Hanoi (VNA) – The political and nationaldefence-security relations between Vietnam and Australia have seen marked qualitative improvements over the past five years, a diplomat has said.

The two sides have shared viewpoints and stance onmany issues, both bilateral and multilateral, Vietnamese Ambassador toAustralia Nguyen Tat Thanh noted in an interview granted to the Vietnam NewsAgency (VNA) on the occasion of the 5th anniversary of the bilateralstrategic partnership (March 15, 2018).

They have maintained meetings and delegationexchanges, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, held online or on the sidelines of international conferences,according to the ambassador.

In 2022 alone, the two sides coordinated inorganising visits to Australia by National Assembly Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue andchief of the Party Central Committee’s Commission for Internal Affairs PhanDinh Trac, and the visit to Vietnam by Deputy Prime Minister and DefenceMinister Richard Marles, he added.

Multilaterally, Australia has supported Vietnam’smembership at the United Nations Human Rights Council for 2023-2025, and the UNESCO’sIntergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible CulturalHeritage for the 2022-2026 term.

The countries are the co-chairs of the Organisationfor Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)-run Southeast Asia Regional Programme(SEARP) for 2022-2025.

Thanh said the bilateral cooperation in nationaldefence and security has been promoted through strategic dialogues, highlighting Australia’sEnglish-language training courses for Vietnamese military personnel and thecountry’s help in transporting servicemen and medical equipment of Vietnam’s fieldhospital to South Sudan for UN peacekeeping operations, among other activities.

The two countries have also cooperated fruitfully incrime combat, immigration management and illegal migration prevention, hecontinued.

Bilateral trade has posted spectacular growth, hesaid, adding that it increased 20% annually in the 2018-2022period, reaching a record 15.7 billion USD last year, making Australia theseventh biggest trade partner of Vietnam, and Vietnam the 10th largesttrade partner of Australia for the first time.

Australia has maintained its annual development assistanceto Vietnam at more than 80 million AUD (53.49 million USD), even 92.8 millionAUD in the 2022-2023 fiscal year.

It has paid attention to the work and holidayvisa programme and is about to materialise the bilateral memorandum of understanding under the Australian Agriculture Visa Programme.

Most noteworthy, Australia helped Vietnam with 26.4million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, ranking second among vaccine donors of theSoutheast Asian nation.

The ambassador also highlighted partnerships ineducation and science-technology with a range of programmes, contributing to easingpoverty, improving people’s living standards and women’s capacity, and bringingadded values, especially in emerging, essential technologies.

Vietnam believes that the bilateral relations will experiencemore intensive and substantive developments, the ambassador said, expressinghis hope that the newly-established social organisations like the Australia-VietnamPolicy Institute and the Vietnam-Sydney centre will play a role in raising understandingbetween peoples, businesses and scholars of the two countries.

Regarding the action programme implementing thestrategic partnership for 2020-2023, Thanh said it has been rolled out well inall the three pillars of economic engagement, strategic and defence - security cooperation, and knowledge and innovation partnerships over thepast two years.

The only shortcoming lies with the fact that the twocountries have yet to bring into full play opportunities and fully implementcommitments in the Enhanced Economic Engagement Strategy (EEES) released onDecember 21, 2021, he said, suggesting the two sides organise the exchange ofdelegations of businesses and localities in a larger scale, and put in place theASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area (AANZFTA) agreement after itsupgrade, and new-generation free trade agreements.

According to the diplomat, the fruitful economicties have created a foundation for the political relations to growth further,and the good political cooperation will contribute to expanding and deepeningthe bilateral trade and investment links.

Vietnam wishes that Australia will step up itssupport and cooperation to help the Southeast Asian nation gain successes indigital transformation and green transition, towards the knowledge-basedeconomy and sustainable development, the ambassador stressed.

Therefore, Vietnam has suggested substantive andeffective cooperation with the country in clean energy, green economy, digitaltransformation, high-quality agriculture and climate change response, he said,noting that the two sides have ample room to boost collaboration in thesefields./.