India

Mr BATTY (Bragg) (15:25): I rise to update the house on my recent visit to India, where I had the opportunity to participate in the Asian Forum on Global Governance as well as the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi. The Raisina Dialogue is India's premier conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics. It is a conference that is hosted annually by the Observer Research Foundation in partnership with the Indian Ministry of External Affairs and this year welcomed 3,500 participants from more than 125 different countries. It was inaugurated by the Prime Minister of India as well as the Prime Minister of New Zealand.

I had the opportunity to participate in the conference as a Raisina Young Fellow, which brought together about 50 leaders from about 40 different countries to exchange ideas, forge really meaningful relationships and discuss big issues facing us in all corners of the globe, from artificial intelligence to climate policy to geopolitical tensions around the world. It is a program that I would definitely recommend for young people interested in these sorts of issues.

It was also a great opportunity for me to learn a little bit more about India and Indian culture. It was my first time visiting India. I have to say it is an extraordinary country. I was extremely impressed just by the sheer scale and size of the place, home to 1.4 billion people, now the world's most populous country. Indeed, every month in India, over a million people turn 18 years old—an incredible statistic. I was also impressed by the diversity of the country—India has the most languages spoken in any one nation—and also the ambition of the country. This is the world's fastest growing major economy. It is the world's largest democracy, and it has one of the world's fastest growing middle classes as well.

Of course, I enjoyed learning a lot about Indian culture as well. I landed right in the midst of the Holi festival, which was a very colourful occasion in Delhi. I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge all of those in my own local community who were celebrating Holi here only a few weeks ago. We had the opportunity to enjoy a cultural night with Indian dancing and singing and, of course, indulged in a lot of Indian food, everything from dosas to curries. My personal favourite was the lovely chuski—quite delicious.

India, of course, is a very important country to South Australia. Our state is home to a growing and large Indian community. More than 40,000 South Australians are of Indian descent; that is the second-largest group after those from England. Many of those Indian South Australians call my own local community home, and it has been a great pleasure to be able to engage with our local Indian community as the member for Bragg over the past few years. As well as our people-to-people links, India is a really important trading partner for South Australia. India is South Australia's third-largest export market, valued at over $1 billion, trailing only the US and China, with international education being particularly important on that front.

It is critical that we keep that momentum up, though. I was concerned to see a bit of a decrease in our year-on-year exports to India in the latest ABS data release. This is just one of the reasons why the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow minister for trade have been calling for direct flights from Adelaide to India, for which there would be huge demand here with my own local Indian community as well. I am pleased that the Premier could follow in my footsteps to continue these discussions over in India just over the past week. We hope to see some results from those discussions.

Just to conclude, I want to acknowledge and thank those involved with the AFGG and the Raisina Dialogue, including Dr Samir Saran, who is President of the Observer Research Foundation and Dr Shashi Tharoor, Dean of the Raisina Young Fellows Program, as well as say a big thankyou to all those on the ORF team who were responsible for the conference, in particular to Aditya and Sayantan for all their hard work in putting together a very successful conference.