Tag Archive for: Pacific Islands

Avoiding a bidding war in developing Pacific island militaries

Strategic competition in the region has provided Pacific island leaders with both an opportunity and motivation to build their security capabilities. For some, that could include standing up a military for the first time. Both Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu recently declared their intent to renegotiate their security agreements with Australia, while Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has reiterated his intent to establish a military in his country.

Defence Minister Richard Marles has told Sogavare that Australia would be ‘very keen’ to provide support if asked, and mentioned that a similar discussion had been held with Vanuatu. If Australia wants to retain its status as security partner of choice in the region and expand its partnerships, it should now focus not on whether to support the development of new militaries in the Pacific, but on how.

Pacific island countries and their partners must ensure that any future military is built to meet the needs of Pacific people. That may seem obvious, but it hasn’t always been reflected in Australia’s recent history of engagement and support in the region. And it’s not the approach other potential partners, like China, will take.

Australian security support is better suited to this than alternatives. Decades of deep engagement with Pacific partners have improved the quality of the Australian option. Although not every security decision will have unanimous approval—like the limited rearmament of the Solomon Islands police force—Australia’s assistance is still mostly appreciated by Pacific populations.

But when it is offered as a counter to Chinese proposals, Australia’s assistance is cheapened in the eyes of Pacific partners. This approach sets Australia up to fail to achieve its highest—though altogether unrealistic—goal of creating a partnership so strong that China can never be considered the security partner of choice.

Pacific militaries need more support than any one country has been willing or able to deliver. The Pacific is enormous and faces extreme natural disaster risks and other climate-related crises. Pacific leaders are often left with little choice but to play potential partners off one another to maximise benefits in a finite window of heightened attention and opportunity. But the bidding wars this generates are fuelling a support arms race, with grand gestures distracting from what’s truly important—long-term, stable, secure development.

The development of new Pacific militaries cannot be approached by waiting to outbid Beijing with half-baked counteroffers. Pacific leaders must focus on identifying why a military is needed and what it would be used for, and Australia should be proactive in supporting them in that process.

Australia has proven its ability to do that. Advisers are already aiding Solomon Islands and Vanuatu under the Defence Cooperation Program and assisting in the development of national security strategies. But it’s time to move on from being ready to support when asked to pre-emptively offering our friends help, because every time Australia offers support reactively, the partnership value of the project is diminished.

Of course, everybody has an opinion on what a suitable military would look like in their country, and Solomon Islands and Vanuatu have faced questions in the past about their need to have militaries at all. Still, they are the two most likely to create new militaries in the near future, and there are many reasons for them to do so—to reduce reliance on external forces for stability and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, to contribute to UN peacekeeping missions, and to improve coordination with partner militaries.

While the final decision is up to Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, it’s essential that the purpose of any new military is clearly defined and widely understood by supporting partners.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t a question China is likely to consider carefully—it will likely offer a quick and flashy solution that may not align with the military’s true purpose in order to generate positive press coverage and undermine Western partnerships. Australia can’t allow itself to do the same. It must propose support that’s truly fit for purpose and emphasise that this is how Pacific governments can deliver the best outcome.

Once a new military’s purpose is clearly defined, Australia would probably emerge as the most suitable partner to support its establishment. Australia is the largest provider of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief in the Pacific. The Australian Defence Force has provided Fijian forces with support and training for peacekeeping operations and the two militaries have deployed to the same UN peacekeeping operations. Australia has also led stability operations in Solomon Islands and, by delivering the highly regarded Pacific Maritime Security Program, continues to strengthen interoperability among security forces across the region.

Setting clear boundaries that define where Australia’s assistance ends and where there is space for other partners will be a challenge. In developing a new military, all parties must ensure that everything aligns—including doctrine, training and equipment—so that it has a strong structural foundation.

Other like-minded nations should be encouraged to find ways to assist. Australia could support that coordination if asked, but there must be a clear expectation that there’s little to no room for China in this process—its involvement would preclude the development of a well-suited, cohesive military. Setting those expectations is not a form of paternalism; it’s choosing to focus on quality support that doesn’t compromise our values.

Now is the perfect time to create stronger, lasting partnerships with Pacific island countries that are seeking to develop their own militaries. It all starts with offering things that alternative partners can’t: patience, understanding and a long-term commitment to meeting the needs of Pacific nations.

Australia can’t act only in fear of China while demonstrating to Pacific countries genuine belief in building Pacific resilience. Once strong partnerships are in place, the region can work together to establish where Chinese support can be utilised without weakening the performance or integrity of a new military. There is too much at stake for Australia to give up the initiative and fall into a reactive mindset.

The rising value of Papua New Guinea’s strategic geography

Last week, Lloyd Austin became the first US defence secretary to visit Papua New Guinea, en route to the AUSMIN conclave in Brisbane. Austin was the latest in a long line of VIP visitors to the South Pacific nation this year, including French President Emmanuel Macron, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly. Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was in Port Moresby too, in January, to progress a new bilateral security treaty.

The intensified interest is concomitant with PNG’s status as the standout among Pacific island countries in terms of territory, natural resources and population, giving it inherent leadership potential in a region that’s been rapidly rising up the international agenda.

Austin’s visit is strategically significant, because the centrepiece of the US’s invigorated bilateral engagement with PNG is a defence cooperation agreement, concluded in May. It has still to be debated in PNG’s parliament. The US State Department’s announcement on the agreement is couched in terms that underline the broad security benefits on offer to Port Moresby, including capacity building for the PNG Defence Force, disaster preparedness, and assistance to PNG’s small maritime constabulary force in suppressing illegal activities in the country’s vast sovereign archipelagic sea. The arrival of a US Coast Guard cutter to the region next year, with PNG ship riders onboard, should further the latter objective, helping to instil perceptions that greater US regional engagement contributes to security beyond narrow military considerations.

The White House appears cognisant of the need to engage Pacific leaders across a comprehensive definition of security, so that the offer of an elevated US defence partnership can be politically sustainable in PNG, increasing the likelihood of it achieving local support. Yet that need shouldn’t obscure the fact that PNG’s primary value to the US is a function of its strategic geography. The access negotiated under the agreement serves an underlying strategic purpose, integral to the US–Australia alliance, as the US Indo-Pacific Command reshapes its force posture in response to China’s continuing military build-up and prepares the theatre for the future possibility of armed conflict on a regionwide scale.

In June, with the ink on the agreement hardly dry, a flight of four US F-35 Lightning II aircraft en route from Australia to Hawaii diverted to Jacksons International Airport, in Port Moresby, for an unscheduled refuelling stop after the tanker they were meant to rendezvous with developed technical problems. The incident was a timely reminder of PNG’s potential as a defence partner in its own right, not simply territory to fly over or sail past.

The text of the PNG–US agreement reportedly identifies six sites for ‘unimpeded access’ across the country: the port and Jacksons International Airport in the capital; the port of Lae and Nadzab airport in the east; and the naval base at Lombrum on Manus Island and nearby civilian airport at Momote in the north. The agreement also details accommodation arrangements and the legal status of US military personnel deployed to PNG, the prepositioning of defence equipment and humanitarian supplies, and refuelling and maintenance for US ships and aircraft in transit. Its duration is 15 years, an indication of purpose on Washington’s part.

Austin has said the US is ‘not seeking a permanent base’ in PNG. In that, the agreement bears outward similarity to the recently expanded enhanced defence cooperation arrangement in the Philippines, with the obvious difference that PNG is not a US treaty ally.

The island of New Guinea, of which PNG forms the eastern half, is often depicted as sitting at the foot of the ‘second island chain’. Alternatively conceived, it constitutes the biggest link in Australia’s own first island chain. Either way, its importance is clear: it’s not just the closest country to the Australian mainland but, with an 820-kilometre land border with Indonesia, also the hinge between Southeast Asia and the southwest Pacific. The Torres Strait, between PNG and Australia, controls access between the Indonesian archipelago and the Coral Sea. Cape York, the northernmost part of the Australian continent, points directly to Guam, in the Marianas, America’s bulwark base in the second island chain. PNG is the only country in between. At AUSMIN, it was announced that Royal Australian Air Force Base Scherger, a ‘bare base’ located on the Cape, is likely to be upgraded, partly to meet US requirements.

From Washington’s standpoint, air and sea access through PNG helps to ensure that US forces can both disperse safely to Australia and project power freely from it into the western Pacific. Of course, Indonesia is also geographically vital in this regard, as an island screen across Australia’s Top End and northwest. Under international law, transit rights through Indonesia’s archipelago are guaranteed via designated sea and air corridors. Yet access in a crisis cannot be taken for granted, which gives PNG heightened significance as a reliable alternative. The Vitiaz Strait provides the most direct sea passage between the western Pacific and Australia’s eastern seaboard.

PNG’s geopolitical value is further sharpened by its sea boundary with Solomon Islands (a sensitive one for PNG, given uncertainty about Bougainville’s future status), which under Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare is tilting towards China and remains one of Beijing’s most likely options to host a People’s Liberation Army presence in some form, even if it’s not a military base. Concern about restrictions that Honiara has imposed on some visiting US Navy vessels partly motivated Washington to negotiate a defence cooperation agreement with PNG.

Unit-level initiatives, such as Task Force Koa Moana, which integrates US marines and sailors with PNG defence personnel, suggest that the US military intends to forge lasting military-to-military and interpersonal relations within PNG. At the onset of a conflict or crisis, PNG could itself serve as a location for the US military to disperse combat assets from Guam and bases in the first island chain. In the event of a protracted maritime conflict, the US and Australia are both likely to regard PNG as a useful ‘in-theatre’ location from which to conduct combat replenishment, basic repairs and maintenance for ships and submarines, and possibly aircraft if the infrastructure is developed to support it. Lombrum served a similar function during World War II and could do so again, but with a smaller footprint on land. Comparisons with the 1940s, when Australians and Americans fought side by side with locals against Japan can mislead, but PNG’s positional importance in a US–China strategic context is likely to have fundamental resonances. Austin’s father served with the US Army in New Guinea during World War II, a point noted by PNG’s Prime Minister James Marape during their meeting.

Canberra has officially welcomed the PNG–US defence cooperation agreement. PNG’s rising strategic profile and that of the South Pacific in general are also discernible in the force posture elements of the AUSMIN communiqué. However, the invigorated US interest is likely to engender mixed feelings in Canberra, which for so long has seen itself as Port Moresby’s partner of choice. Australia’s defence cooperation program with PNG is its largest and the bonds run deep. Securing support for the US agreement has depleted Marape’s political capital, delaying the ratification of Australia’s own treaty-level agreement by several months. Nevertheless, the US decision to double down on defence cooperation with PNG stands to bolster Australia’s security significantly in the long run. It can be considered an extended investment in the US–Australia alliance, strengthening linear communications along the second island chain in particular, and facilitating access to and from Australia for US forces across the Pacific theatre.

Pacific media needs more support to protect the truth

Media freedom is an essential pillar of democracy. In Pacific island countries, this pillar is under threat from financial and capacity constraints. Democratic partners—which believe in the importance of a strong, independent media—must do more to support journalism and media in the Pacific to protect the integrity of independent thought and defend against information warfare.

ASPI’s Pacific program has facilitated workshops with Pacific journalists and engaged with media professionals to help identify the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for development in their organisations. This work points to some key lessons that should guide governments and other groups seeking to further support Pacific media.

The spread of information online—which includes some information that is false, deliberately manipulative and harmful—moves much more rapidly than media outlets and governments can keep up with. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, found that fake news spreads six times faster than real news on Twitter. False information disguised as government leaks is increasingly being shared online, compelling leaders to release correct information faster.

More and more of what should be government announcements are coming from the private social media accounts of individual politicians. That puts journalists on the back foot when addressing current events and creates unnecessary friction between governments and the media.

Some friction is important, but it should come from holding governments accountable, not a race to be the first to share information. Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape’s admonishment of the media for reporting on a potential US presidential visit is a recent example of the unnecessary competition to be first with journalists who are just doing their jobs.

In some cases, journalists have inadvertently reported false leaks and rumours as fact based on what they were been exposed to online. These inaccuracies often come from inexperience in detecting false information, and insufficient time to closely check sources plagues young journalists, exacerbating mistrust. Senior media professionals lack the resources to provide the mentoring required for these roles and would welcome additional outside support.

Support does exist, but democratic partners still need to do more to provide Pacific media outlets with training and exchange opportunities. Unlike some other areas of engagement in the Pacific, we are not at risk of overwhelming our Pacific counterparts in the media arena. In fact, nearly every individual we spoke with was hungry for more training and greater engagement.

In Solomon Islands, BBC Media Action’s first foray into the Pacific has addressed some of the underlying challenges in reporting, including emergency broadcasting and financial broadcasting. By embedding a trainer in the country and reaching beyond the capital, this training program has been exemplary in meeting Solomon Islands’ needs and is greatly appreciated by local media institutions.

BBC Media Action is not alone in this endeavour. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s international development group also delivers huge benefits across many Pacific countries and is growing again. But partners should establish more of these programs across the region. In cases where a trainer can’t be based in the country, consistency and strong relationships are key.

Many senior reporters and executives also lament the loss of exchange opportunities. They speak highly of past programs that allowed them to travel and learn for a short period of time in much larger and more complex newsrooms.

Offering these exchange opportunities again would be extremely beneficial for Pacific media, but they must be two-way. We shouldn’t burden small Pacific news outlets with a temporary loss of personnel, and two-way exchanges would also give partners’ media staff invaluable experience in the region.

Beyond training, Pacific media professionals will struggle to implement best practices without appropriate funding. Pacific media organisations are not adequately resourced to keep up with demand and need more equipment. In the near term, that means the provision of laptops, cameras and quality sound-recording equipment, and the training required for their use and maintenance.

Building a strong, independent and resilient Pacific media is crucial to countering misinformation and disinformation operations in the region. Rumours of corruption, assassination plots and financial opportunities swirl online and in person. The confusion this creates provides opportunities for malign actors to manipulate information and populations.

Pacific journalists frequently mentioned geopolitics as an area of growing concern for false information. ASPI has previously highlighted some of the influence activities being undertaken in Pacific island countries by the Chinese Communist Party, including suppressing the truth and spreading lies in Solomon Islands, accusing Australia and the US of instigating the November 2021 Honiara riots, and seeking to undermine democracy and partnerships across the region.

To increase Pacific resilience to these information operations, democratic partners need to be more transparent and support Pacific media to critically evaluate whether proposed assistance and equipment truly benefit the people.

Moving beyond simply copying and pasting press releases requires effort on both sides. Partners shouldn’t deliver equipment, aid or infrastructure without providing an opportunity for the press to ask questions and encouraging local journalists to take those opportunities whenever they can. From these questions stems a story about how this support is truly benefiting people in the Pacific.

Transparency is one of the many strengths that sets democratic partners apart from authoritarian alternatives. For instance, the Media Association of Solomon Islands boycotted Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s speech in Honiara in May 2022 when they were told that only one Solomon Islands journalist could ask their own minister a question at the event.

No media in any country should have to rely on support from China, a country that consistently ranks among the world’s worst for media freedom—particularly if that partner is also responsible for spreading false information and seeking to manipulate the information environment.

Unfortunately, many Pacific island countries are heavily reliant on Beijing’s support, and without greater effort from democratic partners, Pacific media organisations won’t be equipped to survive the constant barrage of false information and confusion they face.

The number behind Fiji’s coup culture

The spectre of Fiji’s ‘coup culture’ continues to loom over the republic despite the peaceful transfer of power on Christmas Eve 2022. That this occurred was due, in part, to Commander Major General Ro Jone Kalouniwai’s tight reins on the military after the election.

However, in mid-January, Kalouniwai appeared to invoke the spectre of a coup with a strongly worded statement critical that the government was going too far too fast. It was uncomfortably reminiscent of former prime minister and then-Commodore Frank Bainimarama’s similar threat to Laisenia Qarase’s government in December 2006.

However, what might have developed into a significant political crisis appeared to have been reduced to a sharp but short storm in a teacup later in the day when the meeting to which Home Affairs Minister Pio Tikoduadua summoned Kalouniwai ended amicably.

Reportedly both sides ‘agreed on a new beginning’ based in a shared understanding of the appropriate relationship between the government and Republic of Fiji Military Forces.

As hopeful as many within and outside Fiji were on the day, it’s too soon to close the chapter on this incident. The spectre is embedded in the constitution—at least as the RFMF reads it.

The initial spark for the current controversy was the public statement by Attorney-General and Justice Minister Siromi Turaga that Fiji’s 2013 constitution is ‘on the table’ along with a suggestion that some necessary changes might be pursued by circumventing the constitution’s exacting amendment process.

Kalouniwai countered with his statement to remind Turaga that the RFMF had a special responsibility under section 131 of the 2013 constitution ‘to ensure that the values and principles of democracy including the checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution are not undermined’.

Despite Bainimarama’s long-repeated claim to being committed to ending Fiji’s coup culture, his former attorney-general, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, acting in his capacity as secretary of the FijiFirst party, attempted to double down on Kalouniwai’s concerns asserting that Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s tripartite coalition government was indeed undermining the constitution.

Kalouniwai’s insistence that the RFMF has an obligation to protect the ‘checks and balances’ of the constitution sits rather uneasily with the 2013 constitution’s section 98 which asserts that the Supreme Court ‘has original jurisdiction to hear and determine constitutional questions’.

So, from where does the RFMF’s assertion derive that section 131 confers some form of supra-constitutional authority to supplant the Supreme Court’s constitutional authority to determine breaches of the constitution?

A simple reading of section 131 does not explicitly place such a broad democratic duty on the RFMF. Rather it states plainly that it is the military’s overall responsibility to ‘ensure at all times the security, defence and well-being of Fiji and all Fijians.’

This is virtually a word-for-word repeat of a Rabuka-instigated provision in the flawed 1990 constitution imposed to replace the 1970 constitution which was abrogated after his 1987 coups. The provision was absent in the 1997 constitution but the presumption behind it clearly continued.

The RFMF plainly stated this interpretation in its submission to the 2013 Constitutional Commission, arguing for such a provision as the RFMF was ‘the last bastion for law and order in Fiji’.

Some argue that the importance of section 131 is not that it creates a duty to protect the constitution but that it confers a constitutionally-based social licence that gives ‘permission’ for the military to intervene in Fiji’s domestic politics when, in its judgement, the government has gone off the rails.

Regardless of how the claim is to be perceived, for more than a generation the RFMF has identified section 131 (and its constitutional antecedents) as conferring a legitimate entitlement to exercise some extra-constitutional authority at its own discretion.

Discussion during the meeting between Tikoduadua and Kalouniwai did not appear to challenge the commander’s assertion regarding the importance of section 131 as grounds for the extraordinary statement; only that it was made public. Both agreed that all the appropriate constitutional processes and boundaries in the separation of powers would be respected.

Both might have assumed, at a minimum, the other was not challenging their view of section 131.

Kalouniwai’s statement acknowledged that the new government had earned the mandate to make policy changes. And both accepted that changes should be implemented with due respect to the constitution.

Turaga came closer to challenging the view that section 131 actually could be read to confer any extra-constitutional authority in his rebuttal to Sayed-Khaiyum’s charge that the government was disrespecting constitutional boundaries. The current attorney-general told his predecessor to file a constitutional redress application through the courts.

One aspect of the 2013 constitution that troubled Tikoduadua in his meeting with Kalouniwai was in relation to his role as home affairs minister. The 1997 constitution stated explicitly that the RFMF was ‘subject to the control of the minister’ (section 112).

The 2013 constitution does not contain such a provision. This may help to explain why the Rabuka government dropped the title of defence minister from its list of portfolios but raises questions as to why the Bainimarama government felt the need to have one.

The ghost of Fiji’s coup culture cannot be vanquished easily. Even if the Supreme Court formally interpreted section 131 in the same way any democratic court would—that the constitutional role of the military is to protect the nation’s physical security—the spectre would still haunt Fiji.

If the RFMF truly wishes to end the spectre of Fiji’s coup culture, it could start by renouncing its perverse interpretation of section 131. This could facilitate the necessary and more fundamental change of culture that has persisted within the RFMF for more than a generation.

Fiji’s open-list electoral system paves way for more diversity in representation

Election posters often show something useful about the intensity and range of partisan feeling in the community on the eve of an election. Having been an election night analyst for more than three decades, I paid close attention to the banners, billboards and posters that I observed in the cab from Nadi to Suva on a recent visit to Fiji.

Impressions from a moving vehicle are just that—anecdotal impressions, of course. Nevertheless, I was struck by evidence of some ways that Fijians are preparing for the 14 December general election.

One very visible sign of the impending poll was an almost a universal election trope. Roadworks were virtually omnipresent on my journey. As far as my cabbie was concerned, these public works were as much an advertisement for the government as the roadside billboards.

The billboards themselves were a story. It seems the FijiFirst party purchased time on all the available billboards shortly before the election was called. As a result, other parties have had to scramble to find whatever alternatives were around. While morally suspect, this tactic is not illegal and, as one opposition critic noted, it was only possible because the other parties were asleep at the wheel in terms of their pre-election preparations.

The message on the billboards reveals something curious about the electoral strategy of Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama’s governing FijiFirst party. Many don’t to have a message beyond his image, party name and often, but not always, the PM’s voting number—234. Some have a photo of Bainimarama with his attorney-general, Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum, as a show of unity in the duumvirate that has governed Fiji for most of the past 16 years.

Promoting the party’s leader can be a successful team tactic in some electoral systems. However, Fiji’s open-list proportional system imposes some critical limitations on adopting a presidential-style ‘beauty contest’ strategy.

The European closed party list system ensures that a vote for a party (or its leader) leads to fairly predictable outcomes in who is elected. Party candidates are successful in the order that the party places them on the ballot, so key party members have a privileged path into parliament regardless of personal popularity.

The open-list system elects candidates in the order of the number of votes the candidates receive. There is no specific quota that a candidate needs. A high personal vote is therefore essential. A candidate can be swept into office by the party’s proportional share of seats with a modest personal vote as long as it’s high enough in the party’s election night results table.

The key to achieving a high personal vote is to have supporters circle (or tick or cross) the unique number assigned to each candidate. There are no party labels, photos or names to prompt the voter in making a choice on a ballot, which can have hundreds of three-digit numbers.

This is why FijiFirst’s strategy this election is somewhat perplexing. The more the vote is concentrated on the leader, the fewer votes there are to elect other members of the team. Fewer votes reduces the possible distinction among the remaining 54 party candidates, which increases the likelihood of unexpected results, as Faiyaz Koya found in 2018. Koya went into the 2018 election as minister for industry, trade, tourism, lands and mineral resources and lost his seat with only 547 personal votes, well down from his 2014 result.

However, his return to the parliament in 2020 illustrates another feature of the open-list proportional electoral system. Although the personal vote decides the order of who is elected in the national poll, party preferences determine the filling of casual vacancies. Each party provides a list prior to the election with the Fiji Electoral Office for filling vacancies. A FijiFirst vacancy occurred in 2020 and the party list had Koya as the next available candidate.

Constituting Fiji as a single national electorate was a key decision that made a leader-focused campaign politically viable.

When Father David Arms put the open-list proportional electoral system before the National Council for Building a Better Fiji in 2008, I was asked to assist him with helping to shape and present the system in terms of its consequences and relevance in comparison with other possibilities.

One issue we debated among ourselves was how many constituencies might be needed to ensure geographic representation while preserving a high degree of proportionality. It was felt desirable to have multiple constituencies in order to guarantee representation for different geographic interests of the archipelago.

As of late 2012, the decision on how many constituencies would be fairest was still moot. Within a year, when the system was incorporated into the 2013 constitution, those concerns were submerged in favour of a single national roll.

The value to Bainimarama and FijiFirst of a single national constituency was demonstrated in the system’s first outing in 2014. Bainimarama won just over 200,000 votes of the almost 500,000 ballots cast. The 49 other FijiFirst candidates combined added only 94,000 votes, giving the party 59% of the total vote.

As expected, the mechanics of the open-list system came more into play in the 2018 election. The difference between the vote shares of the parties was less marked, although the number of successful parties remained static at three. Bainimarama still enjoyed the greatest individual support of any candidate in 2018, but his personal vote dropped (although his share of the party tally increased) since FijiFirst secured a bare majority with just over 50%. The Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA) led by 1987 coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka won the lion’s share of the remaining vote, while the National Federation Party (NFP), the other opposition party, made a very modest gain on its 2014 result.

The open-list system’s proportionality encourages representational diversity. Seven parties contested the 2014 election. The number was down to six in 2018, but nine parties are registered for the 2022 poll.

The number of parties is significant because the threshold of 5% that a party must cross to win a share of the seats in parliament should be low enough to give many parties a chance at success. The idea is that that would lead to compromise and the moderating influence of coalition-building.

So far the success rate for parties has been lower than expected due to the dominance of FijiFirst in what has been a largely two-party system since 2014.

Signs are that the 2022 election will bring the proportionality of the open-list system into greater play. The fact that more parties are registered to contest the national ballot is one indicator that there’s greater support for more diversity.

Rabuka’s split from SODELPA to form the People’s Alliance Party (PAP) has weakened the major opposition party. This is expected to free up votes to go to other parties since the divorce was acrimonious on both sides.

The NFP has recruited well and appears likely to recover some Indo-Fijian voters who defected massively to FijiFirst in 2014. Moreover, the NFP and the PAP confirmed very early a pre-election working arrangement to campaign together.

At this stage in the 2022 campaign, it seems probable that there will be four parties in parliament with room for a fifth. However, without public opinion polls, there’s little guidance as to how any of the parties are tracking in the lead-up to election day.

Some, like the All Peoples Party, whose manifesto includes a promise ‘to leave the United Nations and join the Commonwealth of Israel’, will not be in the mix it seems.

Advancing the women, peace and security agenda in the Pacific

On this day 22 years ago, the United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 1325 in recognition of the fact that women experience and are affected by conflict in different ways to men. Since then, a further nine resolutions relating to women, peace and security (WPS) have been adopted to promote gender equality and strengthen women’s participation, protection and rights in conflict situations and peacekeeping operations and to acknowledge the changing global context of peace and security. Together these 10 resolutions are known as the WPS agenda.

The WPS agenda goes beyond recognised situations of armed conflict. Its fundamental purpose is to ‘prevent insecurity and violence by harnessing the potentials of both women and men, and addressing structural gender inequality and discriminatory gender norms that are barriers to sustainable peace’. Increasingly, natural disasters, poverty, climate change, health epidemics and gender inequality are being viewed as drivers of insecurity and barriers to peacebuilding.

Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the Pacific. Consultations by the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D) earlier this year explained how Pacific people experience insecurity at multiple levels:

  • globally, as a warming planet presents ecological and civilisational threats
  • regionally, as players and relationships change
  • nationally, as countries respond to the effects of Covid-19, natural disasters, illegal fishing, transnational crime and other threats, compounded by gender inequality
  • locally, where community leaders and security agencies struggle to control violence and subnational conflicts in several countries. In some areas, law and order challenges and the proliferation of firearms mean that risks to individual safety and tribal and political violence are extremely real.

An expanded concept of security is articulated in the Pacific Islands Forum Boe Declaration.

Against this backdrop, progressing the WPS agenda in the Pacific is a crucial part of ensuring a peaceful and prosperous region. While a commitment to gender equality and increased participation of women in security and peacebuilding efforts is highlighted in key regional documents such as the 2050 Strategy for a Blue Pacific Continent and the 2012 Pacific Leaders Gender Equality Declaration, this is yet to translate into women’s increased political participation or reduced levels of violence against women. The Pacific has the lowest levels of women’s political representation in the world with just 6% of seats held by women. Rates of gender-based violence in the region are among the highest in the world.

Momentum for the WPS agenda is growing, with Pacific women pursuing policy change through civil society alliances and local women’s organisations. The nexus between climate change and conflict is better recognised, as well as the gendered impacts of both. The 2019 WPS Pacific summit recognised how the changing security environment in the Pacific demands a strengthened role of women in the peace and security sector.

For Australia, stability and peace in the Pacific goes to the heart of the country’s security, prosperity and national interest. Australia and Pacific island countries agree on a human security approach and the importance of women’s participation and leadership in peace, security and decision-making. However, more attention is needed to put this approach into action.

Putting the Boe Declaration into practice means implementing a human security approach that reaches out to subnational and non-state groups, women’s groups and youth groups to help create peaceful and cohesive societies. This includes supporting feminist approaches and highlighting the perspectives of women in decision-making through programs such as Pacific Women Lead that are led and staffed by Pacific women. A shared feminist foreign policy agenda should be developed for the region that centres on Indigenous people, approaches and worldviews; recognises the gendered drivers of insecurity; and applies locally owned solutions. Other imperatives are social inclusion— in particular, acknowledging the large youth populations in the Pacific and the need to respond to their economic and political imperatives—and a focus on the impact of extractive industry on human security.

Both Australian and Pacific leaders have long stressed their shared desire for peace and security. But what has maintained peace in the region in the past cannot be assumed to be sufficient in the face of the climate crisis and a deteriorating strategic environment. Australia needs to work harder with the Pacific to respond to drivers of instability to support a peaceful and secure region. This means developing a common framework for security that responds to the full set of peace and security challenges in the Pacific. The WPS agenda provides a framework for working towards a peaceful and prosperous region.

Australia’s South Pacific lessons for the US

‘A great deal of the history of our world is going to be written in the Indo-Pacific over the coming years and decades. And the Pacific Islands are a critical voice in shaping that future. And that’s why my administration has made it a priority to strengthen our partnership with your countries and with the Pacific Islands Forum.’

— President Joe Biden, US – Pacific Island Country Summit, 29 September 2022

As the United States re-engages with the South Pacific, it can learn from what the islands have taught Australia.

Over 50 years, Australia has built a vast store of hard-won experience in the modern South Pacific, seasoned by mistakes, misses and messes.

Before inspecting the misses, emphasise the positives. Australia is the top aid donor in the islands. Australia offers a security guarantee to the South Pacific, pledging to be the ‘principal security partner’. And Australia is a major economic partner.

The frame or policy floor Australia gives the South Pacific has such a long history it can be assumed as a given. The downside of this given is that those with the power to give can be resented both for the power and for the problems confronted in the giving. Australia efforts for the Pacific family don’t entitle it to dominate the family.

The US well understands the conundrum—the big power reaches for the big responsibilities, but has the biggest room for misses and offers a big target.

One lesson that often troubles Canberra is to retain and build on all its Pacific experience. In my writing about Australia and the South Pacific since the 1970s, an oft-used line is that the islands remember more about us than we remember about them. In similar vein, President Joe Biden’s speech to the Pacific summit lauded the ‘deep history’ the US and the islands share—a nod to how much America has neglected that history.

The US confronts multiples of Australia’s Gulliver problem—the differences of size, perspective and power in tip-toeing around Lilliput.

The islands’ long memory of Australia means that although they like us well enough, we’re often hard work. Our heart might be in the right place, but our attention wanders. Our intentions may be good, but we can be hard of hearing.

What Australia thinks of as straight talking can become loud noise that shuts out important cultural signals—sometimes Gulliver needs just to sit down and shut up. One of Australia’s finest in the South Pacific, the journalist Mary-Louise O’Callaghan, says the ability to sit in silence is the first thing any Australian has to learn.

Another experienced hand, Sandi Logan, laments sins of omission and commission along with a habit of tone-deaf diplomacy: ‘Our default “bang on the table”—our way or the highway—approach to negotiations with the Pacific has, to use an Australianism, bitten us badly on the bum.’

You can see why islanders both smile and sigh when the Australians arrive. The South Pacific pities our inability to sing and they worry about us as a post-Christian society. Generally, though, the Australians will turn up, and they can rely on us to pay for the beer.

Surveying that catalogue, the US can easily out-church Australia, and the Biden administration can claim more climate-change cred.

In terms of misses and messes, the climate war that has blasted through Australian politics for 15 years became the greatest difference between the islands and Canberra.

Pacific officials are equally scathing—in private—about the ‘Pacific solution’ for ‘boat people’ that Australia imposed on Nauru and agreed with Papua New Guinea. Politeness and pragmatism mean that the ‘Pacific solution’ is never publicly raised by the Pacific leaders. But it informs the judgement that Australia’s power can be turned to selfish purposes.

The starting point for the US is that simple piece of advice from Solomon Islands: ‘You have got to show up.’ The Washington summit is a response to that need and a symbol of intent. Now for the work to show that the US can join with friends to deliver for the islands, as promised by the new Partners in the Blue Pacific initiative.

Australia wants more from the US just as the islands need more, but that will ask more from Canberra, as the former diplomat James Batley comments:

Renewed interest in the region by friends and allies is of course welcome but presents another set of challenges. Working in concert, countries like Australia, New Zealand, the US, Japan, France and the UK all theoretically reinforce each other’s efforts. In practice this is not always the case, or not as much as one would hope. National systems can be very different, and the US in particular seems to find it difficult to work at the granular scale required in the Pacific.

Going granular to meet South Pacific requirements feeds into the grand strategy of the competition with China, the linkage the islands fear. Echoing Southeast Asia, the South Pacific pleads that it must not be forced to choose between China and the US.

What’s worse for the islands? Being overlooked, or being treated as geopolitical pawns? ‘Our greatest concern isn’t geopolitics—it’s climate change,’ Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama noted in his first meeting with Australia’s new Labor government.

Trouble is, the geopolitics can touch everything. See that in one of the major development efforts the US has already joined in the region.

In 2018, the US, Japan, Australia and New Zealand announced the Papua New Guinea Electrification Partnership to connect 70% of PNG’s population to electricity by 2030. As of 2020, only 15% of Papua New Guineans have access to the national grid.

With plenty of help from Chinese technology and projects, however, a lot of Papua New Guineans are doing it for themselves, with up to 60% of people getting a solar product.

How PNG will electrify has become another ‘point of competition’ with China—both ‘lucrative and conflict-ridden’. The Harvard International Review reports that ‘the nature of the foreign involvement in electrical development will largely influence whether China or Western nations can consolidate influence in PNG’. Power politics, indeed.

The Australian experience tells the US that it must turn up in the South Pacific and help deliver a better life for islanders. Biden’s summit speech embraced those imperatives. He didn’t once mention China, but he dwelt on geopolitics, devoting the final portion of his speech to the war in Ukraine and Russia’s flagrant ‘imperial ambitions’.

The leaders of the South Pacific heard that the US is back. But, ready or not, so is great-power competition.

The US comes back to the South Pacific

The first US summit with South Pacific leaders offers symbolism and the chance of future substance. The US announces, ‘We’re back!’

The summit on Wednesday and Thursday is a statement that the US can no longer leave Melanesia and Polynesia to Australia and New Zealand. That division of responsibilities worked well over 50 years. No more.

‘The United States now finds itself having to address long years of relative neglect,’ observes the former Australian diplomat Richard Maude. ‘US interests are largely defined by China’s gains.’

In this century, the global balance will be set in the Indo-Pacific, and that makes the South Pacific part of the great geostrategic struggle. At the summit, the South Pacific can sample the view and feel the weight that accompanies a new reality.

Setting up the Washington meeting with island leaders, the White House leaned on the symbolism:

The Summit will demonstrate the United States’ deep and enduring partnership with Pacific Island countries and the Pacific region that is underpinned by shared history, values, and people-to-people ties. The Summit will reflect our broadening and deepening cooperation on key issues such as climate change, pandemic response, economic recovery, maritime security, environmental protection, and advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific.

Rely on Washington to deliver great symbolism. The substance that must roll out in the months and years to come will need to reverse a long absence of mind.

The absence partly explains missteps on the initial guest list for the summit: no invites for Cook Islands, Niue, New Caledonia and French Polynesia, despite all being members of the Pacific Islands Forum.

In the same way, the State Department could this month summon up more than 50 examples of ‘new US assistance and ongoing engagement with the Pacific Islands as part of the Indo-Pacific Strategy’, but the only two references to the Pacific Islands Forum in the list were to its fisheries agency. One of the skills Washington will have to pick up is the ability to speak PIF.

See PIF-speak at its best in the superb act of imagination and region-building that is the Blue Pacific Continent. The US embraced this with the creation of the Partners in the Blue Pacific (founding members: Australia Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom) based on three principles: deliver results for the Pacific more effectively and efficiently, bolster Pacific regionalism, and expand opportunities for cooperation between the Pacific and the world.

Ahead of the Washington summit, the foreign ministers from the Partners in the Blue Pacific met in New York last week to lay out six lines of effort—climate change; technology and connectivity; the ocean and the environment; people; resources and economic development; and political leadership and regionalism—and to welcome Germany and Canada as prospective members.

The Blue Pacific partnership will offer a larger working of the wry line by US Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell that Washington intends to be a ‘better deputy sheriff’ to Australia and New Zealand in the South Pacific. A more apt image is that the US intends to join a bigger and better posse. Cowboy language always works a treat for Washington, although not so much in PIF-speak.

Whatever the imagery, the substance must be a US that’s constantly present in the South Pacific and delivers for the islands’ people. Hear that from the doyen of Solomon Islands journalism, Dorothy Wickham, in her New York Times op-ed. She offers a simple lesson for the US as it vies with China for influence across the Pacific:

You have got to show up. And the United States has not.

We get it. The Solomon Islands is small, remote and economically insignificant. But if all countries like us are dismissed as such, China will pick us off one by one with its promises of business projects and development aid.

For decades, we identified with the West, a legacy forged when the United States, Australia and their allies halted Japan’s imperial advance during World War II in the Battle of Guadalcanal. But that was long ago. There is a creeping sense today that we are being ignored, if not forgotten. So who can blame us if we open the door to new friends who can help with our needs?

And those needs are great.

So, the US moves to re-establish an embassy in Solomon Islands, after closing it in 1993. The Honiara return was announced by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during a speech in Suva—the first visit to Fiji by a US secretary of state since 1985. Spot a pattern?

The ‘we’re back’ message ran through the address to the PIF summit in July by Vice President Kamala Harris, promising a new chapter of partnership: ‘We recognize that in recent years, the Pacific Islands may not have received the diplomatic attention and support that you deserve. So today I am here to tell you directly: we are going to change that.’

Harris announced new US embassies in Tonga and Kiribati, the first US envoy to the forum, and the return of Peace Corps volunteers to the South Pacific.

Expect more on those lines from President Joe Biden this week. As ever, Washington will put on a great show.

While enjoying the pomp and attention, island leaders might note that other parts of the world are also getting a ‘we’re back’ embrace. The new US strategy towards sub-Saharan Africa released by the White House last month has similar language about reframing American policy to respond to ‘growing foreign activity and influence’.

Island leaders will have to find the positives in the US turning its eyes towards the southern hemisphere, whatever the regional context. They’ve had decades to understand that Washington is ever a world unto itself.

This week, though, Washington world meets the world of the islands, because much has changed in the world.

The chance for much more of substance from the US in the South Pacific will be the promise from a well-polished summit display of what Washington has to offer.

Australia and the Pacific: now for the hard part

Australia’s new government has made a strong start in the Pacific islands since its election in May. Early visits by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to the Pacific Islands Forum, and bilateral visits by Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Minister for International Development and the Pacific Pat Conroy, have laid the foundation for strong personal connections over coming years.

The government has actively sought to contrast itself with its predecessor in its approach to the region. At a rhetorical level, there has been a strong emphasis on ‘listening’, which has been well received. And the government has come to power with new policies that will be welcomed. These include, inter alia, promises of additional aid, a new domestic climate-change commitment and a new program for permanent migration from the Pacific.

Truth be told, though, the Albanese government’s approach is likely to represent an evolution, not a revolution. Indeed, in many areas we should expect to see strong continuity from the Scott Morrison era. We are yet to see a strategic-level statement of the government’s intent in the Pacific along the lines of the 2017 foreign policy white paper; it would be especially good to know if the Albanese government sees continued integration between Australia and the Pacific as a primary policy objective.

Even so, speeches and official statements to date are a reminder that a change in tone isn’t necessarily the same thing as a change in strategic direction. In practical terms, the aid and defence cooperation programs—with some tweaks—will remain key policy tools in pursuit of Australia’s objectives; support for Pacific regional institutions will remain a priority; and labour mobility will continue as a growing element in economic integration and people-to-people links.

The Albanese government may not use the Morrison-era term ‘Pacific step-up’, but it has wholeheartedly adopted Morrison’s use of the term ‘Pacific family’ to describe Australia’s relations with its Pacific neighbours. Indeed, in her inaugural message to the Pacific—issued the day she was sworn in—Wong used the phrase ‘Pacific family’ no less than five times in a two-minute video.

Incidentally, the results of Australia’s 2021 census suggest that there’s now slightly more substance to the language of ‘family’; the proportion of the Australian population claiming Pacific islands ancestry has doubled since 2006, albeit off a very low base and still only representing just over 1% of the total.

If climate change represents the key point of contrast between Australia’s new government and its predecessor, the question of China in the Pacific is the area of strongest continuity. The government faces serious challenges on both fronts.

Wong’s description of the China – Solomon Islands security agreement as ‘the worst foreign policy blunder in the Pacific since the end of World War II’ sets a high bar for the government’s management of the China challenge in coming years. It is helpful, from Australia’s point of view, that China seems to have overplayed its hand in the Pacific over recent months, not only in the Solomons agreement but also in its unsuccessful attempt to corral the region into signing up to a ‘common development vision’. The communiqué issued by Pacific Islands Forum leaders at their meeting in July, which stated in part that ‘leaders reaffirmed the concept of regionalism and a family first approach to peace and security’, was an encouraging sign of what might be an emerging regional consensus on how better to manage regional security cooperation. But it is hardly definitive.

It is of course wishful thinking to hope that China will desist from attempts to entrench itself in the region, and to disrupt traditional relationships. Nor, in the case of Solomon Islands, should the government draw any comfort from Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s repeated reassurances that his relationship with China is entirely benign. The government will need to find ways of building on the momentum of the positive Pacific Islands Forum outcomes at both a bilateral level and a regional level.

The climate-change challenge is of a somewhat different order. While Pacific leaders prefer Australia’s new domestic climate targets to those of the previous government, a gap remains between Australia’s position and the aspirations of Pacific island countries. Pacific views on this question align most closely with those of the Australian Greens. Only time will tell how much this gap will remain an irritant in relations. Beyond adjusting Australia’s domestic settings, there’s work to be done to ensure that Australia’s aid program in the Pacific reflects the government’s aspirations on climate change. Given the multiple demands on the aid program, that may not be easy. The government also is likely to face increasing calls to develop policy in anticipation of climate-induced migration.

Development challenges remain serious across the region, including because several tourism-dependent countries are suffering from particularly bad Covid-19 hangovers. Australia’s aid program is not a panacea, but these are issues Australia cannot afford to ignore. With democratic practice and accountability (an open media, free and fair elections, the rule of law, independent judiciaries) weakening in several countries, the government may need to confront the extent to which values matter in our relationships in the region.

Problems of governance and effective institutions remain particularly acute in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. The former faces an existential challenge over the future of Bougainville, which voted 97.7% in favour of independence in late 2019. It’s hard to envisage any national government in Port Moresby agreeing to a complete separation, just as it’s hard to envisage any Australian government breaking ranks with Port Moresby on this question. The problem is wicked: Bougainville’s independence would risk removing one source of instability in the immediate region only to replace it with another. Quite apart from its impact on Papua New Guinea itself, an independent Bougainville could seriously exacerbate entrenched tensions between the national and provincial governments in neighbouring Solomon Islands. And regardless of the fate of Bougainville, Solomon Islands is likely to experience further turmoil.

The broader policy challenge for the Australian government is to integrate aid and non-aid instruments so that they are mutually reinforcing. The latter include defence cooperation (which isn’t counted as aid), expanding labour mobility and migration policies, and soft-power initiatives including a credible ‘First Nations diplomacy’—whatever that might look like in practice.

Renewed interest in the region by friends and allies is of course welcome but presents another set of challenges. Working in concert, countries like Australia, New Zealand, the US, Japan, France and the UK all theoretically reinforce each other’s efforts. In practice this is not always the case, or not as much as one would hope. National systems can be very different, and the US in particular seems to find it difficult to work at the granular scale required in the Pacific. The recently announced Partners in the Blue Pacific initiative—combining Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the UK and the US—commits its members to work better together in responding to Pacific priorities, but it remains unclear whether this is anything more than well-meaning rhetoric.

Morrison set a historically high bar for prime ministerial engagement in the Pacific, and it paid dividends: we don’t know yet whether Albanese will continue that pattern. Wong and Conroy will do a lot of good together, but they can go only so far in fostering relationships with heads of government. Within the public service, the government will soon be making some key appointments, not least new Australian high commissioners to Solomon Islands and to Fiji. Both are challenging and influential positions. In Canberra, the indefatigable Ewen McDonald has presided over the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Office of the Pacific since its establishment in early 2019; while there’s no time limit on this position, he can’t be expected to stay in the role indefinitely.

The Albanese government is enjoying something of a honeymoon in the Pacific, and deservedly so. But it’s unlikely to last. Formidable challenges loom, and the inbuilt structural imbalance between Australia and its smaller neighbours will inevitably give rise to tensions and disappointments. That’s not the end of the world. Indeed, historically it’s par for the course. So far, so good: now for the hard part.

The ABC’s role in Australia’s Pacific reset

The Australian government is moving fast to reset relations with Australia’s Pacific partners, including a larger Pacific role for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Detailed research undertaken late last year for the ABC in our six key Pacific markets (Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu and Tonga) confirms that the ABC today is used, valued and highly trusted by Pacific audiences. This result has been made possible through the ABC’s multi-channel approach, and by thoughtful programming made with Pacific partners and designed specifically for Pacific audiences.

In terms of reach, access to AM/FM radio today is significantly higher than access to shortwave across the Pacific, and our research confirms that the most effective way today to engage audiences in urban and peri-urban regions is through FM radio transmission. ABC Radio Australia currently has 13 transmitters across the Pacific. ABC Australia (TV) broadcasts to 16 Pacific island nations and territories under more than 25 distribution deals.

Meanwhile, a transition to digital and social media in the Pacific is also well underway. Smartphone use is high in urban areas, and increasingly, the ABC connects to its Pacific audiences via Facebook and through our digital offerings.

Our multi-channel approach is paying off. Total Pacific user interactions late last year with the ABC, whether via the ABC website, the ABC app or social media channels, were reportedly higher than usage and interactions with any other international provider, including the BBC, CNN, RNZ and CGTN.

In the PNG market, the research showed that more than half of all respondents had either watched ABC Australia (TV), listened to ABC Radio Australia or accessed the ABC online in the second half of 2021. That’s a big jump in audience numbers within just a few years.

The Australian government has plans to review the merits of restoring shortwave radio and the ABC will be contributing to that process. Part of that will include understanding how many people still have access to shortwave radios and the interest or need to use them as an information source.

In terms of content, the ABC’s unique advantage lies in its commitment to, and relationship with, Pacific audiences. We aim to be local. Our Asia–Pacific newsroom is the only one of its kind in Australia, with 50 journalists and producers telling the stories that matter to Indo-Pacific audiences, told in Bahasa Indonesia, Tok Pisin and Chinese as well as English.

Our flagship daily current affairs program, Pacific Beat on ABC Radio Australia, features interviews with leaders and newsmakers, attracting audiences of all ages and genders. Then there’s Sistas, Let’s Talk (conversations with inspirational Pacific women), Wantok (Pacific-focused news and current affairs in Tok Pisin, Solomon Islands pidgin and Bislama), Island Music (reggae, dancehall and R’n’B with a focus on the Pacific region) and Pacific Playtime (for kids and families across the region).

A shared love of sport offers opportunities to strengthen social ties across the Pacific, and particularly to engage young people. ABC Radio Australia takes the men’s and women’s National Rugby League competitions to lovers of the sport across the region. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade supports the ABC to produce the only pan-Pacific sport-focused TV show, That Pacific Sports Show, and a fresh and humorous sport-oriented radio show and podcast, Can You Be More Pacific?, hosted by Australian and Pacific sportspeople.

This commitment to genuine partnership with the Pacific is paying off. The proportion of respondents in Pacific markets last year who valued the ABC across all its channels as a ‘trusted source of news and information’ was comparable to that in Australia, at a very high 75%.

It’s also worth noting that all the content we produce for Pacific audiences is available domestically in Australia, helping to maintain regional ties and build greater Australian awareness about our Pacific neighbours.

The ABC’s International Development Unit, supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and donors like USAID and the United Nations, works with partners across the region to enhance journalism skills and media capacity. The ABC also provides skills development training for specific challenges like election coverage and emergency broadcasting, plus support for media associations, like the Media Association of the Solomon Islands, which has been active in campaigning for press access and freedom in the Solomons.

The government has committed to increase funding to the ABC’s international program by $8 million a year over the next four years. The focal points of this strategy are enhanced regional transmission, more content production, and increased media capacity training for Pacific partners. This approach has been informed by the ABC’s own proposals.

Over recent years, various ideas have been floated for a new administrative process or organisation to ‘manage’ Australia’s media presence in the Pacific. That would add unnecessary bureaucracy.

There’s a lot more the ABC could do in and for the Pacific. The ABC today has the strategy, systems and relationships in the Pacific to enable rapid expansion, given funding support. And our research confirms there is a demand for it.