Australian Defense Minister Marise Payne visits the crew of AP-3C Orion aircraft (Mar Jay S. Delas Alas, PIA 3)
CLARK FREEPORT ZONE — Defense Minister Marise Payne reiterated today the strong defense cooperation between the Australia and the Philippines.
“Australia and the Philippines have (an) extremely long shared regional and military history and our engagement here in the surveillance activity (in Marawi) has been an important extension of that,” Payne said as she visited the crew of AP-3C Orion Aircraft of the Australian Defence Force.
“When I met with (Philippine Defense) Secretary Lorenzana and had an opportunity to discuss the challenges that the government of the Philippines was facing in Marawi, it was very important to me that I was able to see the enthusiasm that Australia’s contribution was an important one,” she shared.
Payne is in the country to attend tomorrow’s 4th ASEAN Defense Ministers (ADMM)-Plus Meeting in Clark.
ADMM-Plus is a platform for ASEAN Defense Ministers to engage their counterparts from the Plus countries namely Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Russia, and Unites States.
With the establishment of the ADMM-Plus in 2010, the ADMM-Plus Experts’ Working Groups on humanitarian assistance and disaster response, maritime security, counter-terrorism, military medicine, peacekeeping operations, humanitarian mine action (demining) and cybersecurity were organized to promote practical cooperation that would enhance the ADMM-Plus members’ defense and military interoperability and capability. (CLJD-PIA 3)