Australia news live: Aukus nations to develop uncrewed undersea vehicles to protect cables; Hanson backs Taylor’s indexation plan

Marles tells Shangri-La Dialogue delegates that ‘seabed is a battlefield’. Follow updates live

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Continuing that report from Agence France-Presse: British defence secretary John Healey said that the planned technology, a “range of cutting edge sensors and weapons systems” for underseas drones, “will rapidly give our forces the very most advanced battlefield technologies”.

The systems will be deployed on uncrewed underwater vessels, Healey added.

We have witnessed a series of attacks against subsea critical infrastructure at a scale and frequency that is historically unprecedented.

Our ability to operate as a modern economy and a functioning state, all of it is critically dependent on infrastructure that is exposed, that cannot move.

As we’ve now seen demonstrated in the Baltic, [it] can be cut with an anchor in the middle of the night.