Page 391 - Week 02 - Thursday, 8 March 2007
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the number of ACT educational institutions and businesses that formed part of the delegation. It was a particularly successful delegation and the work that was done by each of the participants certainly contributed to that great success. I thank each and every one of them very much for their participation in the delegation. I present the following paper:
Trade mission to India—ministerial statement, 8 March 2007.
I move:
That the Assembly takes note of the paper.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (3.46): I am delighted that the Chief Minister has made this statement today. I agree with him. I think India is one of those markets that most of the western world has overlooked. It is a fabulous country. Its population will exceed China’s some time in the next 10 to 15 years. It currently has a middle class of some 200 million people. There are something like 20 million US dollar millionaires in India, and growing daily. Its economy is booming. It is growing. It is looking for markets and expertise. I am very pleased that the Chief Minister took that delegation, the second ministerial delegation, to India.
The great shame is that it took them six years as a government to follow up on the work that we started. I believe it was in July 2001 that Michael Moore, representing the government at an international conference on drugs in India, went to Bangalore and other areas to look for opportunities to expand relationships with India. There were commitments made then that were not followed up by this government, and we have seen that so often. Commitments made in China were not followed up and contacts and commitments made to South Africa were not followed up. I guess six years later is better than not at all.
I concur with all that the Chief Minister has said in his summation of his trip. India is a good place for Australia to do business. When Mr Moore went in 2001, he took officers from Business ACT—I think the officers are no longer there because they were lost in the cuts that the government imposed upon Business ACT—to look at relationships at the level of chamber of commerce to chamber of commerce as well as city to city because even then it was quite clear to us, in 2001, that the opportunities were there to be had.
Notwithstanding some of the problems that the Chief Minister touched on, there are advantages that do exist that make India a very easy market for Australia to look at. In India, in the main, they speak English. They operate under a system of English law and they have a great and enormous respect for Australia on a number of levels, including a shared military history and sporting achievement. I am not sure that all that many Australians know that the only other troops, apart from ANZACS, that went ashore on Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 were, in fact, Indians. Two mountain batteries of Indian artillery went ashore, as well as some Indian medical corps. Indeed, Simpson, of donkey fame, spent much of his time camping with the Indian orderlies because they looked after the donkeys.
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