Tony Abbott, Australia’s special trade envoy for India and a former Prime Minister who visited New Delhi last week, has described India as “emerging democratic superpower” and added that a swift trade deal with India would be an important sign of the democratic world’s tilt away from China.
In an opinion piece published in ‘The Australian’ newspaper on Monday, Abbott said that a trade deal with India could be seen as making “the world safer for democracy.”
Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, Abbott said, India has revived the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, and the first in-person Quad summit is expected before the end of the year.
“India and Australia are like-minded democracies whose relationship had been under-developed, at least until Narendra Modi became India’s Prime Minister. Under (PM) Modi, India has revived the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, and the first in-person Quad summit is expected before the end of the year,” he wrote.
Abbott, who was Prime Minister when China and Australia signed a bilateral free trade agreement in 2015, noted that China’s formidable power is the result of the free world’s decision to include a communist dictatorship in global economic networks.
“Back then, the assumption was that rising prosperity and more economic freedom would lead, eventually, to political liberalisation too. Certainly, that was my view in 2014 when we finalised China’s first trade deal with a G20 economy. Subsequently, our exports to China did indeed grow, even faster than theirs to us; but the current capricious boycotts of Australian coal, barley, wine and seafood show that, for the Beijing regime, trade is used as a strategic weapon,” Abbott said.
At the virtual summit held between Modi and Abbott on June 4 last year, the bilateral relationship was elevated to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, under which India and Australia committed, inter alia, to encourage expanded trade and investment flows for mutual benefit and decided to re-engage on a bilateral Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA).
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