It's a great pleasure to be a premier sponsor once again at the Indian Film Festival, and to congratulate its entrepreneurial director Mitu Bhowmick- Lange, her creative team, and Indian cinema's wonderful Vidya Balan, the Festival Ambassador. They've turned the Festival into one of Melbourne's cultural highlights.

India and Australia. Bollywood and Sustainability. 

These might seems like strange linkages. But at Visy we see our future as a globally sustainable manufacturing business in packaging, recycling, and renewable energy.

Which means that we think about the Indo-Pacific region, about how to do business there, and about Australia's opportunities and responsibilities as a regional player.

We believe that Australia and India have just begun to explore a bilateral relationship which offers enormous mutual benefits to both nations, economically, strategically, and culturally.

As a step towards promoting the bilateral relationship, the Pratt Foundation and the University of Melbourne's Australia India Institute will hold the inaugural Australia India Leadership Dialogue this October in New Delhi. The Dialogue will bring together leaders from the two countries in government, business, media, civil society, the arts, and the universities.

Our ongoing sponsorship of the Indian Film Festival in Melbourne is another such step towards improving the bilateral relationship.

The link between sustainability and Bollywood may seem less obvious. But we can only tackle climate change, the environment, and the natural disasters which confront all of humanity, if we do it globally. So we have to break down the barriers of misunderstanding and ignorance about our cultural differences. 

The movies can help us do that. Even in an age of social media, film still remains the most potent vehicle for telling the stories that resonate around the world. And Bollywood, the world's largest and most diverse film industry, tells those stories. Entertainingly and with great style.

But the Indian Film Festival in Melbourne offers us even more than great movies. By bringing us some of the great stars, directors, and screenwriters from India, it brings something of Bollywood's excitement, colour and exuberant energy to Melbourne.  

Long may it continue to do so.