City of Perth council to vote on new international sister-city relationship with an Indian city

An international relationship, which could boost economic and commercial links between two countries, could soon be formed between an Indian city and the City of Perth. The proposed partnership — which town staff have recommended the Perth council approves — would focus on supporting economic growth through trade, investment and knowledge-sharing. The Indian city will be chosen on factors related to education, tourism, energy transition and innovation. “Sister city agreements encourage people-to-people interaction by providing citizens with the opportunity to participate in cultural, informational, educational, trade and knowledge-sharing exchange programs across cities,” the City of Perth’s Sister Cities document reads. “More recently our sister city relationships have evolved to become a framework to support economic growth across a variety of businesses and industry sectors.” According to a staff report, the City of Perth has been working towards a “more formal relationship” with India “for some time”. In 2017 the city attended the Sister State relationship delegation with WA and Andhra Pradesh (an Indian state) while in 2023 the city renamed an East Perth road to Sailani Avenue to honour Anzacs from the Indian community. The city has also been in discussion with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Australian India Business Council WA, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA and the Indian Consul General. The formal establishment of the relationship is expected to take up to 12 months, but a shortlist of potential cities will be presented to councillors in April. The endorsement of the nominated city is expected to be completed by August. But Perth Lord Mayor Basil Zempilas spoke at Tuesday night’s agenda briefing session and asked whether this decision could be fast-tracked. “My sense is that with all of the informed discussions that we have had, we are further down the process that perhaps that timeline indicates and we’ve heard (in) an engagement session, unanimous support to push ahead,” Mr Zempilas said. “We’ve heard from some informed conversations that we’ve had, in part alluded to, there seems to be some standout candidates. Are we not able to move that along sooner?” City of Perth general manager Kylie Johnson responded to Mr Zempilas and city staff would endeavour to follow the timeline “without creating an expectation” they could not meet. “If we can make it happen quicker than July or August we certainly will, but I wasn’t going to give you a time that I didn’t think we could (complete).” Earlier this month the City of Cockburn councillors voted to delay a decision to send four councillors on a business trip — which would set ratepayers back more than $100,000 — to Croatia in July, as part of a sister-city visit to Split. “Cockburn was talking about an exercise in cultural visitation, we are the capital city of Western Australia (and) we are trying to drive the economy in the way that we can influence of our state and our city forward,” Mr Zempilas said. The City of Perth already has 11 sister and friendship city agreements including with Chengdu, China, Vasto, Italy and Megisti, Greece. Brisbane and Ipswich already have a formal relationship with Hyderabad (a southern Indian city), making them the only Australian cities with an official partnership with an Indian city.