Menhan Australia: Indonesia Akan Akuisisi 5 Kapal Selam Dari Korea TRANSCRIPT: PRESS CONFERENCE – SECOND ANNUAL AUSTRALIA- INDONESIA DEFENCE MINISTERS’ MEETING TRANSCRIPTION: PROOF COPY E & OE DATE: 26 JULY 2013 TOPICS: Second Annual Australia-Indonesia Defence Ministers’ Meeting; Asylum seekers. STEPHEN SMITH: Thanks very much for turning up. Can I officially welcome Indonesia’s Defence Minister Purnomo to Australia and to Perth. Purnomo leads a very high-level delegation from Indonesia, including Admiral Lubis who has just signed, together with General Hurley, the agreement for the sale of five C-130 Hs to Indonesia, and I will come back to that. Also, the Chief of the Air Force, Air Vice-Marshal Dunia, and so we welcome the Indonesian delegation. Purnomo arrived with the delegation on Wednesday, so I greeted him at the airport on Wednesday and on Thursday we had an extensive day in Perth and Western Australia, starting off in Henderson where the delegation saw the work being done at BAE’s shipyard on our Frigates, enhancing the radar and combat capability of our ANZAC Frigates. Also at Henderson, saw some of the maintenance work on our Collins-Class Submarines, and then to HMAS Stirling for a briefing and tour of HMAS Stirling, and tour of one of our ANZAC Frigates which has just returned from the Middle East doing its counter-piracy and counter-terrorism work. Then to the SAS in Swanbourne for a briefing from our Special Forces, a wreath laying yesterday at the State War Memorial at Kings Park and last night an official dinner. Today we have a formal Indonesia-Australia Defence Ministers’ dialogue. This is the second of what is now an Annual Defence Ministers’ dialogue and adds to the architecture that we now see in the defence-to-defence, military-to-military and the national security architecture between Australia and Indonesia. Two-plus-two meeting between Australian and Indonesian Foreign and Defence Ministers, the annual meeting now between our Prime Minister and Indonesia’s President, the first of which we saw in Darwin last year, and the second in Jakarta in the last month or so. And earlier this year in Jakarta we conducted the second so-called two-plus-two meeting. The bilateral relationship between Australia and Indonesia is, of course, very important, but it’s also at a very strong and high level, both generally, but also in the military-to-military and defence-to-defence area. The modern relationship is laid out by the Lombok Treaty which came into force in this room in February 2008 when I signed the Lombok treaty with then-Indonesian Foreign Minister Wirajuda, and pursuant to the Lombok Treaty in 2008, we entered into a Memorandum of Understanding so far as defence and national security cooperation was concerned and since then we have enhanced our practical cooperation between Australia and Indonesia on the military-to-military and defence-to-defence front. As a result of the discussions we’ve had in the course of yesterday and Wednesday, there are a range of areas where we will formally agree today to enhance our practical cooperation. Firstly, in the area of peacekeeping: this is very significant. Indonesia makes a substantial contribution to United Nations peacekeeping. Some 1900 Indonesian peacekeepers take part under the UN flag, and Australia is in the top 12 contributors to United Nations peacekeeping. Historically, Australia prides itself as having the first boots on the ground under a United Nations mandate when, courtesy of the United Nations Committee, we intervened in Indonesia and separated the fledgling Indonesian Forces from the then-Dutch Forces, assisted in the repatriation of the Dutch, which helped see the establishment of Indonesia as a Republic. We’ve agreed to enhance our practical cooperation on United Nations peacekeeping, including with a view, in due course, to the potential for embedding peacekeepers in our respective contributions to the United Nations. Secondly, one of the modern challenges – cyber security. We both acknowledge that cyber security is a challenge for us and we’ve agreed to commence and subsequently enhance our cooperation and exchange of information on cyber security. Thirdly, we’ve agreed to enhance our strategic analysis and strategic communications and strategic exchanges. This will first be reflected by Indonesia’s briefing of Australia on the preparation of Indonesia’s White Paper. When our White Paper was published in May of this year, we had previously agreed with Purnomo that he and his officials would be briefed as the preparation of the White Paper commenced and would be briefed fully before its publication, and that was a very good process. Purnomo and Indonesia have agreed to extend the same courtesy and approach to Australia in the course of the preparation of Indonesia’s White Paper, but we will expand that to other areas of strategic analysis and strategic cooperation. We’re also proposing to enhance the work that we do together on capability. This is particularly in the area of lessons learned for acquisition, maintenance, sustainment, and we will have exchanges of officers in our respective defence organisations, particularly Defence Materiel Organisation and the Indonesian equivalent. Finally as a result of our visit to HMAS Stirling and Henderson, we’ve agreed there is collaboration we can do on lessons learnt for maintenance and sustainment of submarines. Indonesia is currently in the process of acquiring up to five submarines in conjunction with Korea. We of course have the Collins-Class Submarine and we have taken a range of steps in recent years to enhance the maintenance and sustainment of the Collins-Class Submarine to get greater availability and greater time in the water itself. So we’ve agreed that there are lessons that we can share on submarine maintenance and sustainment and, importantly, we’ve also agreed to facilitate Indonesia’s access to our submarine rescue facilities at HMAS Stirling. So cooperation on submarine maintenance and sustainment, experiences and lessons learnt, but also collaboration on submarine rescue. So they are five areas which we’ve agreed in the course of our conversations over the last 24 hours or so to add to the already extensive cooperation that we see with Indonesia, and we will formally do that at the formal bilateral meeting later this morning. Purnomo, to you and your delegation, can I thank you for visiting Perth. I thank you for visiting Perth. It is not the first time Purnomo has come to Perth prior to becoming Defence Minister. Purnomo was Indonesia’s Energy and Mining Minister, so in that context he has previously visited Perth, but it is his first visit as Defence Minister. It’s our third or fourth meeting this year and ninth or tenth meeting overall, so it reflects the strength of relationship and the importance of the defence-to-defence collaboration so far as Indonesia and Australia is concerned, and indeed it is a good example of what the White Paper, Australia’s Defence White Paper 2013 describes as the importance of the relationship between Australia and Indonesia, indeed Indonesia being Australia’s most important relationship in our immediate region. So, again welcome. Thank you for coming with your delegation and I would like you to make some remarks. PURNOMO YUSGIANTORO: Thank you, Minister Smith. STEPHEN SMITH: Sorry, we’ve just got all the microphones on this one. PURNOMO YUSGIANTORO: But you know that I am shorter than him so you will not see me fully. Well, first I would like to thank Minister Smith for the very good hospitality here in Perth. I would also like to thank the Government of Australia. We have just been signing the sale of the five C-130H. That is the full contingent with the four C-130Hs that was granted to Indonesia, so the total of nine C-130H will be very, very benefit to us, to Indonesia, since we have a lot of natural disasters in our country. As you know that, we do have natural disasters such as tsunami, earthquakes, flooding, volcanic eruption that are then need the transportation from point-to-point to bring the logistics, to bring the people, for the rescue operations. That’s the reason in this trip I am accompanied by the Chief of our Air Force, Mr Putu Dunia, in the back row there, because I know that the Air Force is very important in your country. Whenever a natural disaster happens in our country, then usually the military come in first to the rescue, and so with that I would like to appreciate Minister Smith, the Government of Australia and all of you, the Australian people that really pay attention to our country. Secondly that I would like to stress is on bilateral cooperation, defence-to-defence. It has been very strong and at top peak of relation between Australia and Indonesia. I’ve been talking to Minister Smith, not only in meetings, by also by phone. If it’s something, then I just grab up the phone and talk to him and he calls me so really the people-to-people contact here is very important, and we put that in our reality, not only for us, but our staff, it’s very strong. So I believe in the futures, the cooperation, the relationship between Indonesia and Australia is enhancing, and becoming stronger, especially in defence-to-defence.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 01:44:31 +0000
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