Tag Archive for: Pacific Islands

Australia should look back to go forward in the Pacific

Recent events in the Pacific have left Australian officials and analysts searching for policy options that don’t simply double down on Australia’s existing approach to the region. Australia’s comparative foreign policy advantage in the region must be something more than the depth of our pockets.

ASPI’s Michael Shoebridge has proposed one response: moving beyond the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme. He suggests that that might look something like the Australia – New Zealand Closer Economic Relations agreement, coupled with the visa-free status enjoyed by (most) kiwis. Shoebridge’s suggestion is gaining traction, including outside of the defence and foreign policy commentariat.

The renewed focus on trade and labour mobility arrangements with our near neighbours, and indeed the closeness with which great-power manoeuvring is now being watched in the Pacific, bring to mind earlier phases of Australian policy in the region. There was a time when Australian statehood was seriously discussed for the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. There’s also a long, often disturbing history of Pacific islands labour in Australia.

These oft-forgotten periods are worth revisiting for more than history’s sake. Numerous Australian governments have already canvassed questions about open borders and labour mobility, the intricacies of political association and more.

Those discussions usefully point to the tricky politics involved in immigration and foreign policy reform that still resonate. It’s as important as ever to be cognisant of our colonial past in the Pacific, which continues to shape our contemporary regional relationships.

Papua New Guinea gained self-government in 1973 and full independence in 1975. Prior to those steps, the country was administered by Australia as a territory, comprising the Territory of Papua (transferred from Britain in 1906) and the United Nations trust territory of New Guinea (originally seized from Germany in 1914). People born in Papua prior to 1975 were Australian citizens, though they didn’t enjoy the full travel and residency rights of citizenship and most lost them upon independence. Those born in New Guinea were not citizens at all. In practice, few Papuan Australians travelled to the mainland.

Well into the 1960s there remained vast uncertainty about the territory’s path towards decolonisation. In 1965–66 there was serious, if short-lived, discussion about incorporating the territory as an Australian state.

In the same period, Ian Downs, a former senior colonial official and member of the territory’s house of assembly, argued: ‘We haven’t got a choice; we have got to find a way to bring the Territory into close association with Australia.’ Even setting aside statehood, one senior official pressed the question: ‘What will be the migration laws into PNG and Australia?’ Paul Barnes, the minister responsible, noted that ‘self-government does not preclude association’. The discussion was serious enough within bureaucratic circles that a senior official in the Attorney-General’s Department canvassed the constitutional feasibility of a transition from territory to state.

The official post-war history of the territory (written, as it happens, by Downs) records that a 1967 Roy Morgan poll found that a third of Australians would accept New Guinea as an Australian state, with another third wanting it to remain under Australian control. Officials pointed out that the Australian people were unlikely to accept the implications of full statehood for the territory, and that independence was the only internationally acceptable position—and the one ultimately chosen by the people of PNG.

The history of South Sea Islander labour in the Australian sugar and cotton industries is also instructive. Between 1863 and 1904, an estimated 55,000 to 62,500 islanders were brought to Queensland and New South Wales. Many were kidnapped in the process known as ‘blackbirding’ and worked under brutal conditions, though from the 1880s many came without such overt coercion. While some returned home after completing their contracts, many were deported and others died in Australia. Those that remained in Australia in the first half of the 20th century faced a framework of discriminatory labour laws designed to ‘protect’ white workers.

So, what do we know that might guide us now?

First, the politics of immigration with our near neighbours has always been fraught. Domestic labour market politics is complex enough, and any immigration policy reform quickly gets implicated in that potential minefield. Recent immigration settings have targeted highly skilled labour; arrangements with our Pacific neighbours target different demographics. Race is also latent in any discussion on this subject, and Pacific islander Australians report significant levels of discrimination.

Second, if the government does decide to pursue reforms, the policy work will need to be top-notch and integrated across government from the start. For instance, would Pacific citizens (and potentially their families) under new and far more generous visa or residency arrangements have access to Australian social services and medical care, and on what terms? On what basis might they access training and education through our school, TAFE and university systems? Investment here would be important to ensure that isolated changes to the immigration architecture don’t produce an exploited underclass, as infamous migrant worker schemes have done elsewhere. Done right, that training and education could also ultimately improve the dividend paid to Pacific nations.

This applies to how Australia administers immigration, too. The government’s immigration function now sits within the Department of Home Affairs, positioning that arguably privileges the security dimension of immigration decisions. To maximise the benefit of a radically changed relationship between Australia and Pacific countries, the benefits of the contribution of these temporary, long-term or permanent migrants would need to take primacy over security concerns, without wholly dispensing with them. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade manages the PALM scheme in conjunction with a provider called the Pacific Labour Facility. Getting the administration of a much broader policy right would be immensely important.

And third, the agency of our Pacific neighbours should never be dismissed or discounted. What do they want? We have already been reminded of this in a very uncomfortable way over past months. Any new scheme needs to respect the interests of these states as well as those of the individuals who might partake in it. This consideration is as relevant to potential trade and investment reforms as it is to labour mobility arrangements.

The PALM scheme is widely seen as a solid success, as were its predecessors, though there have been noteworthy blemishes related to labour exploitation. There is certainly a base here upon which something greater could be built.

As Shoebridge acknowledged, ‘Developing, negotiating and delivering such an initiative will take all the skills [Foreign Minister Penny] Wong possesses and the buy-in of South Pacific leaders and people, along with the wider cabinet, parliament and public here in Australia.’ There’s a lot wrapped up in this set of challenges, and our historical experience might be a good guide to some of the potential pitfalls.

Culture as a foundation for development in the Pacific

During the Covid-19 pandemic there have been extraordinary signs of resilience in Pacific island states. This is despite the economic hardship caused by over two years of border closures in some countries.

Most employees in Fiji’s biggest industry, tourism, lost their jobs and struggled for months on end without any form of wage subsidy. It was a similar story in Samoa, Vanuatu and some other tourism-dependent countries. Yet we heard no reports of mass hunger, or widespread civic unrest, in the face of such challenges. Why is that?

One major reason is the fact that Pacific communities have been able to turn to traditional culture and customary systems to support livelihoods and wellbeing during the pandemic. Despite this success, the benefits of these practices and traditions for Pacific development are not widely appreciated.

For example, the customary ownership of land has long been seen as a constraint to economic development that impairs investment. Yet customary land ownership allows Pacific communities to allocate, manage and develop land as they see fit, and in accordance with their customary and spiritual beliefs.

Many development partners and groups have attempted to abolish these systems, as they feel it places constraints on what they see as the land’s best use. However, in the face of dispossession caused by the pandemic, customary tenure has literally been a lifesaver. It has proven to be the basis for survival, in terms of the provision of food.

In interviews we have conducted over the past two years, nearly every individual talked about ‘returning to the land and sea’ as a source of livelihood. As one individual in Samoa explained, ‘For some things, I’ve had to relearn skills that have not been used for years, skills in planting and especially in fishing.’

‘I am very happy with the plantation of mixed crops I have now and feeling confident we will be ok moving forward in these times of uncertainty,’ they added.

Contrary to popular belief, customary land has also been the basis for new forms of entrepreneurialism. Many Pacific peoples utilised their land to set up businesses associated with selling cash crops or excess produce, as well as adding value through selling cooked foods. Thus, customary tenure, which ensures that many Pacific peoples can access land on which to grow food, is a very useful tool for locally driven economic development.

It is often asserted that the collective nature of Pacific island cultures doesn’t foster the individualism required to be a successful entrepreneur. In fact, a lot of the innovation and entrepreneurialism that has been on show during the pandemic is founded on customary systems and cultural connections. Many, for example, have called upon cultural and community relationships to set up online trading and fundraising systems.

There were also signs of cultural revival during the pandemic, which saw people reconnecting with their extended families or clans, their traditions and their land.

This revival had significant benefits for social and mental wellbeing. One waiter, who lost his job at a busy resort, noted: ‘We’ve had so much more time together. It is good to be out in the open and getting dirty … the quiet in the plantation allows us to relax while working. [There is] less stress and this feels natural.’

The transmission of cultural knowledge during the pandemic—such as uncles teaching nephews how to fish and women practising traditional crafts—also helped to support people’s wellbeing.

Despite all odds, many people expressed an amazing sense of resilience to the great economic loss they were experiencing. This was, in part, thanks to supportive cultural and family systems.

‘When the pandemic struck, and I lost my job at the hotel, my family were supporting me with money. Now, I have opened my small canteen, sell food, and put on barbeques every Friday,’ one Fijian respondent said.

‘I think it’s good because we know our family are there to help us, but also we can find new means to earn, such as small side businesses.’

Pacific leaders, who have worked hard to protect customary tenure in the face of external pressure from development banks that fail to appreciate its value, should be applauded. Conversely, development partners need to act with humility and ensure that an appreciation of culture and customary systems is central to their post-pandemic support for Pacific countries.

In the face of increasing uncertainty, development must complement the Pacific way and uplift the mana of Pacific peoples—not seek to replace it.

Australia’s bipartisan promise to South Pacific people

China makes ambitious offers to South Pacific states. Australia’s great counter-offer is to South Pacific people.

The people dimension must define Australia’s effort for the islands.

The rebuttal to the charge that Australia is driven merely by a China security panic is the thinking about human security for the islands.

Canberra’s pondering on helping Pacific people promises much in the diplomatic duel with China.

As well as its own policy platform, Anthony Albanese’s government inherits an extensive set of proposals for Australia to do much more. The inheritance is a bipartisan effort by the federal parliament.

During the previous term, the parliament’s Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade produced a series of linked reports:

The last of these reports tied together the many strands of three years of work with these thoughts:

Australia’s relationships with the nations of the Pacific are of enduring importance. They are underpinned by a long shared history, common values, strong ties between peoples, and a natural empathy.

At a time of intensifying geopolitical competition and growing global challenges, especially that of climate change, fostering and strengthening these relationships has assumed a new importance and urgency.

The four reports are the effort of a Canberra awakened from its long Pacific stupor, seeking new thoughts and wanting to do better.

The all-party effort by the foreign affairs committee meshes with the promise Labor made during the election campaign to ‘build a strong Pacific family’. Whatever else of Scott Morrison’s inheritance is discarded, his ‘Pacific family’ coin grows in value and is now Labor language.

Back in 2019, I hailed ScoMo’s family language as ‘goddamn genius’. The response from the University of Tasmania’s Richard Herr was the caution that, ‘While the inclusiveness of the family concept might play well at a rhetorical level … the content of “family values” is very much in the eye of the beholder … Whose norms are to prevail as the Pacific family’s values?’ All true, as to be expected from the wisdom of Herr, with his decades of work in the islands. The test will be deeds to match the words.

Canberra’s vision of the Pacific will be built by what’s done (and how it’s done) not the warmth of the chat. Australia must deliver for the people it embraces as family.

Yet the family imagining matters—action follows the shapes offered by the understanding.

Family is a continuity amid all the changes in the shift from the Morrison to the Albanese government. Indeed, ScoMo got a tacit nod in Albanese’s policy statement on ‘Labor’s plan to build a stronger Pacific family’. As it should, this will be Pacific policy with lots of moving parts. The new government has pledged to:

The new thought coming into view is that Australia offers the Pacific family more than the chance to be seasonal workers. The step to longer-term visas pushes at the doors of easier access and the right to live in Australia.

The parliamentary report on relationships emphasised the need to scale up the labour program to ‘better support career development, and provide pathways for permanent residency’, and recommended creating ‘a dedicated Pacific component within Australia’s permanent migration’.

Getting more Pacific people into Australia will be warmly welcomed by the region. Where the discussion becomes complicated is Australia’s effort to lift the region by holding the region closer.

The foreign affairs committee wants more work on ‘deeper integration’ of the islands. It calls for ‘bold ideas for longer term Pacific region “deep integration” including the creation of a significant compact of free association with countries in the Pacific island region—in particular microstates most vulnerable to climate change instability’.

I’ve been writing about political and economic community with the islands for decades, often bemoaning Canberra’s inability to think new thoughts. And I’ve got plenty of old scar tissue where I’ve been kicked by islanders for being paternalistic or neocolonialist.

The Gulliver dilemma is that Australia, as the giant, must always tiptoe around the South Pacific, just as Gulliver stepped carefully around the fictional South Seas land of Lilliput.

Australia’s talk of integration follows the logic of family; island scepticism centres on what that means for their identities and sovereignty.

When rubbing my paternalist/colonialist bruises, I often respond that deep economic and security integration with Australia hasn’t done much damage to New Zealand’s identity and sovereignty. In the Pacific family, the Kiwi always offers help to the Kangaroo.

The family discussion is happening. Canberra has a lot of fresh thinking to draw on. Now it must do better for the family.

Australia’s policing relationships a vital asset as China spruiks authoritarianism in the Pacific

While many in Canberra will view the failure of the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to secure a regional Pacific agreement as a relief, Australia’s new government will have to deal with a steadily increasing number of bilateral security pacts between China and Pacific island countries. A recently leaked document has given the world a glimpse of the CCP’s ambitions to rapidly expand its influence in the Pacific. China’s deal focuses on developing closer relationships with the Pacific on security matters, including training police. Of course, this has many policymakers across the region worried. However, the CCP’s confidence in chequebook diplomacy has meant it’s overlooked Australia’s ‘thin blue line’ connection to the rule of law across the Pacific.

Policing in the Pacific is no easy task. Pacific islands police forces contend with large geographical areas, heterogeneous societies, violent crime, corruption and political instability. In many cases, police fill a hybrid role that merges law enforcement with national security.

The region’s police forces were established under colonial rule, in most cases to control local populations. The police of the day were, for the most part, focused on dominating communities and being accountable to the regime and not the people. This sort of policing has strong similarities to the role and accountability of China’s police today.

In the years that followed independence, Pacific island police were often not at the forefront of democratisation. Some were actively involved in conflict and the suppression of democracy. This created deep distrust between the people and the police in many Pacific nations, a legacy that has been hard to shift.

Over recent decades, democratic policing across the region has advanced in leaps and bounds. This is not an argument that there are no remnants of the old way remaining, but that law enforcement in these countries has undergone substantial reform. This reform has resulted in a greater focus on democratic policing that prioritises protecting people rather than controlling them. Australian and New Zealand police have been on the frontline of this reform.

The Australian law enforcement community has deep and memorable multigenerational connections to policing in the Pacific, not just as donors but as partners. Sure, we buy equipment, but the relationship is about more than the security of the state.

For more than a decade, Australian Federal Police worked with police from the region in the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands. Now senior police from Papua New Guinea to Fiji and Solomon Islands to Vanuatu have deep connections with their counterparts in Australia and New Zealand.

Several Australian police officers have served, and continue to serve, as police commissioners in the region. This is because Australian police officers are trusted by many Pacific communities.

Australian police work with their fellow officers from across the region at the Pacific Transnational Crime Coordination Centre in Fiji, sharing information and intelligence daily. This has been the case for decades and those involved know Australia is there to stay.

Australian and New Zealand officers have for decades trained, and trained with, officers from across the Pacific. In doing so we have moved past the old colonial policing days.

Australian police have deep and multigenerational connections to the Pacific islands. Countries can’t buy these relationships, they must be earned over time and built on a firm foundation of shared experience and trust. There is also a shared understanding of the role of the police, which can’t be faked.

Pacific island police, like their counterparts in Australia, understand that to be effective, they must be accountable to the law and they must be responsible to a democratic government. To maintain public trust, they’ve learnt that they must be transparent. Just as important, they prioritise protecting people’s safety and rights.

While Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has been seeking to sell China’s security deal to the region, he has arguably failed to recognise the fundamental incongruence between what the Pacific wants and what he is offering.

China’s police focus on protecting the CCP, not the Chinese people. They are not transparent in their decision-making and nor do they give priority to safety and rights.

Pacific people are familiar with regime policing and all its vices, and their governments have, over decades, overwhelmingly rejected it.

Australia needs to double down on its thin blue line investment in the Pacific. If China is to build police academies, let’s offer the trainers, curriculums and mentors to ensure that the region’s police reform continues towards democratic values and not authoritarian ones.

China’s maritime deal with Solomon Islands hints at dual-use facilities

A reading of some of the headlines on China’s new security deal with Solomon Islands might give the impression that a Chinese naval base with assets pointed straight at Australia is a fait accompli and that other Pacific dominos are just waiting to fall. Public anxiety on the issue has risen sharply—unsurprising given that the deal has been caught up in the dynamics of the federal election campaign—with a recent Sydney Morning Herald survey finding that 70% of voters are concerned about it.

The exact terms of the final, signed security agreement haven’t been made public. And Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has assured regional nations including Australia and the US that there will be no Chinese military base in the Solomons and that Australia remains his country’s security partner of choice.

At the same time, the strong US and Australian reactions to the deal, as well as the experience of being visited by US National Security Council Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell, prompted an incensed Sogavare to declare in the Solomon Islands parliament that Australia’s concerns were ‘hysterical’.

He went on to describe Campbell’s statement that the US would ‘respond accordingly’ if ‘steps are taken to establish a de facto permanent military presence, power-projection capabilities, or a military installation’ as a ‘tacit warning of military intervention’ and said that his country had been ‘threatened with invasion’.

But what we do know is that the open-ended nature of the leaked draft agreement allows for a Chinese military presence in Solomon Islands, which is a first for the South Pacific. Beijing has security agreements with Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, Cook Islands and Papua New Guinea, but thus far they have been confined to training and equipment provision.

The region will now be watching closely to see if and how militarisation proceeds, and there’s a spectrum of possibilities here.

So far China has provided riot-control training to Solomon Islands police. But the language in the security agreement could allow for a more permanent military or paramilitary presence to safeguard Chinese investment projects, or dual-use ports and airfields that could be used for People’s Liberation Army logistics and replenishment.

A draft maritime cooperation agreement that was leaked on 8 May may give a much clearer picture of China’s intentions. On the face of it, the agreement is dazzling in economic terms, promising deep-sea fishing bases, oil and gas development and undersea mining ventures, wharves, submarine optical cables, shipbuilding and repair, as well as solar, wind and tidal clean-energy projects.

If realised, this would massively expand China’s investment in the Solomons, likely making Beijing its biggest economic partner. China is already Solomon Islands’ biggest trading partner but has been largely absent in terms of overseas development aid, two-thirds of which is provided by Australia at roughly $250 million per year.

But can Sogavare balance the complexities of having mutually antagonistic economic and security partners?

As analysts have pointed out, much of this proposed infrastructure would be dual use. Combined with China’s promised airfield upgrade and the security agreement, these facilities could potentially allow for the kind of PLA power projection that Washington and Canberra have deemed unacceptable, without reaching the level of a standard naval base. Both countries will find it difficult to object to wharves and roads, and to identify the point at which an ‘appropriate’ response might be triggered.

Honiara is certainly betting that Canberra won’t baulk at continuing to provide the capacity-building development aid that will help the Solomon Islands government facilitate this economic package. But given that national budget documents from 2019 onwards also include mentions of China contributing to donor-funded budget lines, there seems to be some hedging here too.

Other Pacific island countries have expressed uneasiness about the potential for this deal to exacerbate great-power political competition in the region. How would Sogavare manage an Australian and Chinese security presence operating in close proximity, in a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief scenario, for example, or if Australia was again asked to come in to help manage rioting that targeted a Chinese economic project with some kind of Chinese security presence in situ?

The region might also have concerns about the highly extractive nature of the proposed projects—with the exception of the energy package—which raises questions about sustainability. A big, permanent Chinese deep-sea fishing fleet based in the Solomons might worry other Pacific island nations with fisheries zones that are hard to police.

And in a region where climate security is existential, the development of the oil and gas deposits that Solomon Islands believes exist in the Shortland Basin, in Guadalcanal’s Iron Bottom Sound and between Isabel and Western provinces is likely to draw fire—particularly since Sogavare has reportedly cited climate change as a motivation for his security deal with China.

For China, dual-use facilities would probably make much more sense than a traditional naval base, which would be a more expensive and overtly aggressive move. In an era of submarine and over-the-horizon missile warfare, a base would need multi-layered air defence for survivability in a conflict. It would also require large numbers of PLA troops to be stationed there, announcing Beijing’s military ambitions in the region in no uncertain terms, which could push neighbouring countries into closer security relationships with China’s strategic rivals.

The dual-use option would combine flexibility and deniability and be useful in keeping the US and Australia guessing about China’s intentions, while also raising the spectre of a military reach towards Australia. All this forces Australia and the US to spend their bandwidth and resources on trying to limit further political and economic influence-building by China in the Solomons and elsewhere in the region.

Australia’s thin red line on China in the Solomons

The timing of China’s announcement that it had sealed its controversial security agreement with Solomon Islands is significant, but not for the reason claimed by Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews. Beijing was more concerned that America could upset its diplomatic coup in the Solomons than it was about influencing the result of Australia’s upcoming election.

Hence the need to pre-empt the possibility that a high-level American delegation including Kurt Campbell, the Indo-Pacific coordinator for the US National Security Council, would arrive in time to attempt to prevent completion of the agreement.

Although the Campbell mission was unsuccessful in stopping or reversing finalisation of the agreement, America’s shared concern over its implications for Indo-Pacific security has contributed to adding a dark shade of khaki to the Australian election campaign.

Both the government and the opposition agree that the Sino-Solomons security agreement has seriously altered Australia’s security environment in a way that is resonating with voters.

Shadow foreign minister Penny Wong has led the opposition’s charge in laying the blame on the government. Labelling the pact ‘the worst Australian foreign policy blunder in the Pacific since the end of World War II’, she has made the security agreement a central plank in Labor’s campaign.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has resorted to some electoral chest-thumping to push back. Drawing a ‘red line’ in the sands of Guadalcanal, Morrison has asserted that he will take action if China attempts to build a naval base in the Solomons.

Unfortunately for campaign messaging, his threat appears to be more muscular than the US is prepared to back publicly. Asked about American support, US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink said only that the US would ‘respond accordingly’.

Australia and the US have softened the prospect of imposing some unspecified sanction any time soon. Without visible cynicism, both countries have publicly accepted Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s assurances that he would not allow such a base under the security agreement he signed with Beijing.

Drawing a red line in the midst of a national campaign may have been intended to deliver an electorally popular shirtfront to China, but its practical implementation raises many questions.

First and foremost, if any action is to be taken, would it be against China as the author of the agreement or the Solomons as the host of the base?

Although the precise terms of the agreement’s final form have not been made public, former prime minister and Sogavare confidant Danny Philip has confirmed that it is very close to the draft leaked a few weeks earlier.

The draft provided the precursor conditions for a base with references to ship visits and stopovers, military personnel and armed forces to justify concerns of legitimate pre-positioning of Chinese military stores in the Solomons.

At what stage in a gradual evolution towards a base would the Morrison red line be crossed? For example, would a temporary secure precinct, perhaps staffed by Chinese police or military forces to protect resupply stores, be enough?

There are other possible red lines that might Morrison or a successor government might want to draw that would have little to do with building a base.

Ethnic tensions and social disharmony are still visibly raw in the Solomons. The security agreement has accentuated some of those tensions. Would a request for Chinese armed police to protect a government refusing to go to an election be sufficient to provoke a significant intervention? Again, the question would be asked, against which side?

This could create a Grenada-style scenario where Australian peacekeepers in the Solomons under the 2017 security treaty might be challenged by Chinese peacekeepers invited under the Sino-Solomons security agreement to support different sides in escalating social disorder.

Sogavare’s desire to postpone the general election due in 2023 is already providing tinder for possible political conflict. Any attempt to do this without due process would be a democratic red line for any Australian government.

However, this is precisely why some, such as Solomon Islander Joseph Foukona, believe Sogavare wanted Chinese protection that would be more responsive to him.

The next Solomons election will be fraught regardless of when it occurs. The main opposition party has expressed an intention to renounce the security pact and even switch diplomatic recognition back to Taipei. Such a significant policy change is unlikely to go smoothly if the opposition wins the next election.

When Anote Tong won the Kiribati presidency in 2003, he switched diplomatic recognition from Beijing to Taipei. He claimed that several Chinese diplomats remained in the country for months after their mission closed working with the opposition to reverse his decision.

Arguably, drawing red lines is especially problematic during an election campaign, when the cold war hyperbole around the Sino-Solomons security agreement encourages insensitive language and over-egged promises to mobilise Australian voters.

The talk of a red line may be intended largely as fodder for domestic electoral consumption to show strength, but it has had international repercussions, some of which are likely to leave lasting scars.

An angry Sogavare has used strong language to attack Australia over its AUKUS agreement and defended the extraordinary extraterritoriality in the Sino-Solomons agreement by claiming that Australia had refused to protect Chinese infrastructure during the November 2021 riots, something the Australian government denies.

Lending credence to the possibility that China wanted the Solomons agreement to draw Australia away from the South China Sea area, the Chinese Communist Party’s Global Times labelled Morrison’s red line ‘ironic’ in light of what it claims is Australia’s willingness to stir up trouble for China in the Indo-Pacific, especially with regard to Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Beyond thought bubbles: how to fix Australia’s Pacific policy

Australia’s Pacific security problem is simple: we’re not thinking big enough about our role and we have convinced ourselves that we’re incapable of moving quickly to counter China.

Canberra policymaking has dumbed down. Note how big policy announcements are made: decisions to double the size of our submarine fleet, stage a Pacific step-up, restart the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and set up the AUKUS defence technology partnership—these are political judgement calls, often made in haste and in some desperation.

The thought bubble is handed to the public service, struggling with realities such as the absence of people and money to shape policy; procurement rules forcing endless delays for probity and value-for-money checks; and bothersome details such as the absence of a nuclear power industry, say, or the presence of other countries with their own ideas.

Policy creativity has been banished from the public service. Risk reduction is the prized skill in a world where elegantly managing Australia’s Pacific decline is what the smart brains settle for.

Australia needs more than a whiff of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s fighting spirit. Recall his response to US offers of evacuation: ‘The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.’

Australia doesn’t get to ride away from its Pacific backyard, although US National Security Council Indo-Pacific affairs coordinator Kurt Campbell has done a powerful good in telling Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare that there are limits to American tolerance of Beijing’s bad behaviour edging forward under the guise of Honiara’s ‘sovereign choices’.

There is a lot of good work being done under the Pacific step-up. The policy shows that Scott Morrison understands the problem China presents to the region, but we are being crippled by slow processes and a lack of imagination.

The prime minister’s plan for a joint initiative at the Papua New Guinea Defence Force’s Lombrum Naval Base on Manus Island, announced in November 2018, is a case in point.

The intent was to ‘deepen our maritime security cooperation, including through increased Australian ship visits’. Preliminary work to rebuild the base didn’t start until mid-2020, then focused on refurbishing a chapel and putting up security fencing. It took a further year to start main works in June 2021. Never enthusiastic about a naval presence at Manus, Defence adroitly ensured that ‘operational facilities’ (a wharf) would be large enough only for PNG’s ‘Guardian-class patrol boats and small boat operations’. We are three and a half years down the track on the Manus plan, with little to show for it.

In January, Morrison announced that Australia would provide loan financing worth $850 million to upgrade a range of commercial ports in PNG. That’s a brilliant idea, but let’s put it into context—there is hardly a port or airport in the Pacific that isn’t being built, refurbished or run by Chinese companies.

This includes the new Momote International Airport that services Manus Island, built by the China Harbour Engineering Corporation and opened on Monday by PNG Prime Minister James Marape.

Labor’s proposals for development assistance, worker visas, extra fisheries patrols, and short-wave and TV broadcasting into the region all make sense, although the ABC shouldn’t run the latter. But this is the same piecemeal approach, flinging money at sometimes worthy thought bubbles. Where’s the strategy?

What should Australia do? First, we need to convey to Pacific islands leaders the danger China presents. It’s true that island governments prefer to focus on climate change, but they can’t wish away strategic reality.

As the functioning members of ANZUS, Australia and the US could invoke Article VIII of the treaty ‘to maintain a consultative relationship with States, Regional Organisations, Associations of States or other authorities in the Pacific Area in a position to further the purposes of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of that Area’. An ANZUS – Pacific islands consultation group should be created at the prime ministerial level. That should be supported by a larger, constant Australian and US military presence throughout the region.

Second, after the election a Pacific affairs minister should be in cabinet at least for that term of government. China didn’t stop its leaders travelling to the region during Covid-19. Australia did. Now there’s a need to rebuild ties at the most senior levels.

The Pacific affairs minister needs to tone down the language about the ‘Pacific family’ because Pacific islanders know when they’re being schmoozed. Instead let’s focus on intelligence briefings about what is really happening in the region. We need to listen more carefully to Pacific leaders and we need to ask for a respectful hearing about our own security concerns.

Most important, the minister will need top cover from the prime minister to be able to cut through Canberra process. We must not accept that it takes four years to build a small wharf.

Third, let’s work with Pacific islands leaders to form a response force, comprising units from Australia, the militaries from PNG, Tonga and Fiji, and police and agencies from the other Pacific islands countries. The Pacific response force could focus on disaster relief and mitigation, regional stabilisation and peacekeeping. Naturally, Australia will end up paying for much of this, but in so doing we are paying for our own security as well as that of the region.

Let’s say this will cost about $5 billion annually on top of all other Pacific-related activities. That amounts to only about 41 days of current defence spending. It’s worth the price to keep the Chinese military out of the region.

Australia has grown used to getting security on the cheap, thanks largely to a benevolent US. But we are in fantasy land to imagine that 2.1% of GDP will cover our defence needs in the future.

Blame game over Solomons–China deal must give way to clear-eyed strategy    

The signing of the security pact between China and Solomons Islands represents one of the gravest Australian diplomatic and intelligence failures in more than half a decade. This failure didn’t just happen, nor is it the result of a particular leader or party.

Australians, of course, want to know what happened. Understandably, there will be many commentators and academics who will point the finger of blame now and into the future. However, it’s far more critical that Australia’s next government provide a clear picture of what it will do about this development.

The origins of this failure can be found in arrogance and hubris that extends across more than 20 years. For two decades, Australia was busy fighting the war on terrorism. That war and global ambitions of being a middle power drew our attention away from the Pacific.

Various governments over this time assumed that the ‘Pacific family’ bond was so strong that they could return to the region and start where they left off when and if they needed. They were wrong.

Personal relationships matter in the Pacific. And we neglected them. Despite the efforts of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Australian Federal Police in Solomon Islands, it was apparent to those in the Pacific that there was little concern from Australia about their future.

Australians must understand that Solomon Islands is a sovereign state like all of our Pacific neighbours. Australia cannot force its will on the region, nor can it afford financially or ethically to undertake chequebook democracy in the Pacific. If change is to come, then it must be done using statecraft.

Both major parties need to spend less time finger-pointing on the issue during the election. They need to do more to make a clear statement on what they will do to address this situation if they were to take government.

The next government will need to take a deep, hard and honest look at the state of our relationships with the Pacific nations. This examination needs to cast aside goodwill statements about the Pacific family. It needs to consider what each Pacific nation thinks of the status of our relationship. In doing so, Australia will need to accept that it has, at times, overstepped the bounds and attempted to exercise paternalistic influence. At the same time, it has failed to meet its obligations as a middle power on issues like climate change.

The next government will also need to examine our relationship with Solomons Islands. Australia’s 14-year commitment to the Regional Assistance Mission Solomon Islands from 2003 to 2017 left a deep and indelible grassroots connection between the two nations. This relationship cannot be bought and is a strong foundation for new policy measures to bring the two countries together. It’s not too late for Australia and Solomon Islands to work together to prevent this security pact from destabilising the region.

There’s no room for short-term thinking, policy on the run, simplistic announcements or media grabs. Our next government must have a clear strategy that draws upon economic, social and cultural means to exercise smart power in the region. This strategy must focus on the kind of engagement that enlarges multilateralism in the Pacific. Effective Pacific multilateralism will prevent the Chinese Communist Party from making the kinds of bilateral agreements that offer short-term benefits with long-term instability.

Finally, the potential for China to establish a naval base or facility in Solomon Islands requires new thinking about defence. The 2016 defence white paper is now long in the tooth. Arguably, the 2020 defence update has also been overtaken by events. Neither party seems interested in embarking on another defence white paper or strategic update. Perhaps they’re right, given the speed of change in our strategic environment.

At the very least, it seems pertinent that the next government undertake a force posture and structure review. This kind of review identifies defence needs in terms of capabilities, readiness, structure and location. There will need to be new thinking about the Australian Defence Force’s strategic strike capabilities, including missiles.

This review should consider whether Cairns and Townsville have become as strategically important as Darwin. Perhaps these cities will need to become much more than garrison and port cities for the ADF. They could well become forward operating bases for the defence of Australia. If so, the Department of Defence will have to make further infrastructure investments to harden ports and airfields from attack and ensure they are fit for purpose.

Opposition leader says Solomon Islanders don’t want deal with China

There is strong opposition in Solomon Islands to Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s security deal with China, says the nation’s opposition leader, Matthew Wale.

Wale tells The Strategist those opposed to the deal include members of Sogavare’s government.

Most Solomon Islanders regard Australia with great fondness and remember well its sacrifices for their country, he says. They do not want any sort of security arrangement with China, and they’ll be very concerned about this one being signed.

‘It’s clear to me that the vast majority of ordinary Solomon islanders do not want a base here, or even this deal. A majority do not want China here at all in the first place,’ says Wale.

He says that was made very clear during the violence targeting Chinese interests in last year’s riots that saw Australian police and military personnel sent in to help keep the peace. That violence was criminal and opportunistic, Wale says. ‘With or without China, we don’t want Chinese businesses being targeted.

‘We share similar concerns as Australia in terms of the consequences of this for the region. Australia’s been a very reliable partner to the Solomons and the rest of the region over many years.’

Wale says the only way the deal can be reversed now is if there’s a change of government in the Solomons or a change of prime minister.

And could that happen? ‘Oh, absolutely it can happen,’ he says. Those opposed to the deal include some of Sogavare’s ministers.

‘We are definitely going to make it an election issue.’

Sogavare could be removed through a motion of no confidence, but that did not succeed when the opposition moved such a motion in November.

His government might succeed in postponing next year’s elections, Wale says. If it doesn’t postpone them, parliament should be dissolved in about May 2023 and elections would have to be held within four months.

Wale says the China deal should have been headed off in the middle of 2021. ‘We’ve known for some time that this was in the works, and Australia ought to have known. I had expected that Australia would’ve done something to nip it in the bud.’

Australia is the biggest donor to the Solomons and addresses fundamental issues and development needs, Wale says. ‘We appreciate that very much but, given what’s happening, I think Australia needs to be a little bit more creative and be deliberate about building its own capital here, social–political capital, and getting some respect for it and not be expected to be an ATM machine—you push the right buttons and cash comes out.’

He says Australia could have made its views clear while negotiating its aid to the Solomons when it could exert significant influence. Exploratory discussions between China and Sogavare were already underway then. ‘Australia could have flexed its muscle some, and I think it could have affected it, or at the very least make him rethink and postpone it a year or two, that could allow greater public discourse over it.’

So, what can Australia do now?

Wale says the upcoming Pacific Games are a big deal for Sogavare and some of his ministers, and they want to be able to deliver them. Much of the infrastructure such as stadiums has been funded by China, but considerable work is being paid for by Australia and New Zealand. Australia could say it wants to review that spending.

If Australia, the United States and other aid donors coordinate their actions, that could carry significant collective weight, he says. It could make Sogavare think twice.

But Wale concedes that if China does want to establish a significant military presence in Solomon Islands it might see that strategic development as such an important prize that it could be prepared to cover the cost of aid lost from other nations such as Australia. ‘That is true, yes.’

He says the lack of transparency around the China–Solomons agreement means Australia could quite legitimately impose some form of financial sanctions on those involved. Brisbane is the gateway to the rest of the world for Solomon Islanders, says Wale.

‘If there were sanctions, of course that’s going to be extreme, but it is a tool that could be used, and the lack of transparency around this agreement deserves to be treated with the worst-case calculations.’

Fiji’s long trek to democracy and the quiet heroism of Fiji’s journalists

Fiji will soon vote on Frank Bainimarama, the military supremo who slowly morphed into an elected leader.

The man who has driven and dominated Fiji’s politics since 2000 had urgent heart surgery in Australia in mid-January and returned to Suva at the start of March.

The campaign period for Fiji’s general election starts on 26 April, which just happens to be the day before Bainimarama’s 68th birthday. He can call for the poll to be held between July and January, though November is most likely.

For Fiji’s democracy and for Frank, this looms as a moment of judgement.

Bainimarama’s Fiji First Party faces the distinct danger that the voters will force it to form a coalition government. Or even dispatch one former coup leader, Bainimarama, in favour of the other former coup leader, Sitiveni Rabuka, and his new People’s Alliance Party.

A mark of Fiji’s strange trek over the past 35 years is that the two main political leaders are former defence chiefs who both seized power in coups. And both then took off their uniforms to become democratic leaders; I contemplated using qualifying quote marks, to call them ‘democratic’ leaders, but that would be a disservice to Fiji, if not to Rabuka and Bainirmarama.

Last week there was bizarre sparring about who did the better coup. Rabuka’s coup was racist; mine was not, claimed Bainimarama: ‘[It] was to bring to the people of Fiji an even playing field.’

Fiji is, at least, able to talk openly about the way the military has warped its politics.

These days, Freedom House calls Fiji ‘partly free’, judging that the ‘repressive climate’ that followed Bainimarama’s 2006 coup ‘has eased since democratic elections were held in 2014 and 2018. However, the ruling party frequently interferes with opposition activities, the judiciary is subject to political influence, and military and police brutality is a significant problem.’

The strength of the democratic norm in the South Pacific is demonstrated by the way Fiji keeps dragging itself back to democracy.

In that effort over the 35 years since Rabuka’s two coups in 1987, one institution has been on the front line and under constant pressure—Fiji’s media.

As a journalist, I pay tribute to the quiet heroism of Fiji’s journalists and their determined professionalism. Over decades, these wonderful hacks—many of them quite young—have faced dangers and difficulties unknown anywhere else in the region. (‘Hack’, by the way, is a badge of praise for the reporters and editors who serve the daily disciplines of the craft.)

Often, Fiji’s hacks have had to bend and bow and dodge and shade the strength of their daily effort to serve truth with the facts. But they’ve never broken or surrendered. The strength of the democracy Fiji has today is partly due to the heroism of the hacks, facing intimidation backed by the threat of jail.

The pressure was on from the start when Rabuka seized power in 1987, closing newspapers and putting a military censor into Radio Fiji.

One of the few light moments of the heavy-handed censorship came when Commonwealth leaders ejected Fiji from the Commonwealth in 1987. That news came through early in the morning and the army officer on duty couldn’t raise any of his superiors to get a ruling on how the information should be censored. He thus refused to approve or reject any copy on the Commonwealth decision.

The editors preparing Radio Fiji’s main morning bulletin came up with a one-off solution to slide by censorship guidelines. They abandoned their own bulletin, subject to censorship, and instead took a live feed of the hourly bulletin broadcast from Melbourne by Radio Australia. So, the news that Fiji had been cast out of the Commonwealth was announced to Fiji by the ABC News theme and conveyed by the ABC’s reporter at the Vancouver summit, Graham World.

In the 2000 crisis, by contrast, there was no censorship for the domestic media and no attempt by the Ministry of Information to control international reporting. Fiji’s media was one of the few institutions that grew in stature during the 56-day siege of the parliament building, when rebel special forces troops held parliamentarians hostage, including Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and his ministers.

Fiji suffered two coups in 2000—one that failed and one that succeeded. The foiled coup was that of the rogue special forces troops who seized the parliament and held hostages. Fiji’s army was at war with itself, ‘hobbled by internal divisions and provincial loyalties’. To unite Fiji’s army against its own comrades in the parliament, the head of the military, Commodore Bainimarama, deposed the governor-general, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, proclaimed military rule and eventually installed his own pick as prime minister, completing the overthrow of Chaudhry. Later that year, Bainimarama barely managed to escape assassination by his own troops during a failed mutiny.

When, in 2006, Bainimarama threw out the prime minister he’d put in place with another coup, the regime hammer kept crunching on the hacks. Censorship was back for a time. Publishers were expelled. Journalists were threatened and harassed. Bainimarama aped some of the New Order approaches of Indonesia’s Suharto regime in deploying military officers throughout the government and tugging the leash on the media.

Under Bainimarama’s rule, journalism is still a legally fraught craft. The 2010 Media Industry Development Decree set up an authority to control the content of any Fijian media that is ‘against the public interest or order’, is ‘against the national interest’ or ‘creates communal discord’. These broadly defined offences carry fines of up to $100,000 and two years’ jail. Journalists have also been charged with sedition, with up to seven years in jail.

As Fiji journalists admit, the result is a culture of self-censorship. The reality of the legal threat was emphasised by charges of sedition against three editors and an opinion writer from the Fiji Times group; the ‘not guilty’ finding by the High Court in 2018 scored a welcome win for Fijian journalism.

The World Press Freedom Index, published by Reporters Without Borders, ranks Fiji at 55th out of 180 countries; back in 2014, the ranking was as low as 107 out of 180. The journalism group calls Fiji’s ‘vaguely-worded’ media laws ‘draconian’.

The general secretary of the Fijian Media Association, Stanley Simpson, told The Strategist that journalism still carries scars. Reporters and editors were conscious of the need for care, he said, but today Fiji’s media had a ‘relatively free environment’.

The election task, Simpson said, is for journalists to assert themselves to provide accurate and balanced reporting and analysis: ‘The big challenge is to provide all parties with a voice, equally, and at the same time inform the people with relevant information they need to make an informed decision.’

The editor-in-chief of the Fiji Times, Fred Wesley, told The Strategist the media will have a critical role in what shapes as a critical year: ‘We all should take responsibility as journalists to rise up to the challenge to get that information, to empower people, to allow people to make informed decisions.’

Fiji’s journalists spent many years sailing close to the wind and battling turbulent tides, but they never lost sight of the star that guides the craft: to serve truth with the facts. The hacks have done much to restore Fiji’s democracy.