Surprise guest as Morrison meets Biden at G7

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also made a surprise appearance at the meeting, which was held behind closed doors at the seaside resort town of Carbis Bay, near Cornwall.The historic meeting brought together three wartime allies to discuss escalating instability in the Indo-Pacific and the need to work more closely in response to regional and global threats.Though reporters were not present at the meeting and the details of the discussions unclear, the three leaders released a joint statement afterwards that hinted that China would have been one of the topics of conversation.“They discussed a number of issues of mutual concern, including the Indo-Pacific region,” the statement said.“They agreed that the strategic context in the Indo-Pacific was changing and that there was a strong rationale for deepening co-operation between the three governments.“They welcomed the forthcoming visits and exercises in the Indo-Pacific by the Carrier Strike Group, led by HMS Queen Elizabeth.”The talks ran for up to 45 minutes after originally being slated for 20 minutes. Mr Morrison and Mr Biden walked up to the G7 family photo after the meeting. The Indo-Pacific step-up, Beijing’s economic coercion of countries including Australia and increasing disinformation and cyber campaigns linked to China and Russia has been a key focus at the G7-plus leaders’ summit in the Cornish seaside resort village of Carbis Bay.Following the Australia-US-UK meeting, Mr Morrison described the talks as a “unique opportunity for a trilateral meeting”.“That is not a usual opportunity that we’ve had at these events in the past,” Mr Morrison said.“We had an opportunity today to discuss the Indo-Pacific situation more broadly. Australia has no greater friends than the United States and the United Kingdom and we’ve been working together on our respective security issues for a very long time.“We had a good opportunity to talk about those and look to see how we can further cooperate in the future. The situation only reinforces the need for us to have deeper cooperation.”Mr Morrison said the G7 summit was a “great opportunity for liberal democracies and advanced economies alike to be able to align their thinking and their outlooks on how they’re seeing issues around the world”.The Prime Minister said Australia’s handling of the Chinese economic relationship was based on being “consistent”.“We are for a stable and peaceful and open Indo-Pacific. That’s in everybody’s interests. It’s in Australia’s interests, it’s in China’s interests. And for the free trade that can occur throughout the region,” he said.Mr Morrison, who confirmed climate change was not the subject of their discussions, on Saturday night said Australia’s alliance with the US and UK as never being “has never been stronger.“It was a meeting of great friends and allies who share a view on the world. It was a great opportunity for my first meeting of course with the President. I’ve known Boris for many years.“And there was a very easy understanding amongst the three of us. As liberal democracies with a great history of friendship and partnership and a shared view on the world and its challenges, and strategic challenges at that. We are very conscious of the environment we face but whatever that environment is we’ll always face it together.”“Our alliance with the United States, our alliance with the United Kingdom has never been stronger.”Mr Johnson had earlier formally welcomed Mr Morrison to the G7 in a beach ceremony, alongside other G7-plus members South Korea and South Africa.Mr Morrison, who met with South Korean president Moon Jae-in at Tregenna Castle on Saturday morning before speaking at a G7 health and pandemic preparedness session, will meet with Japan Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and German chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday.Mr Morrison’s first in-person meeting with Mr Biden was initially intended to focus on ramping-up land force cooperation, the joint development of critical technologies, as well as climate change, new energy technologies and cyber threats.Mr Johnson, who will hold one-on-one talks at Downing Street with Mr Morrison on Tuesday, has dramatically ramped-up Britain’s military presence in the Indo-Pacific, including sending naval carrier strike group led by aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth on a 28-week maiden voyage including movements through the South China Sea and Philippine Sea.Australia and the US will progress plans to align their strategic approach in the Indo-Pacific later this year when Defence Minister Peter Dutton and Foreign Minister Marise Payne meet with their counterparts Lloyd Austin and Antony Blinken at the upcoming AUSMIN meeting.‘AMERICA IS BACK’The G7 on Saturday unveiled US-led plans to counter China in infrastructure funding for poorer nations, and a new accord to battle future pandemics, as the elite group advertised Western unity at its first in-person summit since 2019.US President Joe Biden touted a message of revived American leadership on his first foreign tour, declaring “America is back” after the tumultuous administration of Donald Trump.“We’re on the same page,” Biden told reporters as he met French President Emmanuel Macron on the summit sidelines, pushing to rally the West against a resurgent China and recalcitrant Russia.Asked if other G7 leaders agreed with him about a US diplomatic renaissance, Biden pointed to Macron, who replied: “Definitely.” Promising to “collectively catalyse” hundreds of billions of infrastructure investment for low- and middle-income countries, the G7 leaders said they would offer a “values-driven, high-standard and transparent” partnership.Their “Build Back Better World” (B3W) project is aimed squarely at competing with China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, which has been widely criticised for saddling small countries with unmanageable debt but has included even G7 member Italy since launching in 2013.“This is not just about confronting or taking on China,” a senior US official said. “This is about providing an affirmative, positive alternative vision for the world.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose nation has huge investments in China, called it an “important initiative” that was much-needed in infrastructure-poor Africa.“We can’t sit back and say that China will do it but it’s the G7’s ambition to have a positive agenda for a number of countries in the world which are still lagging behind… I welcome it,” she said.Britain meanwhile hailed G7 agreement on the “Carbis Bay Declaration” – a series of commitments to curb future pandemics after Covid-19 wrecked economies and claimed millions of lives around the world.The collective steps include slashing the time taken to develop and license vaccines, treatments and diagnostics for any future disease to under 100 days, while reinforcing global surveillance networks.The G7 – Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States – will formally publish the pact on Sunday, alongside its final summit communique containing further details on the B3W.SCOTT MORRISON BACKS GLOBAL PANDEMIC WARNING SYSTEMIt comes as Scott Morrison said he will support a global early warning system at the onset of pandemics and reform of the World Health Organisation in his first major address to the G7 summit in Cornwall.The Prime Minister on Saturday also declared more “work” needed to be done to determine the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, and whether it had natural origins or may have leaked from a lab.Mr Morrison, who will attend a G7 leaders’ summit session to discuss the pandemic, said “it’s very important that we understand the origins and there has already been discussion around our preparedness for any future pandemic that the world can move quickly on issues like vaccines”.“But equally, it’s important that we have an early warning system, that we have a way of being able to alert the world to when these types of viruses originate so we can move quickly. Australia moved quickly and we shut our borders,” Mr Morrison said.“Having that opportunity to be able to identify these pandemics at their very early onset and to be able to take very quick action, relying on very good and reliable information. This is the key lesson out of this pandemic.”Mr Morrison said the purpose of the Covid-19 origins inquiries had nothing to do with “politics or frankly blame”.“It’s about understanding it so we all on a future occasion can move quickly and can avoid on a future occasion the absolute carnage that we’ve seen from this pandemic,” he said.“What I’m simply saying is the process we called for is not yet done, it is recommending further work. And recommending that there be further powers for the WHO to be able to identify these things early, and ensure that information is passed on in a timely way.” The Prime Minister, who will hold a series of bilateral meetings on Saturday including his first in-person talks with US President Joe Biden, was due to speak at a leaders’ session on health, the pandemic and future preparedness.Mr Morrison was expected to tell G7 leaders Australia’s pursuit of a suppression strategy had supported the nation’s health response and economic recovery.He will also raise vaccine certificates with G7 leaders and the need for an integrated system as nations look to reopen international borders. Following a meeting between Mr Morrison and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Thursday, the pair outlined a digital vaccine framework to help facilitate a travel bubble between Australia and Singapore.Mr Morrison will support the independent Covid-19 review into the origins of the pandemic and highlight Australia’s role in the vaccination rollout in the Indo-Pacific region, the country’s backing of the COVAX facility and its 20 million vaccine pledge backing Boris Johnson’s G7 vaccine dose sharing initiative.Mr Morrison, who was due to take-part in a G7-plus leaders’ family photo early Sunday morning, would also endorse the G7’s collective effort to bolster defences on international health security risks and reform agenda for the World Health Organisation.G7 leaders on Saturday will sign-up to the Carbis Bay Declaration on Health, with Britain pledging to establish a new centre to develop vaccines to prevent zoonotic diseases spreading from animals to humans. G7 countries will make a major statement on medical supply chains, focused on personal protective equipment and vaccines.The G7 nations will commit to combining resources to prevent a global pandemic from re-occurring on the scale of Covid-19 and setting-up an early warning system.Mr Johnson said “to truly defeat coronavirus and recover we need to prevent a pandemic like this from ever happening again”.“That means learning lessons from the last 18 months and doing it differently next time around. I am proud that for the first time today the world’s leading democracies have come together to make sure that never again will we be caught unawares,” Mr Johnson said. WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom supported the Carbis Bay health declaration, and said it was crucial to “build on the significant scientific and collaborative response to the COVID-19 pandemic and find common solutions to address many of the gaps identified”.“To this end WHO welcomes and will take forward the UK’s proposal for a Global Pandemic Radar. As we discussed, the world needs a stronger global surveillance system to detect new epidemic and pandemic risks,” he said. Mr Morrison on Saturday held his first bilateral meeting on the G7 sidelines with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, inviting the avid hiker to visit Australia.“Our countries have come through Covid incredibly well. I commend your strong leadership in South Korea both in suppressing and containing the virus but also on the very strong economic performance.“Both Australia and South Korea have come through Covid to date with stronger economies than before the pandemic while at the same time having considerably relative success in suppressing the virus and its devastating health impact on our communities.”G7 nations, led by Mr Biden, are expected to collectively pushback against China’s aggressive behaviour and economic coercion of countries including Australia when the final communique is released. Asked about US and Australian naval vessels sailing together through the South China Sea on Thursday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said “we hope relevant countries can do more to promote regional peace and stability, rather than flex muscles”.- with Anton Nilsson