Australia and Vietnam deepen Defence Cooperation

Today in Hanoi for the inau­gur­al ASEAN-Plus Defence Min­is­ters’ Meet­ing (ADMM+), I met the meeting’s host, Viet­namese Defence Min­is­ter Gen­er­al Phung Quang Thanh, and signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU) on Defence Coop­er­a­tion.

The MOU reflects the grow­ing bilat­er­al defence rela­tion­ship between Aus­tralia and Vietnam. 

It will pro­vide the frame­work for enhanced prac­ti­cal coop­er­a­tion between Aus­tralia and Viet­nam in areas includ­ing strate­gic-lev­el pol­i­cy dia­logue, mil­i­tary train­ing and exer­cis­es, and human­i­tar­i­an assis­tance and dis­as­ter relief.

Today’s sign­ing fol­lows the estab­lish­ment of the Aus­tralia-Viet­nam Com­pre­hen­sive Part­ner­ship Agree­ment by our two Prime Min­is­ters in 2009, cov­er­ing the fields of trade, devel­op­ment assis­tance, secu­ri­ty and defence, and peo­ple-to-peo­ple links.

In addi­tion to sign­ing the MOU, Defence Min­is­ter Thanh and I dis­cussed the impor­tance of the ADMM+ to pro­mote coop­er­a­tion in peace and secu­ri­ty mat­ters includ­ing mar­itime secu­ri­ty, peace­keep­ing, and human­i­tar­i­an and dis­as­ter relief. 

Press release
Min­is­te­r­i­al Sup­port and Pub­lic Affairs,
Depart­ment of Defence,
Can­ber­ra, Australia 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter