Northern Territory to host Japanese marines

Australia will host more Japanese military in northern Australia, including elite Japanese marines, as part of a major plan to ramp up trilateral exercises with US marines in Darwin.

Penny Wong walks with Yoko Kamikawa, Minoru Kihara and Richard Marles at the annual Australia-Japan 2+2 Foreign and Defence summit. Picture: AFP

Australia will host more Japanese military in northern Australia, including elite Japanese marines, as part of a major plan to ramp up trilateral exercises with US marines in Darwin.

The move comes at a time when Beijing is stepping up its military brinkmanship in the ­region, with defence and foreign ministers of both Australia and Japan criticising China’s recent air and sea incursions into Japanese territory.

The boost in defence co-operation to a record post-war level was agreed at the annual ­Australia-Japan 2+2 Foreign and Defence summit at Queens­cliff, Victoria, on Thursday.

Defence Minister Richard Marles said after the meeting that Australia had agreed to further step up military co-operation with Japan, including more exercises in northern Australia with Japanese air and amphibious forces.

For the first time, Australia will invite the elite marines of the Japanese Rapid Deployment Brigade to join trilateral exercises with Australian troops and US marines in northern Australia.

“This is a really huge opportunity for our three defence forces to operate in an amphibious context,” Mr Marles said, noting that Australia wanted its army to develop great amphibious capabilities as outlined in last year’s Defence Strategic Review.

Mr Marles flagged a further expansion of the deployment of Japanese F-35 joint strike fighters to RAAF base Tindal, which plans to have more planes conducting more exercises after last year’s initial deployment of several Japanese strike fighters.

The talks between Mr Marles, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and their Japanese counterparts, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Kamikawa Yoko, and Minister of Defence, Kihara Minoru, canvassed growing concern about China’s military brinkmanship.

Mr Marles said Australia shared Japan’s alarm at August’s incursion in Japanese airspace by a Chinese PLA aircraft and into its territorial waters by a Chinese warship.

“We expressed our support for Japan’s sovereignty at that moment …we want to be in a world where disputes are resolved not by power or might but by reference to international law,” he said.

Senator Wong said the relationship between Australia and Japan had never been stronger and the two countries were ambitious to grow the partnership across defence and strategy co-operation, economic ties and trade and investment.

She said both countries were also concerned about China’s growing naval harassment of The Philippines coast guard in the South China Sea and Australia would look to provide greater support for the coast guard.

Mr Minoru declined to say whether Japan would join the competition to provide the Australian navy with a new fleet of general purpose frigates.