Barnaby Joyce declared 'we want peace' with China during his first official press conference as Acting Prime Minister while Scott Morrison is on a trip to visit President Joe Biden in the United States.
Mr Joyce, who reclaimed the Deputy Prime Minister role in June, said Australia had to build up its military to ward off any attackers, citing China, Russia and Iran as potential adversaries.
On Thursday Mr Morrison announced the US and UK will give Australia the technology to build eight nuclear-powered submarines to counter China's growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region.
Mr Joyce said the move was not designed to provoke China but was a necessary step to keep Australians safe.
'We don't really want a threat from China. We don't want to provoke anything. We want things to settle down,' he said.
'But there is no denying the actions that have happened in recent times,' he said citing Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, accusations of human rights abuses and China's military build-up.
'They have around 70 submarines just so people know. We're talking about eight, they got 70, we got eight,' he said.
'On top of that, you have the actions of Russia and on top of that you got the actions of Iran and we have a more unstable position, but this time it's not in Europe on the other side of the world. This time it's in our part of the world. It is here.
'And we just want peace, we want peace, we want peace, but to have peace, if you want peace, you got to be substantial enough to not be worth the fight,' he said.
Mr Joyce - who was friendly with journalists and appeared to enjoy the presser - also discussed Christian Porter who resigned as science minister on Sunday after accepting an anonymous donation to fund his legal battle against the ABC.
Chinese United Nations troop take part in a drill in north China. Mr Joyce said he wants peace with Beijing
He said Mr Porter had 'not a good day at the wicket' but insisted that
