JOINT STATEMENT: FIJI-AUSTRALIA DEFENCE...

3 October 2025

Today, we, the Minister for Defence and Veterans' Affairs the Honourable Pio Tikoduadua and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence the Honourable Richard Marles MP held the annual Fiji-Australia Defence Ministers' Meeting in Suva.

Deep and enduring people-to-people links are integral to the success of our defence cooperation. Within our renewed and elevated Vuvale Partnership, we welcome the agreement by the Prime Minister of the Republic of Fiji the Honourable Sitiveni Rabuka and the Prime Minister of Australia the Honourable Anthony Albanese MP to commence negotiations to elevate our Vuvale Partnership to a treaty.

The endorsement of the Blue Pacific Ocean of Peace Declaration at the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders' Meeting in Honiara on 11 September 2025 demonstrates the significant strategic alignment between Fiji and Australia. Today, we reaffirm our defence organisations will continue to work closely together to ensure a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific.

We commit to continuing our extensive Defence Cooperation Program and Pacific Maritime Security Program. Our vast engagement ranges from working together on Fiji's Guardian-class Patrol Boats, training and education, to infrastructure works and the Defence Pacific Air Program. We will continue to grow our reciprocal instructor and embed exchange officer program that serves as the bedrock of our evolving and deepening security partnership.

Together Fiji and Australia make significant contributions alongside other Pacific militaries in operationalising the Pacific Response Group and enabling more effective co-deployments in the region.

We celebrate our deepening maritime security cooperation demonstrated by the opening ceremony of the Vuvale Maritime Essential Services Centre - a sovereign asset of the Republic of Fiji. Our joint development of this facility is a tangible example of our shared commitment to combating maritime security challenges.

The exemplary interagency cooperation between defence, customs, police and policy organisations at the Vuvale Maritime Essential Services Centre is impressive. We commit to continuing to share information, expertise and personnel, and jointly implement our 20-year Maintenance and Sustainment Memorandum of Understanding. Together we will ensure the facility fulfils its potential in enhancing Fiji's maritime capabilities.

The company-sized Republic of Fiji Military Forces' (RFMF) deployment to Australia in support of Exercise Talisman Sabre 2025 and Exercise Coral Warrior 2025 is a demonstration of a true partnership. The five-month deployment enabled the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and the RFMF to integrate, collaborate, and build our combined capability and interoperability.

Building on this landmark initiative, Fiji will embed an RFMF Company on an extended deployment with the Australian Army's 7^th Brigade in 2026. The bonds forged between our personnel and the opportunity to operate together in complex exercise scenarios allow our armed forces to better support each other on a range of regional security challenges.

The RFMF and the ADF will deepen our peacekeeping cooperation. We will work together to seek United Nations accreditation for training courses delivered at Fiji's Blackrock Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Camp. Fiji has long made distinguished contributions to global peacekeeping efforts, and Australia has been proud to provide strategic airlift for Fiji's brave women and men to operations across the globe.

Today we strengthened the vital defence relationship between our two nations. We commit to holding strategic-level discussions again in 2026.