This week the 15th Singapore-Australia Joint Ministerial Committee (SAJMC) was held in Adelaide, South Australia. The SAJMC is held every two years and brings together senior ministers from both governments to coordinate cooperation across the full spectrum of the relationship, rather than focusing on a single policy area. This year, it was attended by both countries’ respective ministers for foreign affairs, defense, and trade.
The centerpiece of the discussions was the signing of a new Protocol on Economic Resilience and Essential Supplies. This was a signal that both countries are viewing their national security now not solely in terms of traditional defense, but in terms of securing essential goods that are required to maintain services and standards of living.
The new protocol is designed to ensure that cooperation on essential goods continues to flow between the two countries during periods of global disruption. There is a particular focus on energy security, given that over half of Australia’s petroleum imports are refined in Singapore, while around a third of Singapore’s LNG usage is supplied by Australia. The protocol establishes the Australia-Singapore Economic Resilience Dialogue, which is a dedicated mechanism for the two countries to discuss their shared challenges and build practical cooperation.
The creation of such a mechanism reflects the current era, where major disruptions are now expected rather than seen as isolated events. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how quickly governments could restrict the export of medical equipment and other critical goods. The current war in the Middle East has highlighted how reliant the world is on energy flows, and how a more globally destabilized environment may make such wars more frequent.
Importantly, the two countries are not advocating for economic disengagement from the broader global trading system. Both repeatedly emphasize their support for open, rules-based commerce, with the World Trade Organization remaining the central mechanism for trade disputes. What Australia and Singapore are seeking to create is a backstop where trusted partners can cooperate if other systems are impacted or fail.
This focus on economic resilience also extends into the signed Industrial Base Resiliency Arrangement (IBRA). This arrangement is designed to improve resilience in defense supply chains in order to strengthen the two countries’ defense industrial cooperation. This will allow “both countries to engage in cross-sustainment of common defense platforms, examine priority delivery requests for defense orders, streamline equipment transfers, foster defense industry partnerships, and facilitate information exchanges to mitigate supply chain risk.”
This further entrenches the close defense relationship between the two countries. This has developed not only through a similar outlook on the world, but through practical necessity. Singapore has an unmatched defense footprint in Australia because it has almost no space to train a modern military, while Australia has an abundance of land. Singapore maintains permanent training presences at two Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) bases – Oakey Army Aviation Center in Queensland, where its Air Force helicopters fleet trains, and RAAF Base Pearce near Perth, where it conducts fixed-wing fighter training.
Defense cooperation in conjunction with supply chain resilience underpins how Australia and Singapore see the most pressing regional concern in the South China Sea – a waterway both countries are dependent on. The joint communiqué firmly expressed “the importance of the right of unimpeded transit passage of vessels and aircraft in straits used for international navigation in accordance with international law as reflected in UNCLOS.” It also raised “serious concern over behavior that increased the risk of miscalculation and unilateral actions that could threaten peace, security, and stability in the South China Sea.”
Australia and Singapore already had a close relationship. The existence of the SAJMC is illustrative of this. The meeting’s purpose now is to look for ways to enhance the relationship through the lens of a more unstable world. Creating more formal processes gives both countries more predictability in a crisis, and sets up more issue-specific consultation mechanisms that can respond quickly and effectively to shocks.
This sits within a broader outlook for countries like Australia and Singapore, which have some strong capabilities but are far from being powers that can exert their will upon the Indo-Pacific region. Instead they are looking to shape the environment where they can, and develop the structures that allow them to navigate the world with greater confidence through coordinated responses.
Discussion about this post