Secretary of State for Defence of the United Kingdom Grant Shapps, left, and Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles exchange a new defence and security cooperation agreement at Parliament House at Parliament House in Canberra, Thursday, March 21, 2024. SYDNEY—Australia and the United Kingdom signed a new defense and security cooperation agreement with the defense ministers of both countries saying it was required to meet “contemporary challenges” to maintain a global rules-based order.
“As the world becomes more complex and uncertain, we must modernize our most important partnerships,” the statement said. “I think one of the most important elements is it describes a mechanism by which we consult when either of our countries are under threat and we have those discussions more formalized than it is at the moment,” Shapps said at a joint press conference with Marles at Parliament House in Canberra on Thursday.
Refreshing the bilateral defense treaty was a commitment made at the AUKMIN conference held last year in the UK, and is unlikely to have come as a surprise to others powers in the region, namely China.
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