Australia, Indonesia agree to upgraded defence pact

Australia and Indonesia say they are close to signing a “watershed” defence treaty that will upgrade their already close collaboration on security issues.

The treaty was approved on Wednesday by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, who is on his first state visit to Australia, although the pact between the two countries will not be officially signed until January.

The new agreement will commit Australia and Indonesia to “consult at a leader and ministerial level, on a regular basis on matters of security”, the Australian leader said.

It will also facilitate “mutually beneficial security activities, and if either or both countries’ security is threatened, to consult and consider what measures may be taken, either individually or jointly, to deal with those threats”, Albanese said.

“This treaty is a recognition from both our nations that the best way to secure that peace and stability is by acting together,” he added.

“It signals a new era in the Australia-Indonesia relationship,” he said, adding that the deal committed the two countries to “close cooperation in the defence and security field”.

“Good neighbours will help each other in times of difficulties,” Prabowo said.

Within Indonesian culture, he added, “we have a saying when we face an emergency, it is our neighbour that will help us”.

Today I stood alongside my friend Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto on HMAS Canberra to make an historic announcement.
 
The governments of Australia and Indonesia have just substantively concluded negotiations on a new bilateral treaty on our common security.
 
Australia’s… pic.twitter.com/bI53L7tj8q

While the text of the treaty has not been made public, Albanese said it is based on a 1995 security agreement signed by then-Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating and Indonesian President Soeharto, according to Australian broadcaster ABC News.

The deal was later cancelled by Indonesia due to Australia’s involvement in a United Nations peacekeeping mission to East Timor, a former Portuguese colony that was brutally occupied by Indonesia from 1975 to 1999.

Since East Timor’s independence in 2002, relations between Jakarta and Canberra have improved, and they have since signed two important security pacts – the 2006 Lombok Treaty and the 2024 Defence Cooperation Agreement.

The new treaty builds on the previous agreements and commits both Australia and Indonesia to consult each other if one or both countries believe their security is threatened, and then to consider whether to deal with such threats either “individually or jointly”, Albanese said.

Australia and Indonesia share longstanding concerns about the rise of China, which is seen as an important economic partner but also a strategic competitor with a growing military presence in the South China Sea and Pacific region.

Keating, the former Australian premier, told ABC News last year that even 30 years ago, he and Soeharto were worried about Beijing.

“Soeharto and my arrangement was essentially a mutual defence pact. Because a major threat to one, given the geography, necessarily impacted on the other, or had consequences for the other or would have had consequences,” he said, according to ABC News.