Deputy prime minister and defence minister Richard Marles has visited Jakarta for a meeting with Indonesia's presumed next president Prabowo Subianto. It comes just two days after defence chief Angus Houston was there who also met Subianto. The visit is for 'high level defence and security discussion' and 'to work towards finalising the Australia-Indonesia defence cooperation agreement'.
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00:00 Richard Miles is in Jakarta to meet Prabowo Subianto.
00:06 They are both defence ministers, but last week Mr Subianto won Indonesia's presidential
00:11 election.
00:12 Richard Miles is the first minister to come to Jakarta and officially congratulate him.
00:17 Now the pair were talking about finalising a new defence agreement between the two countries,
00:24 but the arrival of a boat of Pakistani asylum seekers on the WA coast earlier this week,
00:30 a boat that had come via Indonesia, that too was discussed.
00:35 The basis on which we approach this is that it is a challenge which is being shared by
00:40 both Australia and Indonesia and that the cooperation that we engage in is enormously
00:46 valuable to both countries and that we place that as the highest priority.
00:52 Australia gives Indonesia millions of dollars every year to help with counter people smuggling
00:57 operations.
00:59 Richard Miles says that Indonesia has high visibility on the issue, but he declined to
01:04 say whether or not the Indonesian side knew the route or the process that those men from
01:10 Pakistan used to get to Australia recently.
01:14 He nonetheless though said that Australia and Indonesia will work even closely together
01:19 on the issue of people smuggling in future.
01:22 For more information visit www.fema.gov.au/covid19
01:24 [BLANK_AUDIO]