Banh mi, beer, and friendship on the menu for Albanese in Vietnam

Viet · Jun 3, 2023

Albanese arriving in Hanoi, Vietnam. NINE

Almost four decades after first setting foot in the South-East Asian nation in his early 20s, the Australia leader began a two-day official visit to Vietnam on Saturday – his first since Labor took office last year.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told top defence officials open channels of communication are critical for preserving peace with China.

The stop marks 50 year since Australia established diplomatic relations with the country and comes at a time of increasing tension internationally.

Among the growing arenas of friction is the South China Sea, where Vietnam is one of several states engaged in territorial disputes with Beijing, which claims almost all of the waterway.

Hanoi has protested in the past week about the presence of a Chinese survey ship in its waters and there have been a string of close encounters between vessels from the two nations in recent months.

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It is a subject that will be on the agenda when Albanese on Sunday meets with Vietnam’s top officials under its four pillars of leadership – Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, President Vo Van Thuong, National Assembly chair Vuong Dinh Hue and the most powerful, Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.

“Vietnam of course shares a border with China to its north. Discussions will no doubt touch on that relationship but will touch as well on how we and Vietnam [share] a view on the South China Sea and that the [UN] Convention on the Law of the Sea needs to be upheld and maintained,” Albanese said on Saturday.

“We need to respect nations’ sovereignty in the region and indeed throughout the world. We share that view.”

Australia and Vietnam have emerged as important strategic partners in that respect despite very different forms of government and Hanoi’s communist links with China.

On Saturday, Albanese also stressed the importance of ties between the two nations in higher education – there are 26,400 Vietnamese students enrolled in Australia and hundreds of thousands have studied there in the past – as well as economic relations with Vietnam, which is Australia’s 12th largest trading partner.

Albanese visiting a banh mi vendor in Hanoi. NINE

He visited a new industry and innovation hub set up in Hanoi by RMIT University, which was the first foreign-owned university in Vietnam when established in 2000 and which is embarking on a $250 million expansion of its Ho Chi Minh City campus.

“This is a vote of confidence in Vietnam’s future,” Albanese said. “And in the strength and the potential we see in joining forces on education.”

Later, he was warmly welcomed at a cafe where, in the scorching afternoon heat, he sampled the local drop and a Vietnamese bread roll as a showcase of Australia’s exports of malt barley and wheat to Vietnam.

It is bilateral relations and regional affairs that will be on the menu in Sunday’s leaders meetings.

Retired baker Chau Van Kham's family is begging the Australian government to help bring him home from a Vietnamese jail.

But Albanese has been urged to also use the opportunity to call for the release of 73-year-old Vietnamese-Australian man Chau Van Kham, a long-time former Sydney baker who was jailed for 12 years in Ho Chi Minh City in 2019 over his association with Viet Tan, a pro-democracy group regarded by authorities in Vietnam as an anti-state, terrorist organisation.

“The Vietnamese government has long been responsible for widespread and serious human rights violations,” Human Rights Watch director Daniela Gavshon said ahead of Albanese’s trip.