Defence, Foreign Ministers sign new 50-year UK-Australia ‘Geelong Treaty’ military pact
Defence and Foreign Ministers from the United Kingdom and Australia have signed a new 50-year military pact.
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Defence and Foreign Ministers from the United Kingdom and Australia have signed a new 50-year military pact designed to underpin Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines.
The deal was signed in Geelong on Saturday, the hometown of Australia’s Defence Minister, and dubbed ‘The Geelong Treaty’.
Officials from Australia and the UK have been forced to voice renewed enthusiasm for the AUKUS agreement, amid a US review of the deal. America’s defence and foreign minister-equivalents have not been part of AUKUS meetings in Australia this week.
Donald Trump and UK Prime Minster Keir Starmer and expected to meet in Scotland this week.
At Geelong on Saturday, Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said the new pact meant jobs and military security.
“It’s a treaty which will last for 50 years,” Mr Marles said during a signing ceremony with his UK counterpart.
“It is a bilateral treaty which sits under the trilateral AUKUS framework, itself embodied in a trilateral treaty that was signed that I signed in Washington, DC., in August of last year.
“In doing this, AUKUS will see 20,000 jobs in Australia. It will see, in building submarines in this country, the biggest industrial endeavour in our nation’s history, bigger even than the Snowy Hydro scheme,” Mr Marles said.
“In military terms, what it will deliver is the biggest leap in Australia’s military capability, really, since the formation of the navy back in 1913.”
Alongside Mr Marles, UK Secretary of State for Defence John Healey dubbed the Geelong Treaty a powerful agreement.
“It is a treaty that will support tens of thousands of jobs in both Australia and the UK,” Mr Healey said.
“It is a treaty to build the most advanced, most powerful attack submarines either of our nations have ever had. It is a treaty that will fortify the Indo-Pacific.
“It will strengthen NATO and we’re the politicians signing it today; But this is a treaty that will define the relationship between our two nations and safeguard the security of our country for our children and our children’s children to come.
“So this is a historic day.”
The two ministers have been joined in a series of meetings by Foreign Minster Penny Wong and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy this week.
The treaty signing also comes as the largest British flotilla in 30 years arrives in Darwin, with the HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carrier docking in Darwin on Wednesday. It was the first time a British aircraft carrier visited Australia since 1997, and brought troops to take part in the massive Talisman Sabre exercises, which run annually across northern Queensland and PNG.
Originally published as Defence, Foreign Ministers sign new 50-year UK-Australia ‘Geelong Treaty’ military pact
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