An old friendship is ready for new era of security threats
As the Wallabies and Lions battle tooth and nail on the pitch, we are in Australia signing agreements that will make both nations more secure and prosperous.
In today’s increasingly volatile world, with conflicts and aggressive autocracies on the rise, partnerships between like-minded democracies are vital for protecting our shared values and way of life. Australia and the UK enjoy a strong and growing trade and investment relationship, worth close to $50bn annually.
We’re bringing the expertise gained from building London’s award-winning Elizabeth Line to Sydney’s Metro renewal.
We’ve agreed to deepen co-operation on industrial policy, global free trade, artificial intelligence and cyber security to further boost and protect our economies – our high-level meeting between foreign and defence ministers.
AUKMIN was first set up in 2006 when Tony Blair was prime minister and we were both ministers early in our careers. Since then, our relationship has gone from strength to strength.
But it is defence that remains the bedrock of our relationship. Our AUKUS partnership with the United States is our most strategically significant defence agreement in generations, and last week we took decisive steps to fast-track delivery.
We re-established the Defence Industry Dialogue to boost military technology development and strengthen procurement.
And most significantly, we’ve signed the Treaty of Geelong to bolster AUKUS and accelerate delivery of the SSN-AUKUS fleet of nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines.
SSN-AUKUS will be the largest, most advanced, most powerful attack submarines ever operated by either the Royal Australian Navy or Royal Navy. They will help us protect our vital trade routes and sovereign borders, and support thousands of jobs in Australia and the UK.
Just as it strengthens our collective security, our investment in AUKUS will be an engine for growth across our two nations. It is creating 10,000 jobs in Adelaide, 3000 in Perth, and thousands more in supply chains across the country.
While we’ve been strengthening our political and economic ties in recent days, our armed forces have been training side by side across Australia.
More than 3000 UK personnel are taking part in Exercise Talisman Sabre, the largest military exercise ever staged in Australia, with a total of 35,000 personnel from 19 nations sharpening their ability to work together, in a massive display of military deterrence.
The UK’s huge presence in this exercise was made possible by our Carrier Strike Group visiting Darwin. A formidable formation of naval and air assets demonstrating the power of alliances – with warships from Canada, Norway, Spain and New Zealand.
These exercises aren’t just symbolic. They strengthen regional stability and improve our forces’ ability to act together.
And our security co-operation doesn’t end there. We’re extending our naval personnel exchange program to include more personnel and more vessels. Our Five Eyes relationship keeps us safe through world-leading intelligence sharing. And we continue to jointly train the Ukrainian armed forces, while UK personnel are set to serve aboard Australian Wedgetail aircraft that will monitor Ukrainian supply lines.
From the battlefields of northern Europe to the frontlines of Korea and Afghanistan, our two nations have stood together when it mattered most. Today, we face a new era of threat, which demands a new era of Australian-British partnership.
Through AUKUS, through our Carrier Strike Group deployment and through strengthened military co-operation, our nations are leading efforts to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific and uphold the international laws that protect our way of life.
Our alliance will deliver the “defence dividend” that sits alongside our strengthened security: creating high-skilled jobs and world-leading technologies, and reinvigorating our proud industrial base in both nations.
We will always remain fierce sporting competitors, and we will always stand as the closest of allies: defending our freedoms, our prosperity, and the rules-based international order that underpins both.
David Lammy is UK Foreign Secretary and John Healey is UK Defence Secretary.
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