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Australia has unveiled a US$42 million package to fund an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) security deal over the next four years. The country’s foreign minister Penny Wong announced the move at the start of the Asean-Australia summit on March 4, 2024, saying, “What happens in the South China Sea, in the Taiwan Strait, in the Mekong subregion, across the Indo-Pacific, affects us all”. China claims almost the entire South China Sea despite a 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitrations, which said Beijing’s claims in some of the disputed waters had no legal basis. In a separate speech, Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo said the South China Sea was of strategic importance and called for Asean to “uphold cooperation”.
