Japan envoy talks up subs bid

Japan's ambassador is talking up his country's bid to build Australia's next generation submarine fleet.

Japanese submarines were world class and had been delivered on time and on budget over many decades without glitches, Sumio Kusaka told a maritime security conference at the Australian National University in Canberra on Wednesday.

It was quite natural the two nations were close partners because geographically they were like the north and south "books ends" of the western Pacific, he said.