Meeting with Malaysian Minister for Foreign Affairs

Today in Perth I met Malaysia's Minister of Foreign Affairs YB Dato' Sri Anifah for discussions to advance our longstanding strategic and economic bilateral relationship.

Malaysia is an important partner in our region and our discussions covered a range of political, economic and security cooperation issues such as combating the terrorist organisation Daesh (ISIL) and tackling the challenge of foreign terrorist fighters returning to our region.

One year on from the disappearance of flight MH370, we spoke of our ongoing commitment to the search efforts in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia. Senior officials from Australia, China and Malaysia will meet for detailed discussions on MH370 later this month in Perth.

We also agreed to continue our close collaboration on the investigation into the downing of MH17.

We discussed Malaysia's priorities for its rotating membership of the United Nations Security Council in 2015-16. I conveyed Australia's support for Malaysia in its role as Chair of ASEAN and the East Asia Summit this year.

We look forward to commemorating this year the 60th anniversary of Australia's diplomatic presence in Kuala Lumpur, a historic milestone in our longstanding relationship.

We also look forward to further strengthening our people to people links, which is underpinned by a 300,000 strong Malaysian-Australian alumni and which is set to expand as over 150 Australian students take up study and internships in Malaysia this year under the Australian Government's New Colombo Plan.