2016 DEFENCE WHITE PAPER

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CHAPTER FIVE: POSITIONING DEFENCE FOR TOMORROW’S CHALLENGES
military and civilian personnel; new training initiatives and greater
collaboration on shared challenges including terrorism and cyber
security; greater intelligence and information sharing; expanding science
and technology cooperation; and co-development of training areas.
The Government will also seek to cooperate with Singapore in
multilateral forums to promote practical regional security cooperation
and a rules-based regional order.
SECTION TWO CAPABILITY
5.52 The Government will prioritise enhancing our participation in the ASEAN
Defence Ministers’ Meeting-Plus (ADMM-Plus). The ADMM-Plus
focuses on practical measures to build better understanding and to
promote practical cooperation on security challenges including
counter-terrorism, maritime security, humanitarian assistance and
peacekeeping. Australia will continue to make substantive contributions
to multilateral practical exercises to help increase interoperability
between ADMM-Plus members to address these challenges. Australia
is also helping to build the region’s collective capacity to combat
terrorism as the current co-chair with Singapore of the ADMM-Plus
Counter Terrorism Experts’ Working Group. We will continue to engage
in security dialogue through other multilateral security frameworks,
including the ASEAN Regional Forum, to discuss cooperation to address
regional security issues.
5.53 Australia and Malaysia have a long standing defence relationship based
on shared interests in promoting regional security cooperation and a
rules-based regional order. Malaysia is an important member of ASEAN, a
capable partner in the ADMM-Plus framework and a member of the FPDA.
Malaysia hosts the Integrated Area Defence System which coordinates
FPDA activities. Defence’s presence at Royal Malaysian Air Force base
Butterworth is an important part of our commitment to the FPDA.
5.54 Under the Australia-Malaysia Joint Declaration of Strategic Partnership
agreed by Prime Minister Turnbull and Prime Minister Najib in
November 2015, both countries agreed to ongoing collaboration on