Australia will host a key upcoming international naval exercise for the first time as the government hails the strength of its relationship with India.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed the defence operation as Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen stressed the need for greater regional security in clean energy supply chains.
For the past three years, Exercise Malabar has involved all four Quad nations in various locations around the Indo-Pacific.
Defence ships and aircraft from Australia, India, Japan and the United States take part in a bid to increase military co-operation between countries.
The announcement came as Mr Albanese and Mr Chris Bowen met India’s external affairs minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, in Sydney on Saturday.
Mr Albanese is due to travel to India in the next few weeks to finalise a trade deal between the two nations and said he was keen to ramp up economic and security ties during a meeting at Kirribilli House.
Mr Bowen later warned the global energy crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine showed why countries such as Australia and India needed to work together to ensure diversity in international supply chains.
“The global shift to cleaner energy cannot entrench energy insecurity by locking in reliance on limited supply chains,” Mr Bowen told audience members at the the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
“We cannot swap one over reliance in world energy supply chains (Russian gas) with over-concentrated renewable energy supply chains.”
China is responsible for about 80 per cent of the market, according to the International Energy Agency, and has previously stopped imports of Australian barley, wine, lobster and other products.
“With renewable electricity growing at a faster rate in India than any other major economy, supply chain diversification will be critical to this continued growth,” Mr Bowen said.
“Let me put it simply, in Australia we want to manufacture more elements essential to the renewable energy transformation, whether it is inverters, transformers, batteries or solar panels.
“But we also want India and other trusted and reliable partners making more things too because diverse supply is good supply.”
Mr Jaishankar’s visit comes at an important time for Australia’s relationship with India.
As well as his upcoming trip to sign off the trade deal, Mr Albanese will travel to New Delhi in September for the next G20 meeting.
Australia will also host the annual meeting of Quad leaders in the first half of the year.
By Rachael Ward in Melbourne
