. And Indian manufacturers aren’t going to just all of a sudden pay over the odds to do what they’re going to do. They’re not. We get that’s not a criticism. That’s just, that’s a reality. And so we need to have a supply chain that is competitive. So it’s a good, positive commercial choice for Indian manufacturers to be able to access what they need in this space on rare earths and critical minerals from Australia. And the same is true in the United States and in Japan.
Now, Japan is already well down this path in the work that is done with Lynas and that is an important part of their supply chain. Now, this can equally be true with India. The processing of rare earths and critical minerals also brings with it some very difficult environmental challenges. And so there’s a whole range of technology that needs to be able to be commercially implemented at scale in India to that end as well. And so while the answer is yes, it’s not easy yes, it’s a yes that’s going to require a lot of work to realise that. And that’s why I said at the Quad and others said, look, we’ve got three things we’re focused on here. The COVID response. The climate response. And the rare earth and critical minerals, critical technology supply chains. And of course, we have a regional security discussion as well. And we discussed the situation in Afghanistan at length. And Prime Minister Modi, of course, raised the very serious concerns that he has about security, most directly on India’s borders. So we want to keep that really simple. And I think if we do that, Ram, then I think we’ll make a lot more progress. The great risk of these groupings is they just do too much and they just end up becoming talkfests and the practical initiatives tend to fall by the wayside. So all four of us are very keen for this to be successful and we’re quite jealous of its agenda and keeping it focused on the things that matter most. So the answer is yes, but it’s going to take a lot of work, I think, to practically achieve it. So the manufacturer sitting in Mumbai says, yep, that works for me. I’m going with them for the next 10 years and I’m going to sign a take-off agreement to that end because that’s good for my business and makes me competitive. That’s the goal.
I want to finish on another point, because it’s important we want India to be a powerhouse in the manufacture of the new energy economy consumables. We really do, making solar panels, making wind turbines, making the components that go into electric vehicles. We want India to be a powerhouse in that in that space. We want Australia to be playing our role in the supply chains of that and being very successful as well. But make no mistake, but we know that India has the potential to really lift its strength in that area in the global market. And we think strategically that is a very good outcome for Australia.