Australia would not commit troops in advance to any conflict, Australian Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy said yesterday in response to a report that said the US was pressing allies to clarify what role they would play if the US and China went to war over Taiwan.
Australia prioritizes its sovereignty and “we don’t discuss hypotheticals,” Conroy said. “The decision to commit Australian troops to a conflict will be made by the government of the day.”
The Financial Times on Saturday reported that US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby has been pressing Australian and Japanese officials on what they would do in a Taiwan conflict, although the US does not offer a blank check guarantee to defend Taiwan.
Photo: AFP
Colby posted on X that the US Department of Defense is implementing US President Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda of restoring deterrence, which includes “urging allies to step up their defense spending and other efforts related to our collective defense.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, speaking in Shanghai at the start of a six-day visit to China that is likely to focus on security and trade, said Canberra did not want any change to the “status quo” on Taiwan.
Meanwhile, Talisman Sabre, Australia’s largest war-fighting exercise with the US, began yesterday in Sydney Harbor and is to involve 40,000 troops from 19 countries, including Japan, South Korea, India, the UK, France and Canada.
The war games would span thousands of kilometers from Australia’s Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island to the Coral Sea on Australia’s east coast, in a rehearsal of joint war fighting, Australian Chief of Joint Operations Vice Admiral Justin Jones said.
The air, sea, land and space exercises over two weeks will “test our ability to move our forces into the north of Australia and operate from Australia,” Jones said.
“I will leave it to China to interpret what 19 friends, allies and partners wanting to operate together in the region means to them. But for me... it is nations that are in search of a common aspiration for peace, stability, a free and open Indo-Pacific,” he said.
US Army Lieutenant General Joel Vowell said Talisman Sabre would improve the readiness of militaries to respond together and was “a deterrent mechanism because our ultimate goal is no war.”
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
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