Australia hopes to ink a deal with Japan this year that would smooth the passage of military personnel into one another's country for joint exercises in a further tightening of strategic bonds amid concern about Chinese ambition in the region.
Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Saturday and discussed security and regional issues including the reciprocal arrangement for military personnel.
"There will be easier access for Australian defence personnel into Japan and Japanese defence personnel into Australia, specifically for the purposes of joint exercises," Ms Bishop told Fairfax Media after her meeting with the Japanese leader.
Australia and Japan have been drawing closer together under the Abbott government, which also has a clear enthusiasm for buying Japanese submarines to replace the ageing Collins Class fleet.
The reciprocal deal on entry of military personnel for exercises, which the government hopes to sign by the end of the year, will further strengthen the relationship.
Currently for Australian Defence Force troops to go to Japan, they must do so under obsolete arrangements set up during the Korean War in the 1950s.
Concerns over China's ambition in the region have been heightened recently over its land reclamation efforts in the South China Sea, which have included building airstrips that can accommodate large military planes.
Further north, Japan is also at loggerheads with China over a set of disputed islands in the East China Sea, seen as a major potential flashpoint for hostilities in the region.
Ms Bishop and Mr Abe met in the city of Iwaki in Fukushima prefecture during a conference of Pacific leaders that Japan holds every two years. That followed her visit to Seoul for talks with South Korea, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey.
Mr Abe has made moves to relax Japan's extremely tight restrictions on how it can use its military, a change that means reinterpreting the country's constitution. He has also signed recently an update to Japan's defence guidelines with the United States that would allow Japan to defend its friends, say by shooting down a missile fired from North Korea at the United States, which it could not currently do.
Ms Bishop said Australia strongly supported this change.
But the Japanese leader has faced stiff resistance and discomfort at home over his stance given the strongly pacifist strain that remains in Japanese society.
Ms Bishop said it was "nice to get him to confirm ... that they'd like [the joint exercises agreement] to progress."
Ms Bishop also clarified some reports that said Indonesia claimed most asylum seekers on boats stranded in seas off south-east Asia were not persecuted Rohingyas from Myanmar but economic migrants from Bangladesh.
The Indonesians were "extrapolating" from three boats that had landed in Aceh province and Malaysia, each carrying between 600 and 700 people. These had carried on average 30 percent Rohingyas and 70 percent Bangladeshis.
There are another 7000 stranded at sea whose ethnicities are unknown.
"I think what [the Indonesians] are trying to say is this is not as straightforward as people think it is, it's much more complex.
"That's Indonesia's most educated guess. I'm in no position to judge.
"It is about the Rohingyas as well as the Bangladeshis. The point they are making is that you cannot say that is a boat of 600 Rohingyas because it's not. It's 200 Rohingyas and 400 Bangladeshis. The Bangladeshis are not fleeing persecution from Bangladesh."
