South Australia is on an exploratory arc to forge partnerships with Tamil Nadu in emerging areas of common interest ranging across renewable energy, education, water management and film production.
Apart from inking an agreement on sister State status with Tamil Nadu on Monday, South Australia opened a full-fledged representative office in Chennai. South Australia's Water Industry Alliance and the Jaipur-based CII Water Institute of the Confederation of Indian Industry also signed a Memorandum of Understanding on water-related research, optimal resource management and technology transfer.
“There is a great deal of complementarity in relations with Tamil Nadu, especially Chennai,” said South Australia Premier Mike Rann, who has led a trade delegation here.
It was important for bilateral ties to be as mutually educative as they were mutually rewarding, Mr. Rann said. Rather than a coincidence, South Australia's choice of Chennai as the hub of its plans for India was a carefully considered decision. “Almost six years ago we decided to set base in Chennai and now I believe we made the right decision,” he said.
Renewable energy
On the potential for collaboration in renewable energy, Mr. Rann pointed out that while South Australia accounted for 50 per cent of the country's renewable energy (wind) portfolio, Tamil Nadu contributed 55 per cent of the State's renewable energy generation. By 2020, South Australia aspired to raise the share of wind power to 33 per cent of the energy portfolio.
There was also scope for collaboration in film-making, particularly given Australia's expertise in special effects and post-production, Mr. Rann said.
According to Mr. Rann, South Australia is also in the process of leveraging new discoveries of rich mineral deposits. The number of mines had tripled from four about five years ago and was expected to quadruple soon. In addition, some 30 new mines under exploration were estimated to have some of the world's biggest deposits of uranium, copper and gold.
Earlier, addressing a meeting hosted by the Indo-Australian Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Rann said that while mining would play a dominant role in South Australia's future relationship with India, he would like the Indian involvement to step beyond mineral imports to feature joint ventures in developing the mining infrastructure.
Peter Varghese, Australian High Commissioner in India, said the opportunities for Government-to-Government ties would vastly increase with the firming up of the Free Trade Agreement between the two countries which could be expected by year-end or early next year. He pointed out that an FTA was projected to add about 30 billion Australian dollars in trade volume terms over the next couple of decades.
The High Commissioner stressed the need to diversify the bilateral relationship beyond energy and commodities that have dictated trade and for scaling up people-to-people connections in order to “update the image that one had of the other”.
The India-Australia relationship had to be contextualised in a long-term framework and the “headline story” of this was that interests were converging in a way that never happened before, Mr. Varghese said.
