First of all, I will be one of tens of thousands of Australians over the course of this pandemic who have left Australia, there are many tens of thousands of Australians who have had to travel overseas including the minister for defence, and the minister for foreign affairs, regarding their business activities, many others on compassionate reasons and those figures will be well known to you.
And for many months now I have engaged in telephone diplomacy on a large number of matters. And we will be doing so again this weekend.
At the Asean meetings and East Asia Summit, and I am looking forward to participating in those and engaging with my colleagues in the region there.
To be the first national leader, I think, to engage in Japan, with the new prime minister, and to have the opportunity to do that is significant for Australia, because Japan is a very special relationship with Australia.
It’s not just an economic one. It’s not just a trade one. It’s not just a cultural and social one, importantly, it a strategic one that we form together with the United States and India, a very important quad relationship.
We play a very important role together in the southwest Pacific. And when it comes to the Covid-19 assistance which has become provided, issues around vaccine development in south-east Asia, work that has been done.
Japan and Australia are very important to gather in providing, I think, a like-minded alignment on these strategic issues within our region.
So the opportunity to go there and include some very important arrangements in this space is in Australia’s national interest.
While I am there I have the opportunity to discuss economic issues as well. And importantly, given I will be going, as you rightly say, 14 days’ isolation which I will do here at the Lodge.
