AUKUS an ‘extremely important trilateral partnership’: Payne

Foreign Minister Marise Payne has highlighted the importance of the AUKUS security pact, noting it is an “extremely important trilateral partnership”.

“We would miss the point completely if we ignored the fact that the premise of the decision that Australia made was our agreement to participate in an extremely important trilateral partnership with the United Kingdom, and the United States – the AUKUS, and everything that is within that partnership,” Ms Payne told Sky News Australia.

“Everything that is within that partnership, whether it is the technology sharing arrangements, whether it is the work that we will do on quantum computing and cyber, on artificial intelligence on other undersea capability, and of course the acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines themselves.

“Everything we will do in that partnership, we do acutely cognizant of the challenges that we face in the Indo-Pacific from a range of vectors.”