AUKUS Pillar 2 has a PR problem—and no, not just among sceptical regional partners.  

Compared with evident progress on Australia’s future submarine capabilities under Pillar 1, analysts have often decried a lack of detail or engagement around Pillar 2, which is aimed at wider defence-technology cooperation. Despite efforts to spotlight trilateral innovation activities in the past 12 months, the absence of clear metrics for success, let alone a shiny new trilaterally developed capability carrying an AUKUS sticker, have led some to contend that Pillar 2 is falling short. 

This has contributed to skewed assumptions about what constitutes success for Pillar 2. On closer inspection, Pillar 2 is actually making substantial progress, both in necessarily preparing the field for future cooperation by harmonising regulatory and policy settings and by maximising operational efficiency and interchangeability of advanced capabilities already in service. 

The problem is that these activities have, until now, not been cast as key outputs or essential waypoints in the service of operationalising Pillar 2 projects.

Perceptions that Pillar 2 is falling short understandably frustrate those within the Australian strategic policy community seized by a sense of urgency. Compared with the long lead times for Pillar 1, officials and analysts alike have framed Pillar 2 as a means to accelerate the delivery of advanced capabilities to the military over a much shorter period, particularly within the next five years. But for many, this is contradicted by an apparent lack of ‘new’ material output in nearly two-and-a-half-years and a growing to–do list. Many members of the policy community have also bemoaned a lack of official information about Pillar 2’s innovation functionality objectives or the barriers to setting the enabling environment. 

The perception that Pillar 2 would deliver trilaterally developed advanced capabilities on an accelerated timeline has led to inflated expectations about what it should, and could, achieve in the short term.  

On one level, this may be attributed to the lack of information or insight from the AUKUS governments about what has been happening in the Pillar 2 space. Yet, since as far back as 2007, policy communities in all three countries have understood many of the challenges and barriers to defence industrial base integration and technology co-development. 

In that context, the essential institutional reforms and regulatory harmonisation efforts that are now in train in Australia, Britain and the US should be considered legitimate outputs of Pillar 2, particularly in its infancy. If AUKUS represents a revolution in defence industrial and technology collaboration amongst allies, then Pillar 2 is as much about setting the conditions for more streamlined cooperation on advanced capabilities as it is about the specific capabilities themselves. Properly sequencing these activities is essential in order to avoid revisiting known problems every time a new trilateral innovation project is launched.  

This is how the three governments appear to be conceptualising of Pillar 2: as a scalpel for dissecting institutional barriers to trilateral co-innovation. Hugh Jeffrey, Australia’s deputy secretary of defence for strategy, policy and industry, intimated as much during a recent CSIS event on Australia–US defence industrial cooperation. That this logic has now been stated publicly helps to recast reform efforts as a core mandate of Pillar 2, rather than simply a hinderance to its success or evidence of its stagnation. 

In that respect, it’s possible to imagine an innovation lifecycle model for AUKUS Pillar 2 with three phases: reforming processes and sharing best practices, coordinating innovation and technology adoption, and near-seamless co-innovation. 

The first phase is about harmonising export controls, progressing conversations about foreign disclosure, procurement policies, information-sharing and certification systems, but also limited innovation activities centred on data-sharing, capability demonstration, and building interoperability. This has included activities such as aligning common artificial-intelligence algorithms on P-8A maritime patrol aircraft to improve data processing for trilateral anti-submarine warfare activities. 

The second phase focusses on coordinated innovation, whereby governments simultaneously conduct innovation challenges on an agreed theme but within their national contexts. An example is the AUKUS electronic warfare innovation challenge, announced in March 2024. Australia’s 2024 National Defence Strategy suggests that this phase may also include the trilateral adoption and delivery of novel technologies developed by any one of the partners. 

Once these conditions are set, Pillar 2 could progress to a third phase and ideal end-state—genuine trilateral co-innovation and co-imagination.  

This three-step model helps to situate the activities and progress publicly disclosed to date in a broader context. It is also one that resonates with experts well-versed in AUKUS Pillar 2 policy discussions in all three countries with whom we have recently engaged. 

Given the long-standing barriers to technology cooperation between even the closest of allies, it’s unsurprising that initial Pillar 2 outputs have focused on reforms to the enabling environment and on maximising the operational efficiency and interoperability of priority capabilities. While co-innovation and co-production might be the gold-standard for AUKUS Pillar 2, progress in that area is not a realistic metric to measure success in the short-term. 

To solve Pillar 2’s two-pronged PR problem—limited information and over-hyped expectations—the three partners should further clarify the logic and importance of this scalpel strategy and the sequencing of the innovation lifecycle. This will help to not only keep industry and innovation stakeholders engaged and supportive, but also balance expectations about what is possible within what timeframe. 

Although Pillar 2’s end goal is more ambitious than what we have seen to date, it was always going to be a challenging first step to set the enabling environment for future success and to maximise possibilities for co-innovation within current limitations. Going forward, clearly communicating Pillar 2’s necessary sequencing to the right audiences on an appropriate timeline is critical, as is an appreciation by other AUKUS stakeholders of the complexities of the bigger picture. 

The Australian government is embracing a whole-of-nation approach to international policy. This means that, in enhancing international engagement, it wants to use resources across society—beyond core international policy actors, such as the departments of Defence and Foreign Affairs and Trade. The idea includes using input from business and investment, science and technology, education, sports, culture, media and civil society. 

But how, in practice, is this to be done? That’s still not entirely clear. Much like conventional notions of statecraft, a whole-of-nation approach is easier in theory than in practice. The effort to organise and harness the country’s distinct and sometimes competing interests, with all their complexity and contradiction, is immense. 

Central to a whole-of-nation approach is an elevated, enhanced and collaborative form of leadership. If governments wish to marshal, guide or direct, first they need to explain, persuade and inform. These are significant new tasks that core international policy actors may not now be equipped or resourced for. This is addressed in a new report from the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D). 

To develop a whole-of-nation foreign policy strategy, Australia must look to build upon successful examples. Cross-sector cooperation in foreign policy is already in action and there are examples that provide models and lessons that can be replicated. 

One was the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, in which different parts of society and government worked together to build the country’s international profile. Australia used the tournament to engage with foreign partners through sport, benefitting sectors including media, trade, education and tourism. 

Businesses engaged through global partnership deals with FIFA, and the knowledge and education sector became involved through universities and think tanks that researched issues impacting women’s sport. The community, including significant diaspora engagement, contributed to the biggest successes of the tournament: filled stadiums and broken television viewership records. 

Building on examples such as this, there are more opportunities for Australia to implement a whole-of-nation approach.  

One example for the future is exploitation of Australia’s significant deposits of critical minerals, including cobalt, lithium, manganese, tungsten and vanadium. These minerals are necessary for emerging technologies that future economies will rely on, underpinning the renewable energy transition. The development of new critical-minerals supply chains has also serious implications for Australia’s security partnerships, particularly AUKUS.  

Considering the importance of the emerging critical-minerals industry, the federal government must play a prominent role in bringing together stakeholders to advance industry capabilities. Australia can position itself as a trusted and reliable supplier of both raw and processed critical minerals while also seeking opportunities as a manufacturer in renewables technology. 

It can’t be done without coordination between government, industry, science, education and civil society—in other words, a whole-of-nation approach. 

Similarly, there is a need for Australia to take a whole-of-nation approach in its bid, in partnership with Pacific island countries, to co-host the 2026 Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP31). The bid requires alignment of domestic policy with foreign policy goals; it can hardly be done by the Department of Foreign Affairs alone. 

COP31 will require Australia as a nation to deliver on its climate commitments. Co-hosting with the Pacific will ramp up pressure to phase out fossil fuel production in support of the Pacific’s fight against climate change. A whole-of-nation approach to COP31 will be an opportunity for Australia to ensure that what it stands for internationally—strong action on climate change—is backed by a domestic climate action agenda. A whole-of-nation approach to COP31 will allow Australia to restore its reputation internationally as a climate leader and strengthen its standing in the Pacific as a credible partner. 

Recognising that different groups will have specific interests in different components of Australia’s international statecraft, the whole-of-nation approach should focus on identifying the complementary nature of various resources and groups. By doing this, the government sends strong signals to civil society and the private sector about what their contributions can be. 

The government should promote the whole-of-nation concept without imposing a centralised top-down approach to international engagement. The idea should begin with a set of values and interests with which any number of actors can align.  

Underpinning this, there will need to be effective structures, coordination mechanisms and resources that support and empower different parts of Australian society to participate in contributing to foreign policy goals. Australia can seek to broaden how it approaches the world by establishing frameworks and guidelines for how multiple groups can contribute to the national interest. 

Not everyone will be in full alignment on all issues. So a whole-of-nation approach must value diversity and continuously shifting consensus while recognising that Australia is stronger internationally if it has a common voice. 

As Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong recently remarked at the launch of an AP4D report on a whole-of-nation approach to international policy: ‘We need to coordinate our strengths …. It’s not just up to our diplomats, nor our military alone. It starts with who we are as a country: our First Nations history, our multicultural fabric, our institutions, business, academia, and civil society’. 

 

This article draws on AP4D’s report on What does it look like for Australia to take a Whole-of-Nation Approach to International Policy.

The Australian government’s proposed amendments to the Defence Trade Controls Act 2012 have provoked strong reactions. Debate on this issue has been simmering for some time, mostly remaining under the mainstream radar. The short window for feedback on the proposal risks pushing the debate to the point of hyperventilation.

Critics denounce any attempt to tighten the rules. Some are worried that Australia is unwittingly relinquishing its sovereignty and caving to the demands of an overbearing partner (which has, not without irony, the dubious honour of running one of the most outdated, onerous and poorly implemented export-control regimes in the Western world).

But a closer look at the details of the amendments reveals that they present an unprecedented opportunity. Capitalising on that opportunity means getting the rules right and ensuring that the Department of Defence has the capacity and the capability to implement them skilfully.

The amendments intend two primary effects. First, they would expand the scope of export-control regulation to include foreign persons within Australia, re-exports to third countries of previously transferred technologies, and services related to technologies included on part 1 of the defence and strategic goods list. Second, they would provide an exemption on permits for exports to the US and UK of certain technologies.

Without doubt, Australia shouldn’t mimic the US’s International Traffic in Arms Regulations. A Cold War relic, ITAR has for decades been a great wet blanket thrown over the Western defence innovation enterprise. Approval timelines are lengthy, to the point of being prohibitive for many small and medium-sized companies that are highly sensitive to cashflow fluctuations. Incentives are misaligned, with administrative responsibility assigned to an organisation without a dog in the fight and an actor-agnostic mindset. Effective risk management is stifled by the worst characteristics of bureaucracy.

The proposed changes to Australia’s rules would indeed make them look a bit more like ITAR. Greater alignment is necessary to realising the aims of the AUKUS pact. But they wouldn’t increase the degree to which Australian businesses are subject to US dysfunction (except in terms of sales volume, a mooted benefit of the new regime). In fact, the amendments can change the terms of the debate. If properly designed and administered, they can create a new source of competitive advantage for Australia.

The problem with ITAR is not its underlying principles. Defence technology must be tightly controlled. Defence innovation is useless—indeed, actively harmful—if its output is readily available to geopolitical competitors. Private companies may not like heavy-handed regulation, but it is a cost of doing business in defence markets.

The effect of Australia being exempted from ITAR without tightening its own defence export controls would be to open the drain on the massive bathtub that is the US defence industry. Loopholes would be obvious and easily exploitable by opportunistic and malign actors alike. That the administration of the US rules has often been ham-fisted doesn’t change this basic fact.

But there’s more to the proposed legislation than tightening the rules. Examine the underlying economic incentives, and it becomes apparent that alignment of AUKUS export-control regimes could have significant positive long-term effects. The US has voiced commitments to open reciprocal exemptions for AUKUS partners meeting a standard of protection. Expanding the size of the yard to include alternative regulatory environments fundamentally changes the incentives for ITAR administrators. It sets a price on dysfunction.

Should the amendments be enacted, barriers to trade would decrease for Australians wishing to sell controlled technologies to the US and the UK. This would also apply to US and UK businesses that decide to move their research and development activities to Australia. They would maintain unfettered access to home markets. Intellectual property created in Australia would be subject not to ITAR, but to the Australian export-control system.

Competition changes everything. The price of sclerosis in the US system will be businesses choosing to move their R&D elsewhere. Until now, there has been nowhere to move without sacrificing the largest defence market in the world. Under the AUKUS partnership, that will no longer be the case.

All this, of course, is not a free pass for Australia. Entering the competition doesn’t mean we’ll win. The design and management of the export-control system will be vitally important. Australian regulators must provide an unimpeachable level of protection for defence-related technologies while avoiding the pitfalls that tripped up our longstanding ally.

How do the proposed changes stack up in this regard?

First, the amendments don’t account for the disruption they will cause to existing partnerships. Ongoing work must be grandfathered under the new regime. Those affected should be asked to submit commitments to align their practices with the new rules over a reasonable period.

Under the proposal as currently written, a companies could incur criminal penalties for breaking the new rules when they become active in 12 months. That could slam the brakes on the Australian defence industry. The small and medium-sized enterprises on which it depends don’t have armies of lawyers standing ready to facilitate the transition. The amendments must apply a phased approach, introducing an intermediate period in which civil rather than criminal penalties apply.

The administrative burden of compliance is manageable for larger companies and prime contractors. It is absorbed as a cost of doing business. But that is often beyond the capability of smaller firms. A grant program should be established to assist small and medium enterprises with compliance paperwork and legal advice. This is a small cost for significant industry-wide potential gains. An application process should be set up to enable Defence to direct assistance where it is most needed.

Expanding the scope of the export-control regime will also increase the workload on administrators. The amendment takes no account of this, postponing an analysis of the financial impact until the next budget cycle. Winning in the new competitive environment will demand smooth functioning of administrative processes. Permit-processing delays resulting from an understaffed administration will set Australia on a path to assuming all the worst aspects of ITAR. We need immediate investment in administrative capacity and technical expertise. A permanent body must evaluate and monitor performance, including all associated governance, audit and resourcing functions.

Risk-management standards must deliberately account for varying levels of trust in export-control regimes beyond the AUKUS partnership. The rules should acknowledge third-party arrangements and adjust the stringency of export-control reviews based on the regulatory environment of the recipient.

The legislation must include a sunset mechanism for future application of Australian law to exported and re-exported articles. The period over which such a sunset clause applies will vary depending on the technology in question and should be assessed at the time of export approval.

Finally, the innovation ecosystem depends not just on defence-related hardware, but on collaborative relationships between Australian innovators and their foreign partners. Innovative activities incorporate dynamic networks of experts. These networks can’t be fully specified in advance. Export-control legislation must include expedited approval processes for bringing additional partners into previously approved technology-transfer relationships.

AUKUS presents an unprecedented opportunity for Australia. It has the potential to shake up a legacy export-control system that has become an impediment to defence innovation the world over. Previous attempts have failed due to the lack of a compelling political imperative and strategic drivers. AUKUS has the potential to introduce a new source of Australian competitive advantage that will draw in innovative activities and all the economic spillovers that come with them.

The devil is in the details.

The wars raging in Europe and the Middle East remind us that conflicts erupt suddenly. It’s a point that some AUKUS critics have seized on to say Australia and its partners are not making sufficient progress to be battle-ready in the Indo-Pacific.

Certainly, we need urgent investment to increase our military preparedness. But this fact doesn’t reflect badly on AUKUS.

AUKUS is about a longer game. Sceptics who are already declaring the partnership a failure because it won’t deliver nuclear-propelled submarines for decades, and therefore will produce no military or strategic returns in a useful timeframe, are missing the point.

This was always about much more than filling a single or immediate capability gap. It is about giving us the best chance to deter aggression, now and in the future, and therefore prevent a war with the Indo-Pacific’s major strategic challenge, China.

Deterrence relies on having strong capabilities, but also on credibility. Intent matters and it was missing, for example, in Europe before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. AUKUS, even in its nascent stage, is the clearest signal that the three countries are resolved, and working together, to meet the China challenge.

With the right political and industrial support, and the necessary resources, AUKUS shows Beijing that we are collaborating on security-related technologies such as quantum, artificial intelligence and autonomous systems that will be decisive in the strategic competition defining our period and the decades ahead.

By turbocharging the advantages inherent in our market-based innovation culture, we will be best positioned to offset China’s massive technology push supported by military spending.

Even by the historical standards of geostrategic competition, this current intense period is marked by an unprecedented convergence of economics and security. Implemented effectively, AUKUS demonstrates the intent that underpins the capability and credibility necessary to deter war and deny Beijing any benefit from starting one.

Projecting this intent, Defence Minister Richard Marles met his US counterpart, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in Washington last week following Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit with President Joe Biden the week before, injecting further impetus and political commitment in the AUKUS process.

Demonstrating bipartisanship in the long-term national interest, Labor not only backed AUKUS but doubled down on the arrangement—with senior government figures including Marles supporting it at the party’s feisty national convention—as a generational, whole-of-nation endeavour.

AUKUS addresses the reality that a collective approach to security with trusted partners is a strategic advantage. No country, not even the US, is strong enough alone to confidently deter and compete with a power of China’s size.

Pentagon officials say that, for now, US submarine technology is better than Chinese technology, but the sheer numerical advantages of China’s maritime fleet demonstrate the old military saying that ‘quantity has a quality of its own’. This captures the strategy that Australia, the US and partners must follow and explains why we need AUKUS: comparative advantage is gained by working with and strengthening friends.

Leveraging each other’s aptitudes by working together puts us in a firmer position to tackle a strategic competitor in China. Fusing its civil and military sectors, China’s strategy openly seeks to monopolise key economic, defence and technological capabilities, including through a combination of intellectual property theft, coercion, interference, and unfair subsidies and investment arrangements. It is these practices and Beijing’s malign intent that motivated AUKUS.

The belated realisation that the world cannot be walled off into neat spheres and regions, due to the global nature of technology and economic supply chains (including in space and cyberspace), makes it significant that the AUKUS partners span the geography of the planet.

And while our open, market-based economic approaches confer advantages in spurring innovation and generating industrial energy, national resilience is strengthened when friendly nations work together and governments concurrently collaborate with industry and incentivise defence and technology industries to cooperate across nations.

There are of course legitimate challenges with AUKUS. They include real workforce and skill shortages, funding and infrastructure gaps, and regulatory restrictions. Each of these poses risks.

The answer, however, is not fatalism but government and industry leadership and a cultural shift to understand that our respective interests lie in collective power. As much as sceptics focus on political distractions in Washington, Albanese and Biden ensured AUKUS was a top priority at their recent meeting, noting progress across both pillars including the first graduation of Australian military personnel from the US Navy’s Nuclear Power School, the first Australian port visit by an American nuclear attack submarine, and the first demonstration of AUKUS artificial intelligence and autonomous capabilities. This was a clear signal of intent and resolve ahead of Albanese’s trip to China.

At the same time, a hearing of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces showed the strength of bipartisan support for AUKUS, with members—including Republican Mike Gallagher and Democrat Joe Courtney—backing supplemental funding and export control reform.

Support doesn’t equal a blank cheque and reasonable questions are being asked in Washington—not just in Congress but in other parts of government—yet these aim to ensure that AUKUS is a success.

The expectation that the necessary domestic political reforms for such a tectonic shift as AUKUS would come easily were always unrealistic. Meanwhile, many of the criticisms about technology-transfer restrictions, difficulties building submarines in Adelaide or the potential for a war this decade are issues that would apply more acutely without a bold initiative like AUKUS.

This is about having a coherent, long-term strategy, at which many authoritarians excel because they are untroubled by the demands of democracy (from elections to protecting the rights of citizens). As a senior figure instrumental to AUKUS remarked at a Washington dialogue ASPI hosted with the Center for a New American Security earlier this year, this partnership is about ensuring the three allies are so intimate that we ‘finish each other’s sentences’ on matters of strategy and security.

There is still much work to be done to deter China and preserve our own sovereignty, but AUKUS is already making a difference, establishing a tight-knit, collective approach to defence policy and the key capabilities that will shape the rest of the century—not just today or tomorrow.

In September 2021, the Chinese Communist Party attempted to use the establishment of the AUKUS pact and Australia’s plan for nuclear-powered submarines to undermine the strong ties between Pacific island countries and the three AUKUS partners. The CCP’s messaging was spread across a broad spectrum of information channels, including Chinese state media, articles and statements by CCP officials in local and social media, and official party-state Facebook groups.

An ASPI study found that the campaign failed to shift Pacific islands’ sentiment against Australia and its partners in the short term, but it can take some time for information operations to make an impact. In some Pacific countries, particularly Solomon Islands, online sentiment towards foreign partners and local governments in response to AUKUS has since shifted.

In March this year, further details about the AUKUS partnership were announced, including the timelines for additional visits of US and UK submarines to Australia and the pathway for Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines starting in the 2030s. The CCP’s response to these announcements was more subdued than in 2021, although Chinese diplomats and state media continued to question the agreement’s intent and presented AUKUS as a threat to stability in the Pacific.

Regularly investigating how the CCP capitalises on Pacific events to spread propaganda and disinformation helps detect changes in its efforts, approaches and effectiveness. Measuring online sentiment also provides insights into how different narratives are perceived by Pacific island populations.

For this new study examining the CCP’s influence in the Pacific islands information environment, we tracked online discussion of AUKUS across the Pacific for four weeks beginning on 14 March, the day the submarine announcements were made. We looked for any mention of AUKUS or nuclear submarines in Pacific online articles, press statements and opinion pieces by governments and officials, and Facebook posts on official embassy pages and by individuals in more than 50 of the Pacific’s largest public Facebook groups. The methodology is explained in greater detail in our earlier report.

During the study period, and as in 2021, the CCP pushed clear narratives and disinformation, including false claims that Australia’s submarine acquisition would breach the Treaty of Rarotonga (also referred to as the South Pacific Nuclear-Free-Zone Treaty) and threaten regional security and prosperity. The CCP sought to undermine the AUKUS countries’ Pacific partnerships by exaggerating the nuclear-safety implications of the AUKUS agreement and claiming that it would trigger a nuclear arms race in the Pacific.

Capitalising on other regional events, the CCP entwined AUKUS with Pacific concerns about Japan’s plans to release nuclear wastewater from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean. The CCP has similarly sought to undermine Japan’s government on the wastewater issue through a covert social media campaign.

In the month following the 14 March announcement, Chinese state media continued to criticise AUKUS. The number of published articles mentioning AUKUS and the Pacific increased from 9 in 2021 to 16 in 2023. In both studies, the Facebook page of China’s embassy in Solomon Islands was the only Chinese embassy page in the region that displayed any content on the AUKUS announcement.

The lone statement from a CCP official in Pacific media, published online by Solomon Star News, was a response from a spokesperson from the Chinese embassy in Honiara addressing remarks by Japanese and US officials. In this response, the CCP attempted to shift the focus away from concerns about China’s recently signed security agreement with Solomon Islands by raising nuclear-safety concerns with Japan and the US—a technique known as ‘whataboutism’.

As in 2021, Chinese state media had limited penetration and engagement in the Pacific islands online information environment. Only one article was shared to a Pacific public Facebook page, titled ‘Front Line Papua New Guinea’. It did not generate engagement or interactions, such as likes, comments or shares. However, state media was still published in print format across the region. China has content-sharing arrangements with various Pacific media outlets, which serve as an additional avenue for its messaging efforts.

We found 39 articles about AUKUS, including opinion pieces and press releases, published by the 30 Pacific media outlets sampled. This was a slight increase on the 33 AUKUS-related articles we found in 2021. The following charts show the origins of AUKUS-related media content in the Pacific during the 2021 and 2023 study periods. There was a significant increase in the amount of locally produced content in March 2023 compared with September 2021 and less reliance on publishing Western articles.

As in 2021, online reaction from the Pacific population was limited. We found only 157 direct comments across all sampled data, 67 of which were relevant for sentiment analysis. Social media data analysis tool Crowdtangle consistently ranked AUKUS content as ‘underperforming’ in generating engagement compared with other posts on the same Facebook pages.

In both studies, the people of Solomon Islands and Samoa were the most engaged on AUKUS issues online. The number of reactions in Solomon Islands commentary was disproportionately high given its share of overall media coverage.

Solomon Islands was also where we found the most dramatic change in online responses and sentiment. In September 2021, most of the comments in Solomon Islands’ groups focused primarily on China, either welcoming its statements of support or criticising its presence in the region and defending AUKUS as a necessary capability boost for Australia. In March 2023, commentary was significantly more critical of Australia and the US, using language similar to that used by CCP diplomats, such as describing the West as having a ‘Cold War mentality’. Concerns over the Treaty of Rarotonga were raised frequently in negative comments in Solomon Islands and Samoa.

Compared to the 2021 study—which was conducted before key events in Solomon Islands, such as the November 2021 Honiara riots and the March 2022 security agreement with China—we found a significant increase in negative comments towards the Solomon Islands government. They were mainly focused on the government’s lack of transparency in signing the security agreement with China, indicating that the CCP’s whataboutism approach hadn’t distracted all of the population from ongoing concerns. A comment on a Chinese embassy post also accused the account of deleting further commentary that reflected poorly on the embassy, potentially biasing the sample to favour China.

While the two studies consider particularly small datasets, they still provide useful comparisons over time. Our findings suggest that the AUKUS partners should prioritise providing further clarification on the agreement to the people of Solomon Islands and Samoa in order to debunk rumours and counter disinformation. And, given that most online engagement occurs through local media pages, Australia, the US and the UK should seek to engage directly with Pacific journalists to provide additional information and support Pacific-based reporting on this issue.