U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (L, front) walks out of the plane in Melbourne, Australia, July 16, 2016.
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Biden, who arrived in Australia on Saturday as part of a tour of the Pacific, met with researchers at the newly-opened Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre in the southern city of Melbourne, where he praised the scientists for their efforts.
He will then head to Sydney, where he will meet with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and have dinner with Governor-General Peter Cosgrove.
“Thank you for having America’s back and we will always have your back”, Biden told the troops gathered on the flight deck of the HMAS Adelaide.
While in Australia, he met with the nation’s leaders and troops in a bid to reassert America’s standing as a so-called Pacific power in the region.
“It’s important we stand together”, he added.
Joe Biden, Vice-President of the United States in Sydney.
Earlier this week, Biden announced that the US and Australia would share the genetic information of around 60,000 cancer patients to help researchers better understand what causes particular cancers.
Australia has been a staunch ally of the United States in Iraq and in the fight against Daesh (the so-called IS).
Speaking of Julie Bishop, the Foreign Minister sat behind Joe Biden yesterday as she watched her Eagles bring home the win at the MCG, next to her partner David Panton.
Turnbull noted that neither Australia nor the United States is a claimant to any of the reefs and other contested features in the South China Sea, which are disputed among the governments of China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei. On Wednesday, he travels to New Zealand.
Of the latest violence, Biden said: “My heart goes out … to those families”.
The collaboration would see an “unprecedented global dataset” of at least 8,000 USA patients and 50,000 from Australia made available to cancer researchers and doctors by 2021, he said in a statement.
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