Australia, Indonesia agree to upgraded defence pact

The information pact, to beryllium signed successful January, pledges some countries to consult each different connected information concerns.

Australia and Indonesia accidental they are adjacent to signing a “watershed” defence pact that volition upgrade their already adjacent collaboration connected information issues.

The pact was approved connected Wednesday by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, who is connected his archetypal authorities sojourn to Australia, though the pact betwixt the 2 countries volition not beryllium officially signed until January.

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The caller statement volition perpetrate Australia and Indonesia to “consult astatine a person and ministerial level, connected a regular ground connected matters of security”, the Australian person said.

It volition besides facilitate “mutually beneficial information activities, and if either oregon some countries’ information is threatened, to consult and see what measures whitethorn beryllium taken, either individually oregon jointly, to woody with those threats”, Albanese said.

“This pact is simply a designation from some our nations that the champion mode to unafraid that bid and stableness is by acting together,” helium added.

“It signals a caller epoch successful the Australia-Indonesia relationship,” helium said, adding that the woody committed the 2 countries to “close practice successful the defence and information field”.

“Good neighbours volition assistance each different successful times of difficulties,” Prabowo said.

Within Indonesian culture, helium added, “we person a saying erstwhile we look an emergency, it is our neighbour that volition assistance us”.

Today I stood alongside my person Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto connected HMAS Canberra to marque an historical announcement.
 
The governments of Australia and Indonesia person conscionable substantively concluded negotiations connected a caller bilateral pact connected our communal security.
 
Australia’s… pic.twitter.com/bI53L7tj8q

— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) November 12, 2025

While the substance of the pact has not been made public, Albanese said it is based connected a 1995 information statement signed by then-Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating and Indonesian President Soeharto, according to Australian broadcaster ABC News.

The woody was aboriginal cancelled by Indonesia owed to Australia’s engagement successful a United Nations peacekeeping ngo to East Timor, a erstwhile Portuguese colony that was brutally occupied by Indonesia from 1975 to 1999.

Since East Timor’s independency successful 2002, relations betwixt Jakarta and Canberra person improved, and they person since signed 2 important information pacts – the 2006 Lombok Treaty and the 2024 Defence Cooperation Agreement.

The caller pact builds connected the erstwhile agreements and commits some Australia and Indonesia to consult each different if 1 oregon some countries judge their information is threatened, and past to see whether to woody with specified threats either “individually oregon jointly”, Albanese said.

Australia and Indonesia stock longstanding concerns astir the emergence of China, which is seen arsenic an important economical spouse but besides a strategical rival with a increasing subject beingness successful the South China Sea and Pacific region.

Keating, the erstwhile Australian premier, told ABC News past twelvemonth that adjacent 30 years ago, helium and Soeharto were disquieted astir Beijing.

“Soeharto and my statement was fundamentally a communal defence pact. Because a large menace to one, fixed the geography, needfully impacted connected the other, oregon had consequences for the different oregon would person had consequences,” helium said, according to ABC News.

“Soeharto was substantially disquieted astir a aboriginal rising China and truthful was I. But adjacent then, 30 years ago, helium disquieted astir Indonesia’s incapacity to support its sprawling archipelago against a competent force,” helium added.