Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi spoke at length about her country’s troubled western state of Rakhine at a Sydney conference on Sunday and appealed to Southeast Asian neighbors for help, Australia’s prime minister says.

Australia and its ASEAN neighbours vows to boost defence ties while stressing the importance of non-militarisation in the disputed South China Sea at a summit where the "complex" Rohingya crisis took centre stage.

ASEAN needed to show a semblance of unity more than ever now, and their common statement on the South China Sea raises some hopes that the group can still pull off an important stunt like this at a time when most observers had given up hope.