Australia will send an aboriginal business mission to India in 2025 and splash out $1.6 million in grants as part of a technological cooperation deal, lesbian foreign minister Penny Wong has announced.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs met her Indian counterpart in Canberra on Tuesday as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese faces sustained criticism for wearing a turban and going barefoot at a Sikh temple in Sydney.
Australia will send a "First Nations business mission" to India, lesbian foreign minister Penny Wong announced today.
It comes as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese faces sustained criticism over his visit to a Sikh temple on Friday.
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“We will send for the first time a First Nations business mission to India in 2025, looking to support new partnerships for Australian First Nations businesses looking to engage with India and promoting the excellence, ideas and unique offerings of First Nations businesses to new markets overseas,” Ms Wong told a press conference.
Ms Wong did not go into detail about the delegation and there were no questions on the matter from journalists, but in March 2023 she and former Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney appointed Justin Mohamed as the inaugural Ambassador for First Nations People.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton has since vowed to abolish the position on day one if the Coalition wins the election, following revelations Mr Mohamed has taken nine overseas trips, mostly to the US and Europe, to represent indigenous views at conferences, costing the taxpayer $358,000. He is also paid a salary of up to $326,000/year.
According to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Mr Mohamed’s responsibilities include supporting “work to incorporate First Nations’ business and exporter interests into our trade negotiations, international agreements and engagements and export growth strategies and activities”, promoting “the excellence, ideas and unique offerings of First Nation Australian businesses”, and advising “DFAT and portfolio partners on pathways to help grow First Nations’ trade and investment”.
At the Tuesday meeting Ms Wong also announced $1.6 million in grant funding for six projects under the Australia India Cyber and Critical Technology Partnership.
The recipients will be the Australia India Institute, the ANU, the CSIRO, the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, Monash University and the National Institute of Strategic Resilience.
The meeting with India’s Minster for External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar came after Mr Albanese was mocked for a series of humiliating appearances at Indian immigrant events.
Amid demands from the rapidly growing Indian population to make the foreign festival of Diwali a public holiday in Australia, Mr Albanese appeared at a event where he had a Hindu dot painted on his forehead, and visited a Sikh temple.
Video from inside shows Mr Albanese walking barefoot and wearing a turban as he is asked “you feel like you are in India, right?” to which he replies “yeah, yeah”.
“We would prefer not to live in India, Prime Minister, thank you,” one Australian said on social media.
“Look at Australia, it’s lost its identity,” said another.
There were already more than 846,000 India-born people living in Australia by June 2023, according to the latest official statistics, up from 754,000 in 2022, and after another 16 months of record immigration that number is likely to have surpassed one million, which Ms Wong acknowledged in her speech on Tuesday.
In 2013 those born in India were just 1.6% of the population, doubling in 10 years to 3.2% after an increase of 467,000 people.
Header image: Penny Wong and Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, left. Anthony Albanese at a Sikh temple in Glenwood, right (X).
