Expanded co-operation in the Indo-Pacific will be at the top of the agenda in Brisbane on Friday at a meeting of Australian and American foreign and defence ministers.

While the annual AUSMIN summit is the main forum for setting the direction of the Australian-American alliance, this year’s meeting could also widen its focus.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles will meet counterparts US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, who arrived on Thursday night.

The American officials arrive in Brisbane after stops in New Zealand and the Pacific islands, where they have sought to cement closer diplomatic and military ties in the region at a time of rising competition for influence with China.

Deeper co-ordination

A State Department spokesperson this week said the Brisbane forum would be an opportunity to review opportunities for broader co-operation with Australia on both fronts.

“It’ll be an opportunity for us to deepen our strategic co-ordination in the Indo-Pacific and globally,” the spokesperson said.

“I think what you can see, or will see, is an expansion of areas where the United States and Australia are working together [and a] deepening [of] those ties. Stay tuned.”

Since taking power last year, Labor has sought to add a new dimension to Australia’s long-standing military and diplomatic alliance with the US: Climate change and renewable energy co-operation.

Alex Bristow from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said the “acid test” for a renewed alliance would be brokering an agreement in areas outside the traditional domains of foreign policy. 

“Critical minerals provide a particularly good example of an area in which Australia can make an outsized contribution to the resilience of the US alliance and the region,” he wrote.

That challenge and the path leading to Friday’s meeting are set against intensifying competition for influence in Australia’s backyard.

Regional contest

That contest involves more players than just America and China.

On a historic visit to the Pacific this week, French President Emmanuel Macron warned that the independence of small Pacific states was being challenged.

Both American officials arrive in Brisbane after tours of the Pacific.

Secretary Blinken was in Tonga on Tuesday, where he dedicated a new American diplomatic outpost in a small island state that recently fell $100 million into debt to China.

It’s the second new American embassy in the South Pacific, alongside the Solomon Islands, which has increasingly been pulled into Beijing’s orbit.

Secretary Austin, meanwhile, arrives via Papua New Guinea on Thursday, the biggest state in the Pacific.

His visit, the first ever by a Pentagon chief, comes after the two countries struck an agreement that will strengthen the Pacific nation’s military capabilities and enhance security ties between the two countries.

‘Door open’ to NZ

The potential for greater co-operation was also on the agenda in a separate meeting in New Zealand this week between Secretary Blinken and his Kiwi counterpart.

America’s top diplomat said “the door is open” for New Zealand to join the AUKUS pact for sharing military technology.

That partnership will enable Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarine technology from the US and the UK as part of a long-term plan with an estimated price tag of $360 billion.

But the “second pillar” of AUKUS will include sharing technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

New Zealand is resolutely nuclear-free but has flagged its openness to exploring the “opportunities” presented by these technologies.

The Pentagon said that co-operation between the Australian and American defence industries on developing AUKUS technologies will be on the agenda for the military component of Friday’s talks.

The recently announced reconfiguration of Australia’s military posture in the region and the requested rotation of an American military presence in the form of bombers and nuclear-powered boats are also expected to figure prominently.