Originally published 28 March 2022.

When the draft security agreement between Solomon Islands and China landed in the news cycle on Thursday, we shared a sense of dread. Initial analysis of the agreement in the Australian media was typically narrow and, at times, downright unhelpful.

The most outlandish claim was that Australia should be prepared to ‘invade’ Solomon Islands and ‘topple its government’. Apart from being illegal and impracticable, recommendations like this undermine both Solomon Islands’ and Australia’s security. They can be used both to bolster complex domestic power struggles in Solomon Islands and to fuel narratives of Australian militarisation and neo-colonialism, undermining Canberra’s relationships in the Pacific and raising suspicions of its motives.

Other Australian media responses were more measured. But they viewed the agreement primarily through a geopolitical lens. Although the leaked draft didn’t specifically mention it, all assumed that it would inevitably lead to a Chinese ‘military base’ in Solomon Islands. And they all focused on shoring up Australian leadership in the region. Recommendations ranged from Australia building a naval base in Solomon Islands to pursuing a regionwide agreement to ban non-resident powers from basing or deploying military personnel in the Pacific region. Other suggestions included expanding access to the seasonal worker program and increasing educational scholarships.

Largely missing were nuanced analyses that acknowledged the primacy of domestic Solomon Islands politics and the complexity of its geopolitical relationships. This was mostly because few Solomon Islander voices were heard in the initial Australian media storm.

Australian understandings of the Pacific will always be partial unless more space is provided for Pacific voices to participate in robust and nuanced public—and private—debate.

This suggests an urgent need for opportunities for deepening mutual understanding, building relationships and elevating the profiles of Pacific thinkers in Australia and elsewhere. Creating opportunities for Australians and their Pacific counterparts to engage in private discussion is essential to widening and deepening knowledge and relationships.

Track 1.5 dialogues offer one (although not the only) way to provide these opportunities.

Track 1.5 dialogues are informal conversations that include government officials and non-governmental experts all sitting around the same table. In Asia, they are an accepted—and, in the case of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue defence summit, institutionalised—part of the region’s multilateral framework.

But track 1.5 security dialogues comprising Australian, New Zealand and Pacific island officials and non-governmental experts are underutilised. This is despite the fact that they could provide critical opportunities for open and frank closed-door conversations to deepen understanding of the issues at stake and the perspectives of other actors.

We frequently participate in track 1.5 regional security dialogues with Australia’s and New Zealand’s major partners at which Pacific issues are discussed. They are rich and valuable experiences. But Pacific participants are seldom involved. Notably, when Australia asked China to revive a dialogue on the Pacific earlier this month, the proposal didn’t include participation by any Pacific state.

One notable exception was in 2020, when one of us co-hosted the Track 1.5 Pacific Security Dialogue held to inform the Australia–New Zealand–United States Pacific Security Cooperation Dialogue. It was deliberately set up to ensure that the majority of speakers and participants were from the Pacific, which was partly enabled by its being held online due to Covid-19 travel restrictions.

Post-dialogue feedback reflected the value of providing a platform for Pacific voices. Participants appreciated the opportunity to hear from, and exchange views with, Pacific participants. Australian, New Zealand and American participants commented that they hadn’t been aware of the depth of Pacific expertise before the dialogue.

There are several contexts in which track 1.5 dialogues could be held in the Pacific.

Universities could be engaged to facilitate dialogues. For example, later this year, funded by a Defence strategic policy grant, our universities and the Australian National University will host a track 1.5 dialogue between Australian, New Zealand, American, Japanese and Pacific officials and academics on enhancing security cooperation in the Pacific.

In the region, the Pacific Islands Forum has considerable convening authority and could partner with, for example, the University of the South Pacific. The forum’s draft 2050 strategy for the Blue Pacific, which aims to design an effective regional architecture to respond to security and political challenges, provides the imperative. Establishing a Suva dialogue, for example, would embed multitrack diplomacy in both regional security practice and architecture.

Institutionalising a program of track 1.5 dialogues between officials and non-government experts from Australia, New Zealand, other partners and the Pacific would build understanding of the region, enhance relationships, deepen trust and provide a platform for Pacific voices and perspectives. It would provide a forum for uncomfortable conversations and for solutions to be offered to the challenges facing the Pacific and its partners. It would require genuine investment and commitment.

The ‘success’ of these dialogues would probably be difficult to define or identify in the short term. Dialogues don’t carry the same weight at the ballot box or catch as much media attention as rumours of military bases, but the dividends of track 1.5 diplomacy—such as open communication during times of crisis—would be invaluable.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong is leading a bipartisan delegation in the Republic of Palau, an island nation of around 18,000 people that sits just north of the equator in the western Pacific Ocean. What Palau lacks in size it makes up for in strategic importance: as the island furthest to the west in the second island chain between the United States and mainland Asia, it stands to play a critical logistical role in any military conflict that may occur in the region. Until very recently, Australia largely ignored the north Pacific. Last December, Australia opened an embassy in Palau.

Since gaining its independence in 1994, Palau has remained steadily pro-Western in orientation. It has maintained a compact of free association with the United States, which grants the US the right to prevent foreign military forces from entering Palau’s 600,000-square-kilometre exclusive economic zone. It is one of just 13 nations that recognise the democratic Republic of China (Taiwan) rather than the communist People’s Republic of China. Still, it’s no secret that Beijing has sought to pry Palau away from the US and its democratic partners. Wong’s visit is thus an important reminder that, in this increasingly contested region, every island matters.

Although it’s commendable that Wong has made it a point to personally visit Palau (as well as other Pacific island countries), to ensure China’s efforts remain futile Australia should do more than provide a photo op. Luckily, there are several areas where Australia might assist Palau, including many that stand to create new opportunities for Australian businesses and people.

For example, although Australia helped Palau obtain its first submarine fibre-optic cable and has recently helped secure the funding for a second, the island’s high-speed internet capability largely stops at the water’s edge. There remains a dearth of infrastructure within Palau’s archipelago to capitalise on the potential of these cables. If Australia committed to supporting the development of necessary infrastructure, it would help Palau create a solid backbone for economic growth. To twist an old adage: rather than just handing Palau a fish so it could eat for a day, Australia would be providing a fishing pole so Palau could fish for its future.

In addition to helping lay the groundwork for the development of new economic sectors, Australia can help Palau further develop what was, until the pandemic, its primary economic activity: international tourism. In recent years, the main source for tourists has been China, followed by Japan and Korea. The failure to see and promote Palau as a unique tourist destination is the failure to leverage one of Australia’s greatest strengths: its people. The development of people-to-people ties through activities such as leisure tourism is an ideal way to reinforce Palau’s pro-Western orientation. Australia should promote tourism to Palau by establishing a direct flight from northern Australia, providing hospitality training opportunities and providing funding specifically for upgrading tourism-related facilities and creating a relationship between tourism authorities.

Relatedly, Palau has only a single public high school and just one community college. Students typically go to the US for higher education and remain there after graduation. This leads to brain drain, depriving Palau of needed skilled labour. Australia should join Japan and Taiwan in offering scholarships to students, as well as opening up additional skills-training opportunities for working professionals, that provide first-rate experiences but require Palauans to return to their country at the end of the programs.

When these newly trained professionals return, they need to be able to succeed in opening new businesses. However, a lack of collateral often makes it difficult for Palauans to secure the capital necessary to fund the development of a business. Australia might make small-business loans or grants available to individuals who want to develop new businesses in the country, as well as foster links with business incubators in Australia so that Palauans can receive support and mentorship, and funding, to start new businesses.

Of course, even if new educational and skills-training opportunities can facilitate additional economic activity in the country, there will still be a need for access to external labour markets. Here, too, Australia can help. The government has already announced that it is expanding available visas for Pacific islanders to work in Australia. It should ensure those visas are available to Palauans as well.

There are also many areas beyond economics in which Australia could make a big impact. One is in the development of new, high-quality housing. A lack of domestic capacity and resources means that there are limited options for new housing that is energy-efficient and that can withstand a typhoon—an increasingly frequent occurrence due to climate change. Australia could provide grants to the National Housing Commission so that it can retain expert consultants who can provide advice on urban planning and sustainable development.

Palau’s lack of domestic capacity extends to other areas as well, including the island’s Foreign Investment Board (which still keeps all of its records on paper), its ability to patrol its EEZ (with only two vessels, one of which is an Australian-donated Guardian-class patrol boat) and even the ability of its government lawyers to do basic legal research (the database they use was created in the early 2000s). Australia should work with the US to provide more assistance and resources in law enforcement; for example, there are very limited human resources in the Attorney General’s Office to prosecute felonies.

Like other Pacific island countries, Palau requires assistance with climate-change mitigation (including relocating its only hospital to a less flood-prone area) and moving to renewable energy. Australia is extremely capable of helping in each of these areas, and has usefully financed a solar project.

Perhaps most importantly, though, Australia should continue to increase its participation in discussions with the US, Japan and Palau’s other allies about supporting Palau’s relatively new National Security Coordination Office, ensuring that Palau can protect itself, its people and its resources—whether on land or at sea—from those who would try to take advantage of a small country, extort or coerce a small government, or abuse the goodwill of a proud Pacific culture.

In all this, Australia stands to receive a benefit from its assistance, be it from a new tourism market for its people, new economic opportunities for its businesses, or a new place for its navy to visit and train. That’s surely better than just writing another cheque.

Africa’s voice is growing louder. And Australia is now listening.

Comprising more than a quarter of UN member states, African nations have a strong voice in global affairs. By 2050, a quarter of the world’s population will be African.

Australia has important economic, security, international political and multilateral interests with Africa. These matter in their own right. And they also have implications for our region. Partnerships with African countries will be essential in tackling challenges such as climate change.

This week, I am making my first visit to the continent as assistant foreign minister for discussions in Morocco, Ghana and South Africa.

My trip will be a chance to discuss our many shared interests—and look to new opportunities for engagement.

Wherever you look, Africa is looming larger in world affairs. It is growing in importance economically, due to its growing middle class and youthful demographics. It is increasingly vital strategically, as a resource-rich continent that can play a leading role in the global energy transition. Its influence is growing politically, as African voices speak out in the multilateral system.

In recent weeks, the eyes of the world were focused on Egypt for the UN Climate Change Conference COP27. This was Africa’s COP. We heard powerful speeches from African heads of state, imploring the world to act on climate change. Before that, leaders from 54 countries across the world gathered for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Rwanda.

These international meetings in Africa brought countries together to deal with some of the major challenges of our time. They were hosted by African nations, reflecting an African continent whose capacity and influence is strong and increasing. African leaders are also prominent throughout the multilateral system, including World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, whom the government was pleased to welcome to Australia last month.

As always, our foreign policy starts with who we are. Modern Australia is connected to the diverse continent of Africa—and Australia’s diverse communities provide a strong foundation for our strengthening ties with African nations. Our warm people-to-people and community connections are the building blocks for closer ties.

We now have four Australian players on our Socceroos side of proud African heritage—Garang Kuol, Awer Mabil, Thomas Deng and Keanu Baccus. These extraordinary young men have overcome enormous challenges to make it to the top of their profession. And across Australia, there are half a million Australians of African heritage who make outstanding contributions to our country—as we’re watching play out in real time, and not just at the FIFA World Cup.

With an estimated middle class of 310 million people, Africa offers a significant trade diversification opportunity for Australian businesses. Australia’s two-way trade with Africa was valued at almost $10 billion last year, led by our major trade and investment relationship with South Africa. Major Australian companies including Flight Centre, Cotton On, Telstra and Zip are active in the South African market, while major mining firms BHP, Rio Tinto and Fortescue Metals Group have operations across Africa.

Many of our shared interests are also practical. To address the global food security crisis, we must learn from each other on our approaches to land use, resource management and water management. Australia is already working with African partners on innovative and climate-resilient agriculture through the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. And we have responded with $10 million in funding for life-saving support to the drought and food crisis affecting the Horn of Africa.

When it comes to our security interests, it is important that we manage the risks to Australians by building our understanding and strengthening our partnerships with African nations that are battling terrorist groups and violent extremism.

We must also look to the future. A wave of African entrepreneurs is driving innovation in the information technology sector, growing tech start-up funding and investment. The emergence of Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Egypt as major start-up hubs will provide opportunities for Australian businesses in new areas. Australia is linked to East Africa through the Indian Ocean, and the blue economy also offers significant opportunities. The African Continental Free Trade Area agreement will help to unlock future economic growth for countries across Africa and eventually allow Australian exporters to access Africa as a single market.

Australia will work with partners on this important continent in pursuit of a world that is stable, peaceful, prosperous and respectful of sovereignty, all underpinned by our strong people-to-people links as a diverse, multicultural nation. Our shared interests are clear and will only become stronger in the decades ahead.

It’s time to reinvigorate our ties with Africa.

One of America’s top space officials says Australia is ‘prime country’ as the strategic competition for space heats up.

In Australia for a range of talks, including a dialogue held by ASPI, US Space Force director of staff Lieutenant-General Nina Armagno said that Australia’s strategic geography was a great asset when it comes to the sites needed for global space domain awareness and that northern Australia’s proximity to the equator could also allow for efficient launches into orbit.

‘Australia is sitting on a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for our common national security interests,’ she told a briefing to media alongside US Space Command’s Lieutenant-General John E. Shaw.

‘This is prime country for space domain awareness,’ she said, referring to the logging and tracking of objects orbiting the earth, ranging from small pieces of potentially dangerous debris to vital satellites.

Shaw added that space domain awareness was the biggest immediate challenge facing the US and its allies in space—and one where Australia’s contribution is vital.

‘That, frankly, is our number one challenge at US Space Command … You have to understand what’s happening in the domain first, then you can take actions to protect and defend and optimise capabilities,’ Shaw said.

Key to achieving that awareness is having as broad a network of sensors as possible around the globe, which is where Australia comes in.

‘[Space] doesn’t really play favourites between the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere, so if you want to understand what’s going on in space, you want to have sensors in as diverse locations as possible on the planet.’

Two major parts of a shared US–Australia space capability centred on surveillance and tracking of objects in space are now up and running near Exmouth in Western Australia. One is a C-band radar that was based in Antigua and has been relocated to WA, and the other is the Space Surveillance Telescope, originally developed by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The telescope is run as a joint facility and recently achieved its initial operating capability.

Both Armagno and Shaw emphasised that while Australia and the US have been working together on space since the Apollo program of the 1960s and more recent projects have roots going back years, there’s enormous scope for expanding the relationship to new areas.

‘Military to military is the partnership has been going on for decades. I think there’s tons of opportunity to partner commercially as well … The environment is ripe for investment in the space economy,’ Armagno said.

The space force general expanded on her comments in a podcast interview with ASPI’s Bec Shrimpton, saying Australia is a ‘burgeoning spacefaring nation, and there is tons of talent here and capability … There’s almost no limit to what we can do.’

The ramping up of Australian, US and other allied space capabilities is motivated by the need to create resilient, defendable space systems that can stand up to possible attack.

As society’s dependence on space has grown for everything from navigation to communications, so has that of our militaries.

‘It’s just how modern warfare in the 21st century works; it relies on space. Our potential adversaries have noticed this and it should not surprise us that there are now threats against those space capabilities,’ Shaw said.

‘So the question is, how do we approach that? And I think we do it the way we’ve always been successful as allies: we work it together and we’re stronger together. And the more that we can cooperate, not only operationally, but also in the development of capabilities, development of policies, the development of norms of behaviour collectively, it’s very clear to me that that’s how we address these threats and deter those threats from ever being realised.’

Conflict in space could range from the use of reversible effects like jamming or dazzling of satellite communications to cyberattacks on the ground-based architecture that supports space operations and even the direct destruction of space assets.

Australia recently joined a multilateral moratorium on destructive anti-satellite missile testing announced in the wake of a test last year by Russia that created a dangerous cloud of space debris that’s now being tracked. China and India have tested purpose-built anti-satellite weapons, while the US used a modified surface-to-air missile to destroy a satellite in 2008 (partly in response to China’s 2007 test). On the non-kinetic end of the spectrum, the war in Ukraine has already seen a major attack on US satellite communications firm Viasat.

‘So we are seeing examples of the kinds of threats that we know exist. They’re being employed by Russia,’ Armagno said.

Shaw added that China had ‘very swiftly’ advanced its space capabilities from just a few satellites 20 years ago to a fleet now numbering in the hundreds.

‘If you were to look at a number of different metrics, they’ve advanced very, very quickly,’ he said.

There has been a broader recognition that the old ways of building expensive, large and vulnerable platforms in space has to change in response to the increasing range of threats.

Armagno said that also involves disaggregating and diversifying space assets in ways that complicate an adversary’s plans to disrupt those capabilities. That could mean using smaller, cheaper satellites whose technology can be refreshed more quickly.

Part of an expansion of Australia’s own space capabilities could be focused on launches of smaller satellites on shorter timeframes than traditional, big-budget rocket missions.

‘In our collective ally discussion, we realise there’s a need for responsive launch—for launch to be more responsive than it historically has been, so there may be opportunities for partnering there as well,’ Shaw said.

As with space surveillance, Australia’s geography could be an advantage in this effort too.

‘It’s always most energy efficient to launch near the equator,’ Armagno said.

Australia’s growing space industry will almost certainly welcome any moves to expand US–Australia launch collaboration, especially after a NASA rocket blasted off from the Northern Territory in June.

A new Labor government takes office, threatened by a global recession, seeking a new start with China, and worried by war in a ‘time of entrenched geopolitical competition and stark divisions’.

A tough menu confronted Gough Whitlam’s government when it won office on 2 December 1972—leaving the Vietnam War as it swiftly exchanged diplomatic recognition with Beijing.

The 50th anniversary of the Whitlam victory on Friday offers echoes and portents for Anthony Albanese’s government, which last week marked six months in office.

For the first time since Whitlam, Australia’s defence minister is also the deputy prime minister. Indeed, the ministries held by Albanese’s leadership group make it the most internationally focused cohort at the top of an Australian government in 50 years. Labor’s Senate leader is the foreign minister, while the Senate deputy leader is the trade minister. The Coalition has a similar international orientation—opposition leader Peter Dutton is the former defence minister, while the opposition leader in the Senate is the shadow foreign minister.

The leadership line-ups speak of another time of geopolitical competition and stark divisions.

Albanese has been overseas in five of the six months he’s been prime minister. The much-travelled Whitlam would have saluted; ‘Comrade,’ he lamented ironically in 1974, the UN is creating countries ‘faster than I can visit them’.

The China story joins the two governments. Foreign Minister Penny Wong made the comparisons in delivering the 2022 Whitlam Oration and in her speech about the 50th anniversary of Australia–China diplomatic relations.

Whitlam’s embrace of China was supremely optimistic. Wong offers a cautious step-by-step prescription to ‘stabilise’ the relationship: ‘What we want to do is to continue to engage, cooperate where we can, disagree where we must, engage in the national interest, and I think what’s important is we can grow our bilateral relationship alongside upholding our national interests if both countries navigate our differences wisely.’

The Albanese government’s key talking point has moved from the three-word bumper sticker describing the problem (‘China has changed’) to the one-word prescription, ‘stabilise’.

In defence, the Albanese government pushes to make Australia’s military fit for purpose, fitted with kit to meet the purposes we’re likely to face in ‘a less safe and less stable world’.

The defence strategic review, due to report in March, faces big tasks, but it’s an echo in the minor key of defence’s ‘massive upheaval’ under Whitlam. Five departments (Defence, Army, Navy, Air and Supply) were merged into one; three services were brought into one Australian Defence Force; and the ‘diarchy’ was born, making the defence secretary and the ADF chief jointly responsible to the minister.

Whitlam delivered Australia strategic benefits that are still central today. He held on to the US alliance even as he battled Washington. He helped give birth to an understanding that Australia could defend itself, while proclaiming that Australia should find security in Asia, not seek security from Asia.

The Albanese government has embraced the alliance, while Whitlam’s alliance commitment was defined by the right to disagree (the US alliance wasn’t the ‘be all and end all’ of Australian foreign policy, Gough quipped). Whitlam’s differences with Richard Nixon’s administration are recorded in James Curran’s Unholy fury: Whitlam and Nixon at war; Curran says it was the closest the alliance has come to destruction.

Whitlam’s focus on Southeast Asia meant Australia became ASEAN’s first dialogue partner. But Whitlam’s effort in his first days in office to create an Asia–Pacific forum was quickly killed off by Indonesia—an early demonstration of the veto ASEAN could wield over regional initiatives from Canberra. Today, Wong says ASEAN is the ‘foundation’ of the effort to achieve ‘strategic equilibrium’ in the Indo-Pacific.

The Albanese government draws nourishment from Whitlam ideas while avoiding his ‘crash through or crash’ style. The US ambassador to Canberra, Marshall Green, called Whitlam a ‘whirling dervish’. In its rush, the Whitlam government was derided as being in office for a good time not a long time. Albanese aims to get a longer stretch in power, pointing to the model of Bob Hawke’s government.

One of the quiet tropes of the Hawke government in its early days was to size up a problem by asking: ‘What would Gough Whitlam have done?’ Then do the opposite. A quiet trope of the Albanese government is to ask, ‘What would Kevin Rudd have done?’ Then do the opposite.

Albo embraces Rudd substance while carefully avoiding the frantic style. One aim is to avoid having everyone in the prime minister’s orbit suffering permanent sleep debt.

During Whitlam’s time, the Canberra bureaucracy united in admiring his ambition while deploring the government’s internal ‘chaos’. The public service had a similar view of Rudd’s government, although the word for its internal workings was ‘dysfunctional’.

Still with the scars of those years, Albanese knows what he wants to avoid as well as what he wants. Six months in, the early public service judgement is ‘orderly’ and ‘disciplined’. The press gallery sees something similar in the relatively calm workings of parliament.

No matter how calm and disciplined you are, a dumper wave can still smash you.

Labor knows Whitlam’s three years in power were bedevilled by the slowing world economy, just as Jim Scullin’s Labor government (1929–1931) was hit by the times—taking office two days after the Wall Street crash, to be smashed by the Great Depression and party splits.

A looming global recession threatens to revisit the three-year hoodoo on Albanese. In the previous two decades, Australia decoupled from America’s economic woes. China lifted Australia over US economic crashes. The scenario may play differently this time if the US tips into recession.

The rhymes of history darken the dreams of the Albanese government.