Japan's Ministry of Finance and Australia's Treasury have put a fixed structure around their finance ministers' talks. Satsuki Katayama, Japan's finance minister, and Jim Chalmers, Australia's Treasurer, signed the Memorandum of Cooperation in Tokyo on 5 October 2026, and the inaugural dialogue followed the same day. Tokyo Brief earlier reported the signing of the pact. The memorandum's text adds the machinery.
How the dialogue works
Katayama and Chalmers will co-chair the Finance Ministerial Dialogue. It will be held annually "in principle", with location, date and agenda set by mutual agreement. The existing officials-level Treasury-Ministry of Finance Economic Dialogue will support implementation of what the ministers decide.
The memorandum takes effect on signing and runs for an initial five years, then renews in successive five-year periods. Either side can discontinue it on six months' written notice. It creates no legally binding rights or obligations, and it does not replace existing bilateral mechanisms. Disputes over interpretation go to consultations between the two sides and are not referred to any national or international tribunal or third party.
What is on the agenda
The first topic is macroeconomic outlook and economic security: energy and fuel security, supply chains including in the defence industry, and government-supported critical minerals investment and offtake.
On investment, the two ministries will deepen technical-level information sharing on foreign investment screening, including trends and lessons from each side's reforms. They will also consider how the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and Export Finance Australia can use their financing capabilities for shared priorities, through information sharing, project development and complementary financing. The priority sectors are energy and fuel security, green industry, housing, critical minerals and digital infrastructure. All of this is subject to the confidentiality and classification requirements applying in each jurisdiction.
The memorandum also covers coordination across the Indo-Pacific, including Southeast Asia and Pacific island countries. It names the World Bank's Pacific project to maintain correspondent banking relationships, and anti-money-laundering capacity building through the Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering. The two sides will also align approaches in forums including the G20, the IMF, APEC and the Financial Action Task Force.
What it does not fix
The memorandum names no funding amounts, and the Ministry of Finance's readout gives no date for the next dialogue. The readout says only that the ministers exchanged views on macroeconomic outlook and economic security, investment cooperation and international cooperation, and confirmed their commitment to closer bilateral cooperation.