PM Modi Meets Former Australian PM Scott Morrison During Australia Visit
MELBOURNE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is co-chairing the third India-Australia Annual Leaders’ Summit with his counterpart Anthony Albanese in Melbourne this week, with both governments expected to finalise a long-awaited commercial uranium supply agreement before the visit concludes on Friday. Albanese told reporters ahead of the talks that discussions had been constructive and that a range of joint announcements would follow, while officials on both sides have confirmed that the regulatory hurdles which stalled the deal for over a decade have now been substantially resolved.
A Decade in the Making
To appreciate why this moment matters, it helps to look back at how long the road here has actually been. India and Australia signed their original Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement in 2014, yet commercial trade never followed beyond a single symbolic test shipment three years later. The gap came down to two separate legal knots, one on each side of the relationship. Australia’s own export laws required any recipient country to be a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a status India has never held which left Australian uranium miners legally exposed to domestic challenges every time a deal was floated. Canberra worked through its side of the problem in 2016, when Parliament passed dedicated legislation shielding uranium transfers to India under its existing IAEA safeguards framework. India’s own barrier proved tougher to shift. A 2010 liability law had exposed foreign suppliers to potentially unlimited damages in the event of a nuclear accident, a risk global reactor makers and uranium miners alike refused to accept. That changed only in December last year, when Parliament replaced the old law with the SHANTI Act capping operator liability and sharply limiting supplier exposure, finally clearing the last real obstacle to commercial contracts.
Why India Needs This Deal
The scale of India’s ambition explains why this uranium pipeline carries so much weight. The country currently runs 24 nuclear reactors generating under nine gigawatts, a modest base against its stated target of 100 gigawatts by 2047 under the Viksit Bharat vision. India’s own uranium reserves are real but structurally limited, since domestic ore runs far leaner in grade than deposits in Australia or Canada thus keeping annual production well under 500 tonnes. That gap is exactly why the Department of Atomic Energy has spent the past year signing major supply contracts with Kazakhstan and Canada worth billions of dollars combined. Australia brings something neither of those partners can match on its own, holding close to a third of the world’s known uranium reserves, concentrated heavily around South Australia’s Olympic Dam and the largest single uranium deposit on the planet.
The Bigger Nuclear Story Behind the Fuel
There’s a longer arc worth understanding here too since imported uranium is meant to be a bridge rather than a destination. India’s three-stage nuclear programme, first conceived by Homi Bhabha decades ago, is designed to eventually run on the country’s abundant thorium reserves rather than uranium at all. Getting there requires natural uranium to fuel today’s reactors, which in turn generate the plutonium needed to power the fast breeder reactors of stage two. India reached a genuine milestone on this path in April when its prototype fast breeder reactor at Kalpakkam achieved first criticality, marking real progress toward that longer-term goal. Secure, steady uranium imports from Australia would give India the breathing room to keep advancing that programme without fuel supply becoming the bottleneck.
More Than Just Uranium
The uranium deal, sits alongside a broader set of outcomes taking shape at this summit. Critical minerals cooperation looks set to move from framework to contract, with Arafura Rare Earths expected to finalise a five year offtake agreement supplying rare earth materials to an Indian magnet manufacturer, feeding directly into India’s push to build domestic permanent magnet capacity. South Australia has also emerged as a major new copper supplier to the Indian industry with purchases climbing sharply over the past year as Indian solar and EV manufacturers scale up. On the financial side Australian pension giant AustralianSuper is reportedly poised to expand its investment in India’s National Investment and Infrastructure Fund, channelling capital toward clean energy and logistics projects.
Trade Numbers That Back Up
None of this is happening in isolation from the underlying trade relationship, which has genuinely strengthened since the two countries’ trade agreement took effect in December 2022. Bilateral trade has grown from roughly $14 billion before the pact to over $32 billion today, with both governments now targeting $100 billion by 2030. Indian exporters have embraced the agreement at an unusually high rate, using it for 84% of eligible trade, a figure well above what similar Indian trade pacts typically achieve. With eleven rounds of talks already completed on a more comprehensive follow-on agreement, the momentum from this summit looks set to carry the relationship further still.
What to Watch as the Summit Wraps Up
With the visit running through Friday, the coming days should bring clarity on the exact contours of the uranium agreement and the accompanying critical minerals and investment deals. Given how much groundwork both governments have already laid and how directly Albanese hinted at forthcoming joint announcements, this summit looks positioned to convert over a decade of diplomatic patience into one of the more consequential energy and resource partnerships either country has built this year.
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