HCM City (VNA) - President of the Australian Senate Sue Lines left Ho Chi Minh City on August 30, concluding her successful seven-day visit to Vietnam.

During her stay, Lines and her entourage laid flowers at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi to pay tribute to the Vietnamese leader.

She received a red-carpet welcome ceremony hosted by National Assembly Chairman Tran Thanh Man, who held talks with her after that.

Party General Secretary and State President To Lam, and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh had meetings with the Australian Senate President.

She attended the second Vietnam-Australia high-level forum, themed “Enhancing Economic Engagement, a Shared Vision for Prosperity,” and had a working session with leaders of the Ministry of Industry and Trade. She visited the northern provinces of Bac Ninh and Ninh Binh, HCM City and Hanoi, while speaking to the Vietnamese media on matters related to her visit as well as cooperation between the two countries, including parliamentary collaboration.

Lines's first official visit to Vietnam as the Australian Senate President showed the goodwill and wish to reinforce bilateral parliamentary cooperation to match the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries.

During her official visit, the two sides agreed that Vietnam and Australia reached many great achievements over the last 50 years with important milestones such as the establishment of a comprehensive partnership in 2009 and a strategic partnership in 2018 and the upgrading of the relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership in March 2024 during Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh's official visit to Australia. This affirms that political trust and mutual understanding between the two sides are increasingly strengthened, especially through maintaining regular delegation exchanges and high-level contacts on all channels, including the parliamentary channel.

The two countries have effectively maintained over 20 bilateral cooperation mechanisms with many positive results. Economic and trade cooperation has been kept stable, with two-way trade reaching nearly 14 billion USD in 2023. The two countries are currently among each other's top 10 trade partners.

In order to concretise and further deepen their Vietnam - Australia comprehensive strategic partnership, the two sides agreed to continue to strengthen cooperation on all channels, maintain existing and newly established cooperation mechanisms with innovations in forms and content, effectively and substantively implement existing agreements between the two countries, coordinate to build the Action Programme to implement the Vietnam - Australia comprehensive strategic partnership for the 2024-2028 period, focusing on promoting people-to-people exchange, and enhancing practical cooperation among localities and friendship associations of the two countries.

The Vietnamese and Australian leaders agreed to continue promoting dialogue and information sharing, enhancing mutual understanding and trust, deepening defence and security cooperation, promoting economic cooperation to achieve higher efficiency, including stepping up investment and trade promotion, striving to soon bring bilateral trade to 20 billion USD and doubling two-way investment in the next 2-3 years. At the same time, the two countries will explore new cooperation areas with potential such as green economy, digital economy, circular economy, digital transformation, science-technology, and innovation.

Vietnam hoped that Australia will continue to support Vietnam in participating in UN peacekeeping operations, and coordinate effectively with Vietnam in implementing the Joint Statement on Practical Actions to Respond to Climate Change issued in November 2021, while supporting the Southeast Asian nation in carrying out programmes to respond to climate change, develop sustainable livelihoods for the Mekong Delta, and deal with drought in the Central Highlands, central and southern localities.

Along with the positive development of the Vietnam-Australian relations, the leaders affirmed that cooperation between the Vietnamese National Assembly and the Australian Parliament has been continuously expanded. The two sides have been actively coordinating to implement the cooperation agreement signed between the two legislatures in 2022, while maintaining consultations and mutual support at multilateral parliamentary forums. In particular, the recent high-level visits between parliamentary leaders have contributed to creating new momentum for the relationship between the two legislative bodies and between the two countries as a whole.

The two sides will increase contacts between leaders and officials of the National Assembly committees, parliamentarians and the Friendship Parliamentarians’ Groups of the two countries to exchange information and share experience in organising parliamentary activities, especially in building institutions, perfecting the legal system and supervising the enforcement of laws.

The two countries concurred to increase people-to-people exchange and cooperation among the two countries' localities, contributing to enhancing mutual understanding between their people.

The Australia side pledged to provide favourable conditions for the Vietnamese commꦰunity in Australia as well as the teaching of Vietnamese at Australian schools with a large number of Vietnamese students, thus promoting the active role of the Vietnamese community in Australia's development and the enhancement of bilateral relations./.