IAN HALL |

In an odd quirk of timing, this year Australia and India’s elections will run in parallel. On 11 April, Scott Morrison made the trip to Canberra’s Government House and the official campaign finally began.

On the same day, Indian voters began to go to the polls in the first of seven phases of voting in that country’s mammoth exercise in democracy. By 19 May, the last day on which votes can be cast – and the day after Australians will go to the polls – up to 900 million Indians will have exercised that right.

Unusually too, India will feature in the Australian campaign. One of the last acts of the Morrison government was to give the federal government’s go ahead for the Adani Group’s controversial Carmichael mine project in the Galilee Basin in Queensland. On 9 April, Environment Minister Melissa Price signed off on Adani’s groundwater management plan, despite doubts expressed by the CSIRO and environmentalists about its claims.

Please click here to read the full “Coal comfort: Australia-India ties after the elections” article at The Interpreter, written by Griffith Asia Institute Deputy Director, Research, Professor Ian Hall.