After arriving in Vientiane, Laos, for the East Asia Summit, Mr Turnbull was questioned as to why he was yet to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, after three days in the region since the G20 in Hangzhou, China.
Since Sunday, Mr Turnbull has had formal bilateral meetings with the leaders of China, Britain, India, Germany, Russia, France, Turkey and Singapore.
“I spoke with Prime Minister Abe on several occasions in the course of the G20 meeting," he said.
"There are formal bilaterals, but in these conferences very often the most valuable encounters are the less formal ones where there can be a very candid exchange of views and Prime Minister Abe and I had a number of meetings of that kind."
Mr Turnbull said there was a formal bilateral meeting scheduled on the sidelineS of the East Asia Summit in Vientiane.
In April, just weeks before the federal election was called, the Australian government announced that France had defeated rival bids from Germany and Japan to build a fleet of new submarines in Adelaide.
The move came as a shock to many in regional security establishments for several reasons, primarily because Japan was given an informal nod by former Liberal Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
Mr Abbott had entered into an informal arrangement with Prime Minister Abe for Japan to build the fleet to replace Australia's ageing Collins class submarines. The decision was perceived to be in the interests of the regional security, bolstering Japan-US-Australia ties against China’s increasingly assertive navy.
But the arrangement was deeply unpopular for the Abbott government at home, especially in South Australia, which was relying on a local build to replace thousands of jobs being lost through the closure of the car industry.
The Japanese government described the decision not to go ahead with the arrangement as "deeply regrettable".
“We will ask Australia to explain why they didn’t pick our design,” Defence Minister Gen Nakatani said.
At the time the contract was awarded to France, Mr Abbott, now a backbencher, commiserated with Japan amid reports he wrote Mr Abe a personal letter.
"Australia's special relationship with Japan is more than strong enough to withstand this disappointment and I am confident that our strategic partnership will continue to grow through other means,” Mr Abbott said in statement.
The ASEAN forum and related East Asia Summit is expected to be dominated by regional security and the South China Sea.
However there have been tensions between Australia and contract winner France as well.
At the G20 summit earlier in the week, French President Francois Hollande told Mr Turnbull that the massive leak of sensitive military data from DCNS’s Indian submarine build was unacceptable.
Mr Hollande assured Australia that France was undertaking a full investigation and would keep the government updated.
But despite all the focus being seemingly elsewhere, Mr Turnbull said he was looking forward to his formal catch up with Mr Abe.
“The relationship is a very warm one, a very close one, we regard each other as friends, at a personal level, it’s a very close relationship,” Mr Turnbull said.
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