Bengal, after which both sides decided to make it a biennial event. During the visit of Malcom Turnbull, Australian Prime Minister to India in April 2017, the Indo-Australian joint statement reaffirmed the importance of the bilateral Framework for Security Cooperation of 2014; both the countries committed to deepening the bilateral defence and security partnership. They also welcomed the trilateral dialogue among India, Australia and Japan, and agreed to invest in trilateral consultations with third countries to enhance regional and global peace and security. Trilateral consultations are strategically important in backdrop of maritime security and freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific, especially after India withdrew from the quadrilateral India, Japan, Australia and US Dialogue following a strong protest from Beijing in 2008; China had issued demarches to India andAustralia then and lodged a protest over their participation in the naval drills. But much has changed since then. After India hosted the first India, Japan, Australia trilateral meeting at New Delhi in 2015, Marise Payne Australian Minister of Defence indicated hosting a similar meeting in Canberra.

Australia has now pitched for observer status during the trilateral India-US-Japan Malabar-2017 scheduled to be conducted in the Bay of Bengal in July. Australia reportedly even wants to have a logistics support agreement with India. Significantly, India had turned down Australia's request to join the trilateral Malabar exercises. In its previous iteration in 2007, Australia was the first to pull out of the "quadrilateral" between US, India, Japan and Australia after China demarcated all four participants. Since then Malabar has been an