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Opinion
July 14, 2026 — 5:00am
There was a moment last week when Narendra Modi told the jubilant night-time crowd of 28,221 in Melbourne to hold up their phones.
Turn on your phone flashlights, he instructed to the crowd in a near-freezing Marvel Stadium on Thursday. And they did.
Not to ask for a tribute to himself as the visiting prime minister of India but to acknowledge his host, Anthony Albanese.
“In honour of my friend, the prime minister, all of you turn on the flashlights of your mobile phones and honour him,” he said, in Hindi. “In his honour.”
As thousands of glow-tipped arms waved back and forth like a luminescent anemone, a smiling Albanese pressed his hands together in the Anjali Mudra gesture that accompanies namaste, returning the tribute to the crowd. Which only cheered louder. For any politician, it would be an uplifting endorsement.
The stadium chant that could be heard as the crowd raised their phones, however, was not “Albo, Albo” but “Modi, Modi”. At various points in the evening, a chant of “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie” went up.
It was certainly a high point for the Indian-Australian relationship and the million-strong Indian Australian diaspora.
“Two great democracies,” Albanese lauded, “two great multicultural societies.”
In an implied repudiation of the xenophobia of Pauline Hanson, he addressed the crowd: “Over generations, your commitment to Australian aspiration and your love of this country has made it better, stronger, and more vibrant … We are a better nation because we have you in it.”
But the evening was Modi’s. He was, as Albanese had hailed him on an earlier visit, “the boss”. As one Indian partisan posted on Instagram after the “Melbourne Meets Modi” event: “Australia’s soil, Australia’s people. Yet Modi ji owned the moment.”
Even after a dozen years in power, Modi’s approval rate is a remarkable 70 per cent, the highest among the 24 democratically elected leaders tracked by Morning Consult, based on April data. Albanese, on the same ranking, has 40 per cent approval and ranks 11th.
So Modi’s endorsement is a political gift for the Australian leader. But it also establishes a point of leverage for Modi. He who giveth an endorsement can also taketh away. That would probably hurt Labor’s electoral standing.
Modi is making a serious investment in the relationship with Australia. He’s made three trips to Australia in his dozen years in power. Before him, no Indian prime minister had visited in 28 years.
“The relationship is acquiring a depth it hasn’t had before,” observes an authority on the subject, Peter Varghese, former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, former Australian high commissioner to Delhi, and author of the federal government’s 2018 India Economic Strategy, known as the Varghese report.
“The big difference is that India sees Australia as a country that can contribute to its own interests. Previously, India was not convinced that we had much to offer them. Economically, strategically, and now with a diaspora community of one million people, it adds layers it hasn’t had before,” he tells me.
Behind the scenes, Modi himself last week made similar points, according to a political ally of his and longtime Australian resident, Dr Jagvinder Virk. The pair met one-on-one in Melbourne last week.
“The uranium supply deal was the highlight of the visit, but Modi puts importance on Australia for a mixture of reasons. It’s trade, Australia has the resources India needs, it’s also the diaspora, and it’s the connectivity, with bipartisan Australian support for India over a long time.” Modi has no complaints about Australia whatsoever, Virk tells me.
Virk himself is part of the connectivity. Formerly a staunch supporter of Tony Abbott, he’s now working on the $3.5 billion bid by Indian tycoon Naveen Jindal to buy and restore the mothballed Whyalla steelworks in South Australia.
One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce has attempted to extract some “monoculture” political gain from the multicultural moment of the Modi visit.
“I have little bits of concerns about rah-rah events,” he told Sky News on the weekend. “I think you’ve got to be a little bit cautious about holding hands and turning out … he was trying to endear himself to a community for a vote.”
Barnaby’s logic is ridiculous. Is it unusual, even sinister, for a politician to try to endear himself to a community for a vote? It’s practically all they do. Quelle horreur!
But his comment was not about logic. It was a dog whistle. Implication: Albanese was going too far to insinuate himself with an alien community and abasing himself in a “rah-rah” event.
Joyce also tried hinting that Albanese had been soiled by Modi’s ethno-religious Hindu nationalism. He pointed to the complaints of discrimination from India’s Sikh and Muslim communities.
“If he [Albanese] wants to stand side by side with all of Narendra Modi’s policies, come out and tell us. That would be an interesting day.”
Again, a ridiculous thing to say. If we always applied this test, Australian prime ministers would be very lonely on the world stage. The PM could never meet Xi Jinping or Donald Trump, on this basis.
Even New Zealand’s Christopher Luxon differs from Albanese on multiple issues. Capital gains taxes, nuclear-powered submarines, anyone?
Again, Joyce was not trying to be logical. He was simply being mischievous, trying to create difficulty in Australia’s relationship with India.
And yet there is a serious point behind Joyce’s cheap politics. Modi is taking India in an illiberal direction. It remains democratic, but not a liberal democracy. Even as Australia’s relationship with India grows closer, the countries’ values grow apart.
“We have to accept,” counsels Varghese, “that as a secular, liberal democracy, Australia and India under Modi will not move in sync.”
But Australian and Indian leaders will overlook this inconvenience. For the first time since World War I, Australia has chosen not to follow the US into a major war. US reliability is at a new low. At the same time, Australia has felt China’s coercive pressure on trade and security and is feeling exposed.
India, similarly, feels strategically vulnerable. Delhi is insulted by Trump’s punitive trade sanctions and threatened by Xi’s military pressures on their shared border.
Both countries are seeking new sources of political, economic and strategic support. In darkening times, Canberra and Delhi are drawn to the points of lights they see in each other.
