(CNSNews.com) - Australia this week marked the 40th anniversary of a joint Australia-U.S. surveillance station in the Central Australian outback by indicating that the base could play a role in American ballistic missile defense (BMD) plans.

In rare public comments on the Pine Gap base, Defense Minister Brendan Nelson told lawmakers in Canberra that intelligence obtained there is critical for both countries, providing information relating to terrorism, proliferation and military and weapons developments.

"Ballistic missile launch early-warning information could be used in any U.S. missile defense system and, as such, this would be a continuation of a ballistic missile early warning partnership that we have shared with the United States for over 30 years," he said.

The multi-layered BMD systems are now being developed to defend the U.S. and its military bases and allies in Europe and Asia against a potential limited missile attack from hostile states such as Iran and North Korea.

Although Pine Gap's existence is controversial among leftists in Australia, the center-left official opposition Labor Party is supportive of the facility.

Labor defense spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon, also speaking in parliament, said the work being done by Australians and Americans at the base "has never been more important."

"Big shifts in the distribution of global power, conflicts in Afghanistan and in the Middle East, tensions on the Korean peninsula and in the Taiwan Straits, and the rise of radical Islamism are combining to make the work of the joint facility more critical than ever before," he added.

Veteran Laborite Kim Beazley, a former party leader and defense minister, also used the occasion of his final speech in parliament after a 27-year political career, to praise Pine Gap and the work done there.

Prime Minister John Howard's ruling center-right coalition and the Labor Party differ significantly over current U.S. foreign policy, and with an election due soon, Labor leader Kevin Rudd has pledged to withdraw Australian forces from Iraq.

But Ron Huisken of the Strategic and Defense Studies Center at the Australian National University said Friday that the joint facilities, a key part of Australia's military alliance with the U.S., enjoy strong bipartisan support.

It was "very hard to see this changing," he said. "The joint facilities in a sense operate above the level of specific situations. So one can have policy differences on specific issues without it infecting these facilities."

Huisken, a former top Australian defense official, said Nelson's comments in parliament constituted "the first significant statement on Pine Gap in a number of years."

He explained that data from infrared satellites in geostationary orbits covering the Eurasian landmass is transmitted to Pine Gap, and from there re-transmitted to the U.S. for processing.

BMD involves the detection of ballistic missile launches, and then the firing of an interceptor missile from a land or sea platform to destroy the enemy weapon as it re-enters the atmosphere en route to its intended target.

The Missile Defense Agency oversees long-range missile interceptors based in California and Alaska.

The U.S. also wants to deploy a system in Central Europe, with a radar base in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland, designed to protect against a missile attack from Iran or elsewhere in West Asia. Russia objects to the plan, which it suspects could weaken its own nuclear deterrent.

In East Asia, Japan is also cooperating with U.S. missile defense efforts. Tokyo is leery since North Korea in 1998 test-fired a ballistic missile that flew over Japan before landing in the Pacific Ocean.

Like Russia, China is opposed to the plan, which could also have implications for any future military conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

Critics argue that instead of making the world safer, BMD systems could unleash a new nuclear arms race, if nuclear powers like China or Russia respond by increasing the size of their arsenals so they will be capable of penetrating the shields.

"Missile defense is a thorny issue," Huisken said. "Defenses against shorter range missiles like Saddam's SCUDs are seen as legitimate while defenses against long-range strategic nuclear missiles are seen as potentially de-stabilizing relations between the major powers."

Expanding missile defense cooperation comes against a background of deepening U.S.-Japanese-Australian security ties. The leaders of the three democracies earlier this month held trilateral talks for the first time on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit in Sydney.

Outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has suggesting widening the strategic partnership to include India.

This month, for the first time, a large annual U.S.-Indian joint naval exercise was expanded to include Japanese, Australian and Singaporean warships. Twenty-eight ships, including two U.S. Navy carrier strike groups, 150 aircraft and more than 20,000 personnel were involved in the week-long Malabar Exercise off India's east coast.

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