PH, Australia ink updated defense pact

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MANILA – The Philippines and Australia signed a Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) on Sunday, updating the two countries’ 30-year-old defense pact and compl...

UPDATED PACT. Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. (seated, right) signs a Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) with Australian Ambassador to the Philippines Marc Innes-Brown (seated, left) at the Eva Macapagal Cruise Terminal, Pier 15, Manila South Harbor, on Sunday (Nov. 15, 2026). The agreement modernizes a memorandum of understanding on defense cooperation, which the two countries signed in 1995. (Photo courtesy of DND)

MANILA – The Philippines and Australia signed a Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) on Sunday, updating the two countries’ 30-year-old defense pact and complementing their existing visiting forces deal.

Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. signed the DCA with Australian Ambassador to the Philippines Marc Innes-Brown at the Eva Macapagal Cruise Terminal, Pier 15, Manila South Harbor, in a ceremony witnessed by visiting Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

The agreement modernizes a 1995 memorandum of understanding (MOU) on defense cooperation signed by the two allied countries.

The Philippines and Australia have a standing Status of Visiting Forces Agreement (SOVFA), signed in 2007 and entered into force in 2012.

Teodoro said the new agreement allows the two sides to “work faster,” as it will “streamline the coordination process.”

"So basically, it is the mechanism by which the SOVFA will work. Bibilis 'yung mga proseso (It will speed up the process),” Teodoro said in an interview after the ceremony.

The defense chief said the agreement would also hasten coordination in the conduct of maritime patrols between the two countries and with other like-minded nations.

The new defense deal, he added, would also serve as a “deterrence” in the West Philippine Sea, a stretch in the South China Sea subject of a longstanding territorial dispute between Manila and Beijing.

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