Australia is again monitoring Chinese warships in the region, deputy prime minister Richard Marles has confirmed.

Mr Marles, who is also defence minister, on Monday played down the significance, stressing that the ships were a long way away.

"I want to confirm today that Defence is monitoring a Chinese PLA-N task group, which is currently in the Philippines Sea," he told reporters.

"But I also want to put this into some context - we maintain constant maritime domain awareness in the geographic areas of interest, South-East Asia, North-East Asia, the North-East Indian Ocean and the Pacific.

"And in that context, we will routinely monitor the movements of PLA vessels.

"And when there are movements such as this, we will monitor them, particularly until we know that they are not coming in the vicinity of Australia."

He said the Australian Defence Force did "not have a sense of where (the task group) is going" but that "we continue to monitor it as we monitor all movements until we know that the task groups are not coming to Australia".

It comes after a flotilla of warships circumnavigated Australia earlier this year.