Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles says China failed to give Australia ‘satisfactory’ answer over warships conducting live fire exercises
Defence Minister Richard Marles says Australia is still waiting for a satisfactory answer from China as to why they didn’t provide more notice of three Chinese warships performing live fire exercises off the NSW coast.
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Defence Minister Richard Marles says Australia is still waiting for a satisfactory answer from China as to why they didn’t provide more notice of three Chinese warships performing live fire exercises off the NSW coast.
It comes as Foreign Minister Penny Wong spoke with her Chinese counterpart Minister Wang Yi on Friday night about the incident which saw multiple flights from Australia to New Zealand diverted away from the airspace surrounding the ships.
Mr Marles said Australian authorities were not directly notified by the Chinese that the drills would occur, and had learned of the danger from a radio broadcast to flights in the area.
He said the short notice was in contrast to the 12 to 24 hours that the Australian Navy would typically provide before firing live munitions.
“I don’t think we have a satisfactory answer from China as to the question of the notice, I think it is important to just understand for a moment that this is all happening in international waters,” Mr Marles told Channel Nine on Saturday.
“This is what navies do (but) we would have preferred that there was much more notice provided so that we didn’t have the disconcerting set of circumstances yesterday.”
Mr Marles said Australia had been “shadowing” the warships “since it came … into our northern waters a week or two ago”.
Defence last week revealed it was monitoring two People’s Liberation Army-navy (PLA-N) frigates and a replenishment vessel in the Coral Sea off Queensland, as the ships conducted military exercises.
He added that there was an “unprecedented level of assets on the case” to know exactly what it is doing until the mission is completed.
“They’re entitled to be there, but obviously we’re entitled to be prudent, and we are being that, and we’re entitled to make sure that we are shadowing them, surveilling them to understand everything that they’re doing.”
When questioned about whether Australia was being too polite with China, Mr Marles eased tensions, saying it was “important … that we stay calm”.
“The point being that that then allows any plane which is coming near where we are, the opportunity to plan a route around the exercise that we’re doing,” he said.
“And you don’t have the kind of mid-air disruption that we saw yesterday, and you don’t have those disconcerting circumstances.”
Mr Marles said a satisfactory answer would have been “why that couldn’t have been done” in the first place.
It emerged on Friday that the vessels had conducted live fire testing, leading to AirServices Australia to issue a warning to commercial aircraft to avoid that area.
The Australian Defence Force said in a statement late on Friday that there had been no official warning from the Chinese vessels, which it said was contrary to ‘best practice’.
“Defence is aware of Task Group 107 advising by verbal radio broadcast on a civil aircraft channel of its intent on 21 February 2025 to conduct live firing activity in the Tasman Sea, 346 nautical miles (640km) off Eden,” Defence said.
“Airservices Australia issued a Hazard Advisory.
“The PLA-N did not inform Defence of its intent to conduct a live fire activity, and has not provided any further information.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters on Friday afternoon that the activity was consistent with international law and there had been no risk of danger to any Australian assets or New Zealand assets.
Originally published as Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles says China failed to give Australia ‘satisfactory’ answer over warships conducting live fire exercises
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