The 2025 Indo-Pacific trade show features more than 900 exhibitors. Photo: Andrew McLaughlin.
Defence Minister Richard Marles has opened the 2025 Indo-Pacific International Maritime Exposition in Sydney with a speech full of well-used rhetoric but little substance.
Held every two years, ‘Indo-Pac’ and the accompanying Seapower Conference is one of the three major biennial defence trade shows held in Australia, the others being the Australian International Airshow at Avalon in Victoria, and the Land Forces exposition held at various venues around the country.
Addressing an audience comprising representatives from 58 countries including 35 navy chiefs and the Royal Australian Navy’s chief Vice Admiral Mark Hammond, Mr Marles switched from some lighthearted opening remarks, including “Sydney during Indo Pac for a Chief of Navy is the happiest place on earth”, to the more familiar rhetoric about global tensions.
“The gathering and the interest of everyone here over the next three days does reflect a more serious and more troubling assessment of the world,” he said.
“Today, be it in Eastern Europe and the Middle East or in the Indo Pacific, the global rules based order is under increasing pressure.
“And the rules of the road which are under pressure, in so many ways are actually the rules of the sea.”
Mr Marles’ words echo those of numerous other speeches from Australia’s political leadership in recent years, but offer no new insights, ideas, or solutions for how these tensions may be alleviated or managed.
“For a country like Australia, with a growing proportion of our national income being derived from trade and the physical manifestation of that being our sea lines of communication, having open sea lines, having freedom of navigation, having an adherence to the rules of the sea, is very much at the core of our national interest,” he said.
“And in our contemporary world, literally, the daily work of the Royal Australian Navy is to assert the rules based order where our trade routes go in places like the South China Sea and East China Sea.
“The biggest military build-up in the world today is China, and that it is happening without strategic reassurance, means that for Australia and for so many countries, a response is demanded,” he added.
“And we need to be thinking about the kinds of capabilities that we have and we need to be thinking about it increasingly.”
Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy, Chief of Navy VADM Mark Hammond, and Defence Minister Richard Marles with visiting chiefs of navy at Tuesday’s opening of the 2025 Indo-Pacific International Maritime Exposition and Seapower Conference. Photo: ADF.
Mr Marles highlighted again a number of recent defence and naval announcements including a commitment to the Ghost Shark extra-large uncrewed underwater vehicle (XLUUV), Japan’s Mogami-class general purpose frigate, and the planned investment in the Henderson Defence Precinct south of Fremantle to support Australia’s ambitious shipbuilding and sustainment aspirations.
This year’s Indo-Pac sees more than 900 exhibitors packed into Sydney’s International Convention Centre at Darling Harbour, with large stands for major defence contractors from the US, UK, Europe, Israel, Australia and other countries interspersed with Australian state representative bodies, educational institutions, and smaller contractors such as specialist engineering firms.
Mr Marles said little to placate a defence industry that is becoming increasingly concerned about the amount of dollars being sucked out of the defence budget for Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine program coming together through the AUKUS construct. Navy has certainly been the big winner from the budget in recent years, with the submarine program, new frigates, and an associated renewal of shipyards and shipbuilding workforce.
But he did lay out a timeframe for the government’s next National Defence Strategy (NDS) and accompanying Integrated Investment Plan (IIP).
“Next year, we will release the National Defence Strategy 2026 in the lead-up to the Federal Budget in May,” he said.
“And NDS 26 with the accompanying Integrated Investment Plan – which is our 10-year procurement schedule – will, I am sure, just as NDS 24 did, just as the Defence Strategic Review did, speak to the need for the Australian Defence Force to be able to engage in impactful projection.
“And that work is challenging, and in truth, it’s becoming increasingly risky.
“And what that means is that over the course of the next three days, this is an invaluable and incredibly worthwhile opportunity, because it is a moment where we can compare notes with our fellow navies around the world around shared challenges, but it’s also a moment when we can speak to industry about the kind of capabilities that we will need to see,” he said.
“And here on the expo side of it, we will be seeing an incredible display of what our industry can produce; awesome power, ingenious autonomous systems and craft of all shapes and sizes which spread, which span the breadth of the beautiful, the menacing and the extremely cool.
“And all of it is on display, the very best of human ingenuity.”
