In a high-profile speech laying out Australia's Indian Ocean strategy, the foreign minister warned against political interference and economic coercion, urging China to be more transparent about its military build-up.
The foreign minister has used a high-profile speech laying out Australia's Indian Ocean's strategy to warn against political interference and economic coercion, urging China to be more open about its military build-up while declaring that countries in the region are facing "unprecedented" threats from climate change and strategic competition.
"With an increasing level of commercial and military passage through the Indian Ocean comes a greater need for the transparency and reassurance," Senator Wong said. Senator Wong made a clear reference to those recent disputes in her speech, saying that in the current climate "even research vessels have the potential to be tools for strategic goals" and there was "an urgent need to address disinformation, interference, opaque lending practices and coercive trade measures" across the Indo-Pacific.
Sri Lanka's president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, also attended the conference. He didn't directly reference the controversy during his speech, but said that "balancing between great powers an increasingly complex task" for littoral states, and that the "space for manoeuvrability was shrinking fast".
"The countries gathered here are no strangers to strategic competition – and you are also no strangers to its costs.