The United States will be able to use planned defence facilities in Western Australia that are to help deliver nuclear-powered submarines under the trilateral AUKUS nuclear submarine deal, Australia said on Sunday.
Australia will spend AU$12 billion ($8 billion) to upgrade facilities at the Henderson shipyard near Perth, as part of a 20-year plan to transform it into the maintenance hub for its AUKUS submarine fleet, the government said on Saturday.
The AUKUS pact, sealed by Australia, Britain and the US in 2021, aims to provide Australia with attack submarines from the next decade to counter China's ambitions in the Indo-Pacific region.
President Donald Trump's administration is undertaking a formal review of the pact led by Elbridge Colby, a top Pentagon policy official and public critic of the agreement.
The far-left Labor government made an initial investment of AU$127 million last year to upgrade facilities at the shipyard, which will also build the new landing craft for the Australian army and the new general-purpose frigates for the navy, supporting around 10,000 local jobs.
Under AUKUS - worth hundreds of billions of dollars - Washington will sell several Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, while Britain and Australia will later build a new AUKUS-class submarine.
Before the Virginia-class submarines, the facility will receive "a rotation of US and UK vessels", Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Sunday.
"This will provide for a significant benefit for our allies, which is part of the AUKUS arrangement," Albanese told a press conference in Perth.
The Republican and Democratic heads of a US congressional committee for strategic competition with China expressed strong support for AUKUS in July.
Australia, which in July signed a treaty with Britain to bolster cooperation over the next 50 years on AUKUS, has previously maintained it is confident the pact will proceed.
(Reporting by Sam McKeith in Sydney; Editing by Matthew Lewis and William Mallard)