SVE NEWS & SMH Sharing Series — Quad meeting under way, with climate and Pacific stability top of the agenda

The four leaders of the Quad have begun their meeting in Tokyo, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese planning to use the talks to commit the Labor government to the security partnership.

Albanese joined the host of the meeting, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, at his residence and office in Tokyo alongside United States President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

With a response to China the key issue, the meeting began with a “family photo” of the four leaders at the Kantei building in the Akasaka district of the Japanese capital.

Albanese will be joined by Foreign Minister Penny Wong at the formal talks, with brief television footage allowed before the doors are closed and the discussions commence in private.

This is only the second fact-to-face meeting of the four leaders after former PM Scott Morrison met the group in Washington DC in September last year.

Kishida has previewed the Tokyo summit with statements about stronger security cooperation and work on 5G communications, a key issue for countries worried about the dominance of Chinese equipment supplier Huawei.

The meeting comes 15 years after the concept of the Quad was first aired. At the time, John Howard visited Tokyo for talks with then Japanese PM Shinzo Abe but support for the idea cooled after Howard lost power. It was then revived after China adopted a more assertive foreign policy, with political interference in other countries and its military expansion in the South China Sea.

One security issue on the agenda in the Tokyo talks is Chinese surveillance, a concern for Albanese after the Chinese security pact with Solomon Islands and the presence of a Chinese spy ship off the coast of Western Australia during the election campaign.

The current PM will hold separate talks with each of the three leaders today after a working lunch of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. He will be in Tokyo until tomorrow morning, when he is due to fly home to Australia.

 

By David Crowe