Australia, India, Japan and the United States will work together on enforcing maritime law in the Indian Ocean, regional cyber security, disaster response and tackling misinformation and foreign interference.
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Without directly referencing China, foreign ministers from the Quad nations agreed to collaborate on enforcing international rules and norms with veiled warnings toward Beijing during remarks after their meeting.
"Conflict is risking lives and is costing lives, extreme weather threatens food and water security and long standing rules are being bent and twisted or broken," Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Monday.
"Countries face coercive trade measures, unsustainable lending, political interference and disinformation - all of these encroach on the ability of every country to exercise its own agency."
"All of us want a world in which disputes are managed by rules, by talking, by co-operation, not by force or raw power. We understand that this does not happen on its own, we have to make this happen."
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken branded the dialogue "a moment of unprecedented strategic alignment among our four countries" as he touted the need for handling problems transparently.
He spoke of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, North Korea's missile launches and the conflict in the Middle East as examples of why collective resources were needed to deal with international challenges.
Australia has set aside just over $18 million over four years for a new cable centre to help bolster undersea networks across the Indo-Pacific and ensure reliable communication and internet services for smaller nations.
China is trying to muscle its way into the sector as part of a jostle for influence in the Pacific, sparking concerns about data harvesting and security.
More than 95 per cent of international data is transmitted through undersea telecommunications cables.
The cable initiative was given the green light at the 2023 Quad leaders' summit and will work across South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific by providing technical assistance, training, research, analysis and information-sharing between governments and industry partners.
The meeting sent a message that "the Quad is here to stay, here to do and here to grow", Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said in opening remarks ahead of the meeting.
"These are not easy times, a major challenge is to ensure global economic growth while also de-risking it," he said.
Only collective endeavours could protect against disruption, "man-made, or natural", he said.
Australian Associated Press
