SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday he will travel to Indonesia next week as a “signal” of the importance Canberra places in the region in his first overseas visit since Saturday’s election victory.
“We have no more important relationship than Indonesia just to our north,” Albanese said in a television interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Albanese said he will travel to Indonesia on Wednesday, the day after his government is sworn into office. Albanese was re-elected and his centre-left Labor party increased its majority in parliament in the poll.
Indonesia will grow to become the fourth-largest economy in the world, and Australia has an important defence and security relationship with Jakarta, he said.
The visit will be “a signal to our region of the importance we place on this region,” he added.
During the election campaign Indonesia dismissed reports that Russia had requested to base military aircraft in Papua, about 1,200 km (750 miles) north of the Australian city of Darwin, where a U.S. Marine Corps rotational force is based for six months of the year.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
