Doorstop with Minister for Defence, Senator the Hon Marise Payne

JULIE BISHOP: After completing a very successful meetingwith our counterparts in the United Kingdom last week, the Foreign Secretaryand the Defence Secretary, it is timely that we are also here now in the UnitedStates to meet with our counterparts, the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo andthe Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. The annual AUSMIN meeting in anopportunity for us to discuss matters of mutual interest and concern and thisAUSMIN was one of the most productive and fruitful that I have attended. Wecovered a range of issues. We reaffirmed the standing and enduring nature ofour Alliance and we committed to continue to cooperate on a whole range ofareas, particularly focusing on our region the Indo-Pacific. It was a verypositive meeting and we have come up with a joint workplan that we will becompleting in time for next year's AUSMIN which we will be hosting inAustralia.

MARISE PAYNE: This has been a very productive couple of days with SecretaryMattis and Secretary Pompeo. Both of them opened their remarks withobservations about 100 years of mateship. So that message about the depth, thehistory and the breadth of the alliance is not lost on any of us in theengagements we've had over the past two days. They've been very valuableopportunities to talk around cooperation, collaboration, particularly the workthat we do together military to military both in the region, here in the UnitedStates and more broadly. We're of course both engaged in key missions in Iraqand in Afghanistan. The United States is very supportive of our engagement inthe Philippines, particularly in terms of our counter-terrorism work after thesiege of Marawi last year. So the opportunity to consolidate those efforts ofcooperation and collaboration, develop further habits of cooperation, as wewere reminded is a very important one, and it's certainly one we've takenadvantage of in the last two days.

JOURNALIST: Minister, did you get a commitment or a senseof timing on the Ambassador to Australia and is it a worry that we still don'thave one?

JULIE BISHOP: We didn't discuss that in detail; it's amatter for the Secretary of State and the Trump Administration. We're workingvery well with the chargé Jim Carouso and we have great relationships with theTrump Administration. We have access at the highest levels and we work veryclosely with our counterparts. So it's an issue for the United States and we'llbe welcoming, I have no doubt, an Ambassador in due course.

JOURNALIST: Minister, in the last two months Donald Trumphas whacked tariffs on Canadian imports and insulted Justin Trudeau. He has puttariffs on European imports and insulted Theresa May. You spoke about 100 yearsof mateship but this is their closest ally and their oldest ally, what makesyou think we won't be next?

JULIE BISHOP: Well if you look back over the last 18 monthswe have a very strong working relationship with the Trump Administration. Wehave had that from the outset. We are in constant contact with the TrumpAdministration, with the White House and we're working very closely with alllevels of government and we're seeing the results of that very closecooperation. The Prime Minister has a good working relationship with PresidentTrump–they speak often. I know Marise speaks often to her counterpart SecretaryMattis, and I've developed a very strong friendship with Secretary Pompeo. Sowe're continuing to work closely on a whole range of issues. The importance ofthis Australia-US Ministerial meeting was that we were able to articulate areasof cooperation and collaboration, as Marise said. We have a joint work programthat Australia and the United States is working on together to achieve peaceand further prosperity in our region. So it's a very close and deeprelationship at the moment.

JOURNALIST: Minister Payne, the communiqué mentionsincreasing troop numbers in Darwin to two and a half thousand. Is thatsomething that will be happening and how does that reflect the status of thedefence relationship?

MARISE PAYNE: Well that has of course been the target for the Marine RotationalForce-Darwin since its inception. And the numbers have been gradually trendingover time. We're very pleased that the United States is continuing to commit tothat engagement in a very strong way and reinforcing it in our joint work planmeans we'll be able to pursue that in the coming months.

JOURNALIST: Senator Payne, on that question, were thereany discussions on other military aspects of cooperation such as possiblehigher rotation of American bombers coming through Northern Australia or shipvisits to Perth or basing in Perth even?

MARISE PAYNE: Well, I won't go into all of the finer details of the nature ofthose discussions but what we did press was the deep levels of cooperation thatwe already have. So we've been obviously working together in the region; ourIndo-Pacific Endeavour Task Group which is currently at RIMPAC embarked almost40 Marines and transited with them through the Pacific and up to RIMPAC. That'spart of our work program at the moment. So we also took Marines on HMAS Choules to New Caledonia for thelargest humanitarian assistance and disaster relief exercise in the region,Croix du Sud. So those engagements are business as usual for us and the marinerotation force gives us an opportunity to enhance and to grow those. We lookforward to welcoming over 24 countries to Exercise Kakadu in coming weeks inthe Northern Territory and then just after that Pitch Black, the Air Forceexercise. So the tempo is significant, and the value of the tempo is that it developsthose habits of cooperation as I said. It develops that interoperability; itdevelops our confidence in working together which is invaluable in times ofcrisis or urgent response.

JOURNALIST: Minister, can I ask, did you learn anythingmore today about Donald Trump's meeting with Vladimir Putin and how concernedare you that that meeting in Helsinki may embolden Russia and perhaps encouragethem to dodge responsibility for their past actions and their involvement inMH17?

JULIE BISHOP: The United States is very clear-eyed aboutRussia's behaviour. The President has seen an opportunity to engage Russia andwe support that. But at no time did we get any indication that the UnitedStates would not be holding Russia to account for its behaviour in backing theAssad regime in Syria, or indeed in relation to MH17 and holding Russia toaccount for its role and you heard it directly from Secretary Pompeo. It was amatter that we discussed in our bilateral meeting but also in the broaderministerial forum that the United States will continue to work with Australiaand the Netherlands in holding Russia to account for its role in the downing ofMH17. So the United States is very clear-eyed about Russia's behaviour, as theyare about other nations that seek to disrupt the rules based order and we willcontinue to work very closely with the United States in that regard.

JOURNALIST: Just further to that, when you learnt aboutDonald Trump's meeting with Vladimir Putin, did you make your request to theWhite House that he bring this up in the meeting or that he ask about it?

JULIE BISHOP: TheUnited States has been and is aware of our concerns in relation to Russia'srole in the downing of MH17. The United States has been with us all the waysince the 17th of July 2014 in working to investigate this matter and hold theperpetrators to account. We couldn't do it without the United States' supportand that is continuing.

JOURNALIST: Secretary Mattis said it's obviouslyAustralia's sovereign decision what we do in terms of the South China Sea butwas there a specific request during the talks for us to take a more active rolethere?

MARISE PAYNE: As I said to Cameron I'm not going to go into the specificmilitary discussions of that nature but what is really important to remember isthat Australia is leading in engagement in the region already. So we prosecutethe case for freedom of navigation and freedom of overflight in an overwhelmingnumber of our activities. I think we had something like 38 port visits throughSoutheast Asia last year including 18 transits of the South China Sea. That wasa combination of both our Indo-Pacific Endeavour 17 Task Group – the largesttask group Australia has sent into the region in 40 years – and our normaldeployments into Southeast Asia and North Asia. We have Indo-Pacific Endeavour18 underway as we speak, as I referred to earlier, and all of those aredesigned in the interests of ensuring that we preserve freedom of navigation,freedom of overflight, the security, the stability, the prosperity of theregion. We make a very significant contribution in that regard and we certainlyreinforced that with our US counterparts.

JOURNALIST: Minister Bishop, you mentioned in the pressconference that Australia might assist as far as North Korea goes in possiblyhelping verify any dismantling of programs. What do you mean by that, what sortof assistance would that be?

JULIE BISHOP: The Australian Government has already offeredexpert advice to assist the inspection regime that must take place in order toverify that North Korea is denuclearising. We have expertise in the detectionof nuclear elements. We have experts that work within the IAEA. We have offeredthat support to the United States and they noted that and took that on board.Clearly there is going to have to be an independent inspectors regime to ensurethat North Korea is doing what it promised and Australia has offered to be apart of that.

JOURNALIST: Minister, Emma Husar has announced she willtake leave from her role while this investigation goes on into her actions. Isthat sufficient?

JULIE BISHOP: Well, I understand that Labor is carrying outan internal investigation into the complaints of I understand over 20 staffmembers. I hope that that investigation is open and transparent and that theconcerns of the staffers involved are properly dealt with.

JOURNALIST: Just on the Syrian refugees Minister, what isthe status of the 1200 Syrian refuges that PM Turnbull had the discussion withPresident Trump about shortly after his inauguration? CNN is reporting thatjust 44, the US has accepted just 44 Syrian refugees in the last year. Do youknow what – has the US kept its word?

JULIE BISHOP: Are you referring to those on Manus andNauru?

JOURNALIST: I'm referring to the Obama-

JULIE BISHOP: They are not necessarily Syrian. They arepeople from a number of different nations. We understand that that isprogressing and that a number of people have left Nauru and have been resettledin the United States. I understand that that's ongoing and that it has beenoccurring, the resettling process has been progressing.