Eleventh Australia-Japan 2+2 Foreign and Defence Ministerial Consultations

The Hon Richard Marles MP, the Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence; Senator the Hon Penny Wong, the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs; H.E. Ms KAMIKAWA Yoko, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan; and H.E. Mr KIHARA Minoru, Minister of Defense of Japan, met in Victoria on 5 September 2024 for the 11th Australia-Japan Foreign and Defence Ministerial Consultations.

Our deep alignment in addressing strategic challenges

We reaffirmed our commitment to Australia and Japan's Special Strategic Partnership, underpinned by shared values, our alignment on strategic challenges and our significant energy, trade and investment ties. We recognised that our cooperation is essential to ensuring a peaceful, stable and prosperous region.

We remained steadfast in our commitment to working together, and with like-mindedpartners, to uphold the international order based on the rule of law and play a leading role in realising a free and open Indo-Pacific that is inclusive and resilient. We reaffirmed our strong opposition to any unilateral attempt to change the status quo by force or coercion anywhere in the world. We underscored our commitment to upholding respect for the rule of law and observing international law in good faith. We concurred on further strengthening exchanges of strategic assessments at all levels in line with the 2022 Australia-Japan Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation (JDSC).

We expressed our strong opposition to any unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion in the East and South China Seas. We discussed with serious concern the recent activities by Chinese military assets in Japanese territory. We expressed serious concerns over recent developments in the South China Sea, including an intensification of China's dangerous and coercive activities towards the Philippines, which have occurred with high frequency. We opposed any coercive actions that could escalate tensions and undermine regional stability, including the militarisation of disputed features. We emphasised the importance of freedom of navigation and overflight and the peaceful resolution of disputes in accordance with international law, in particular the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and reaffirmed that the 2016 South China Sea Arbitral Tribunal Award is final and legally binding on the parties to the dispute.

We underscored the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. We called for the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues.  

We strongly condemned North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. We urged North Korea to cease provocative actions, and to fully comply with all of its obligations under the relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions (UNSCRs). We reaffirmed our commitment to the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of all weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles of all ranges of North Korea and called on all countries to fully implement relevant UNSCRs. We condemned North Korea's malicious cyber activities that fund its unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs. We also strongly condemned the increasing military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, including North Korea's export and Russia's procurement of North Korean ballistic missiles in violation of UNSCRs, as well as Russia's use of these missiles against Ukraine. We committed ourselves to continuing to cooperate closely towards the immediate resolution of the abductions issue.

We reaffirmed our unwavering determination to support Ukraine. We urge Russia to immediately, completely, and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the internationally recognised territory of Ukraine. We concurred on the importance of continuing to remind third countries, including China, of their duty to uphold international law and in no way to validate, support, or condone Russia's attempts to acquire territory by force, in violation of the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. We reaffirmed our commitment to continuing to raise the costs for the architects of Russia's illegal and unjustified aggression by applying economic and financial sanctions.

We called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, for the protection of civilians, to allow increased humanitarian access and the release of hostages, and as critical to avoiding wider regional escalation. We urged parties to the conflict to agree to the ceasefire deal endorsed by the UN Security Council Resolution 2735 and reiterated our commitment to working towards a two-state solution. We remained unequivocal in our condemnation of Hamas for the atrocities of October 7. We expressed deep concern about increasing deaths and incidents affecting humanitarian personnel and stressed the need to regalvanise commitment to international humanitarian law and norms for the protection of humanitarian workers in crisis zones globally. Israel must listen to the concerns of the international community. We called on all parties in the region to cease their destabilising actions and attacks.

Strategic and security cooperation for peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific

As indispensable partners, guided by the JDSC, we are determined to further deepen and expand our strategic and security cooperation to include all tools of statecraft to help prevent conflict and maintain peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific. Our partnership is vital to delivering practical benefits to the region to enhance economic security and resilience, secure funding for quality infrastructure in the region, including undersea cable infrastructure, counter information manipulation and reduce the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation.

We also committed to strengthening collective deterrence, further building interoperability, enhancing regional communication and reassurance, and coordinating our national security policies more closely than ever before, including in collaboration with the United States.

For these purposes, we will:

Strengthening the Special Strategic Partnership

• Further integrate our systems and strengthen the foundations of our Special Strategic Partnership to protect and advance our interests for a period of geostrategic competition, including through:
  • leveraging an Australia-Japan Economic Security Dialogue—a framework for exchanging information on economic and strategic risks and exploring ways of concrete and practical bilateral cooperation in the area of economic security  
  • strengthening discussion on strategic infrastructure cooperation to share experiences between Australia and Japan with the aim of increasing interoperability and delivering more effectively our assistance in the region
  • enhancing cybersecurity cooperation through the inter-agency Cyber Policy Dialogue
  • strengthening accountability for irresponsible and unacceptable behaviour by states in cyberspace by aligning frameworks on cyber attributions, building on recent cooperation on APT40 Technical Advisory, and sharing information on cyber sanctions frameworks
  • deepening dialogue between our foreign ministries' chief information officers to build resilience in government systems to cyber challenges and manage supply chain and vendor risks
  • deepening discussions on classified information sharing to enhance strategic coordination, interoperability and deterrence, under the Information Security Agreement
  • closely cooperating on the evacuation of respective nationals from third countries during crises, and coordinating on contingency planning for potential evacuations, noting recent successful collaboration in New Caledonia
  • strengthening collaboration in support of full implementation of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, including with partners and on climate, disaster risk reduction and response, cyber and space security, as well as nuclear non-proliferation, including through:
    • increasing bilateral WPS defence cooperation to strengthen gender perspectives in military activities, through reciprocal visits, dialogues and training
    • increasing WPS cooperation with the United States and other countries
    • joint support to countries in the Indo-Pacific in their implementation of the Gender Action Plan, underpinning implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030.

Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific to promote security, connectivity and prosperity

• Reinforce our respective enhanced approaches to Southeast Asia with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at its centre, and work together towards mutually decided priorities and joint projects with ASEAN and Southeast Asian partners to improve regional economic, security and climate resilience to security challenges, and implement the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific, including by:
  • enhancing civil maritime cooperation with the partners in the region, including support for the Philippine Coast Guard
  • Australia's commitment to supporting the Asia Zero Emission Centre, focused on accelerating the uptake of clean energy to drive the region's energy transition
  • continuing to coordinate engagement with Southeast Asia to improve the resilience of undersea cable infrastructure, consistent with the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific.
• Enhancing trilateral dialogue between Australia, Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) to advance shared interests in the region, building on the success of the inaugural Australia, Japan, ROK trilateral defence ministers' meeting and the inaugural officials level Indo-Pacific dialogue held in June 2024.
• Continue to work in genuine partnership with Pacific Island countries by supporting the Pacific Islands Forum's 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent, and including through:
  • establishing an Australia-Japan Pacific Digital Development Initiative (PDDI) that will leverage dialogues and expertise between Japan and Australia to enhance connectivity and digital resilience across the Pacific in line with the priorities of Pacific Island countries, including collaborating on digital and telecommunications infrastructure, including undersea cables and regulatory capacity enhancement; data centres and security; and cyber security capacity building and cyber resilience
  • working with other like-minded partners to ensure Pacific Island countries will have undersea telecommunications cable connectivity to support countries economic growth and access to critical digital services
  • jointly visiting and assessing needs and support for pilot projects in parallel in the Pacific to uplift of cyber resilience through the purchasing of updated software and provision of technical assistance, while considering the support modalities of each country, and
  • continuing to coordinate respective efforts for meeting regional security and stability needs in support of Pacific priorities, including through Japan's Official Security Assistance (OSA).
• Reaffirm our commitment to work with partners, including through the Quad, to support a free and open Indo-Pacific that is inclusive and resilient.
• Advance our trilateral cooperation with the United States, including through the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue and the Trilateral Defence Ministers' Meeting.
• Activate Australia-Japan-United States Trilateral Infrastructure Consultations (TIC) for information sharing and political coordination on infrastructure cooperation, including cooperation on systemic reforms and priority projects.

Strategic communication and countering foreign information manipulation and interference

• Work together with regional partners to promote healthy, open and fact-based information environments.
• Enhance bilateral cooperation on strategic communications, narratives and countering foreign information manipulation, including through developing our joint understanding of the impact of foreign state information manipulation, and discussing ways to support civil society, media and academia to build societal resilience.
• Advance further cooperation between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states and the Indo-Pacific Partners (IP4), including through Japan's initiative to invite NATO, its member states and the IP4 to a meeting on strategic communications in Japan during this financial year.

Operational Cooperation and Joint Training

• Reaffirm the importance of, and commit to further refining Scope, Objectives and Forms (SOF) as a critical mechanism to achieve deeper interoperability based on our shared strategic objectives in a range of situations including contingencies.
• Building on our substantial cooperation, enhance bilateral operational capabilities and interoperability from 2025 through operations and joint exercises, leveraging the Australia-Japan Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA)
  • welcome ADF's inaugural participation in the United States-Japan Exercise ORIENT SHIELD in 2025
  • increase air cooperation from 2025, acknowledging the importance of air interoperability to deterrence, including through increasing exchanges, people-to-people links, training, exercises with air capabilities and through reciprocal asset deployments
  • increase the complexity of joint exercises, including through Exercise SOUTHERN JACKAROO.
• Examine how we can use enhanced bilateral cooperation to deter unilateral changes of the status-quo by force and maintain regional stability through deepening our mutual understanding of Australia's Strategy of Denial and Japanese measures including Flexible Deterrence Options.
• With the future establishment of Japan Joint Operations Command (JJOC), welcome reciprocal exchanges of liaison officers between our joint headquarters, with the first Joint Staff LO to commence in HQJOC in November 2024.
• Enhance our cooperation in the space domain by increasing information sharing and expanding opportunities for practical cooperation.

Defence Advanced Capability and Technology Cooperation

• Further cooperation between counter strike capabilities that leverage Japan's stand-off defence capability and Australia's long-range strike capability.
• Cooperate on enhancing information warfare capabilities, including:
  • in countering threats posed by negative information campaigns; and
  • in countering mis- and disinformation.
• Welcome ongoing cooperation on multiple bilateral research projects including the Joint Research Project on Robotic and Autonomous Systems for Undersea Warfare (RASUW).
• Pursue further opportunities for operationally relevant advanced collaboration under the bilateral and Japan-Australia-United States trilateral Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) Projects Arrangement.
• Continue to consult with AUKUS partners and Japan on opportunities for cooperation on AUKUS Pillar II Projects.

Trilateral Defence Cooperation with the United States

• Expand trilateral intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance cooperation in the Indo-Pacific and welcome Australian personnel's participation in the Japan-United States Bilateral Information Analysis Cell (BIAC).
• Reaffirm the importance of reciprocal deployments of United States, Japanese, and Australian F-35s and further enhance trilateral air cooperation facilitated by the signing of the Australia-Japan-United States Memorandum of Intent (MOI) at Exercise PITCH BLACK 2024.
• Continue to cooperate on our vision toward a networked air and missile defence architecture among the United States, Japan and Australia, building on the commitment made at the United States-Japan-Australia Trilateral Defence Ministers' Meeting (TDMM) 2024.
• Increase Japan's participation in activities enabled by Australia-United States force posture cooperation, in alignment with commitments made at AUSMIN 2024, including by:
  • exploring participation of Japan's Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade into training activities with Australia and the United States, including with Marine Rotational Force-Darwin.

Indo-Pacific Defence and Security Cooperation

• Enhance quadrilateral cooperation between Australia, Japan, India and the United States, including through a maritime patrol aircraft collaboration activity on the sidelines of Exercise KAKADU in September.
• Strengthen cooperation with the Philippines such as through Maritime Cooperative Activities and capacity building assistance.
• Continue cooperation to build regional capacity through ASEAN-led mechanisms including the ADMM-Plus Experts' Working Groups on Maritime Security co-chaired by Japan, and on Cyber Security co-chaired by Australia, both from 2024 to 2027.
• Deepen cooperation with Pacific Island countries by supporting Pacific priorities in alignment with the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent through the delivery of humanitarian aid and disaster relief, capacity building and enhanced collaboration through regional activities, such as Operation RENDER SAFE.