Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto met in Jakarta in mid-May 2025 to strengthen economic and defense ties between the two neighbors.
“I am here in Indonesia because no relationship is more important to Australia than this one,” Albanese said in a statement.
“This is the fastest growing region of the world in human history and Indonesia is central to that growth,” he said, adding that Indonesia is projected to be the globe’s fifth-largest economy by 2040.
Given their geographical proximity, Australia and Indonesia traditionally have maintained close ties, including in security and defense. They signed a Defense Cooperation Agreement in 2024 to enable more complex joint activities and exercises. Canberra hailed the agreement as the nations’ “deepest and most significant” defense deal.
“This is how we can build our shared prosperity and advance our national and regional security,” Albanese said. “This treaty-level agreement, underpinned by the Lombok Treaty, will enable new cooperation in maritime security, counterterrorism, as well as humanitarian and disaster relief.”
The 2006 Lombok Treaty sets the framework for bilateral security cooperation.
Indonesia dismissed recent reports that Russia had requested to base military aircraft in the archipelago’s easternmost province of Papua, about 1,200 kilometers north of the Australian city of Darwin, where a United States Marine Corps rotational force is based for six months each year.
“Indonesia’s answer is no, they’ve made it very clear,” Albanese said, according to the Reuters news service.
Cooperation between Australia and Indonesia “continues to move forward incrementally and there is greater stability than before,” Euan Graham, a senior defense analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told Reuters.
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