New York

TheIndia-Australia partnership is "underutilised", Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said, asserting that he and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are “very keen on rectifying that”.

Albanese, who is scheduled to visit India in December, made the remarks during a conversation hosted by Asia Society here last week on the sidelines of the high-level UN General Assembly session. "We have a lot in common as well. We're both Commonwealth nations, and we have language and universities being established there. There's a lot more we can do though. It has been underutilised, the relationship and partnership, but both PM Modi and I are very keen on rectifying that,” he said. Albanese said he would travel to India on his way to the US to attend the G20 Summit, to be hosted by President Donald Trump in Florida on December 14-15. His India visit will include a 'G'day Namaste’ event, a cultural, business and sporting showcase featuring the Business Council of Australia and other stakeholders. Albanese said he will be taking a “whole lot of businesses” to Mumbai and “it will finish with, as things in India always does, with a cricket match" in Chennai between a Victorian and Western Australian team. The conversation was moderated by former Australian prime minister and Global President and CEO of Asia Society Kevin Rudd, who observed that the India-Australia relationship appeared to be going places. “India will be the third largest economy in the world. They already have the largest population in the world,” Albanese said. Crediting Modi for India's expansion of access to energy, the Australian prime minister said more people had been connected to energy in India under his leadership than had occurred in “any decade in any country or any region in human history”.

“He is someone who we have a strong relationship with. I think there's a lot more can be done in our economic partnership,” Albanese said. Recalling that Modi and he have each visited the other's country twice as prime ministers, Albanese also spoke about the large public gatherings during the Indian leader's visits to Australia. "There's something rather extraordinary about the way that politics is conducted from the Indian community. "If you think a Republican or Democrat convention is full of adulation for whoever the leaders are at any particular time, you haven't seen anything till you've seen a Narendra Modi stadium event. Even the last one was in Melbourne, and he filled a stadium,” he said. When asked whether people at the event were also cheering for him, Albanese said, “Well, the good thing for me was that Prime Minister Modi asked them to cheer for me, and that was enough for a chant.” Australians are a “pretty tough bunch”, he said, adding that the only time 40,000 Australians would be "chanting my name" was because he was a friend of Prime Minister Modi. "But the excitement was extraordinary,” Albanese said.