The Abbott government has discussed with the Obama administration the subject that was supposed to be unmentionable between them – climate change.
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A senior US official said ''there was a meeting of the minds on the significance of the challenge'' when the two countries held their annual Ausmin consultations in Sydney this week.
The subject was not mentioned at the Ausmin news conference on Tuesday.
But Daniel Russel, the senior official for the Asia-Pacific region in the US State Department, was involved in the talks and said the two governments had ''a good discussion of non-traditional security threats, among which is climate change''.
''The conversation was predicated on the reality of global warming,'' he said, dismissing any hint that the Abbott government might be in denial on the subject.
''It was not a theological debate. It was an information exchange.''
He described it as ''a very practical, forward-looking conversation'' on the matter.
Australia was represented by Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop and Defence Minister David Johnston. They spent a day and a half in consultations with US Secretary of State John Kerry and US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel.
The Barack Obama administration has made climate change a priority.
Mr Kerry is especially fervent. In February he said that it was ''the world's most fearsome'' weapon of mass destruction.
He has described sceptics of the science of man-made climate change as members of the ''Flat Earth Society'' and said he and Mr Obama had no time for them.
Mr Abbott said in 2009 that the science of climate change was ''absolute crap''.
His government, however, has pledged to meet the same carbon emissions target as Labor – a cut of 5 per cent to 2000 levels by 2020.
Labor leader Bill Shorten said in June that Mr Abbott would have nothing to say if Mr Obama raised the topic. ''Tony Abbott will have to sit there and shrug his shoulders and politely try and change the topic to the weather,'' he said.
However, Mr Russel said of the Ausmin talks: ''They exchanged views on the upcoming global conferences regarding climate change and they also touched on the relevance to the force posture agreement in the sense that the Asia-Pacific region is home to lot of wonderful things but, unfortunately, it's also home to the lion's share of natural disasters, and a significant component of the rationale and the mission for the rotational [US Marine] presence in Darwin ... is to increase the region's ability to respond to natural disasters.''
The head of Australia's Climate Institute, John Connor, said: ''This government may be waking up to the fact that the heavy hitters in the US and China see climate change as a security issue and an economic issue, not just an environment issue.''
The chief of US Pacific Command, Admiral Sam Locklear, has said that climate change could lead to the displacement of millions of people, ''and then security will start to crumble pretty quickly''.
