Aid & Development

Back to the future The Morrison government gave the development aid sector an unexpected surprise with a budget spending increase mostly in the Pacific, just as the latest crisis in Solomon Islands was occurring. There is still plenty of grumbling that this – perhaps parting gift given the

With the postwar global order facing its most profound set of challenges in almost 80 years, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has highlighted  the importance of “using all the elements of statecraft to shape the world we want to see”. Labor’s Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Penny Wong, appears

When the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai volcano erupted in January, Tongans living abroad, in a diaspora of well over 100,000 people, were cut off from their loved ones after the explosion severed critical data cables to the Pacific nation. Diplomats and officials confronted the challenge of

As Australian personnel patrolled the streets of Honiara, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare this month successfully fended off an attempt to oust him. The failed vote of no confidence came after violent anti-government protests that followed two years of tensions between Sogavare and

Under construction After Build Back Better World (B3W), the Blue Dot Network and the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP), the latest entrant on the acronym-strewn path to a renovated region is disarmingly bland. Infrastructure ++ is the leitmotif from a quietly

As Australia emerges from its local state-based lockdowns – largely due to its high vaccination rates – many low-income countries in Southeast Asia and Africa remain at risk of further outbreaks of Covid-19. Despite a sluggish start to its vaccination campaign, Australia has achieved double-dose

Through thickly vegetated jungle paths, teams of doctors hike for hours to reach Fiji’s most remote villages. Travelling ahead of them, as reported in The Guardian recently, are packhorses carrying ice-chests filled with AstraZeneca vaccines.  Fiji is no

In November 2018 Port Moresby was a sea of red in the build up to the APEC leader’s summit. Chinese flags covered every road of Papua New Guinea’s capital while “China aid” was emblazoned – literally – on every traffic light. With China’s President tacking an official two-day state

Follow the money Forget Extinction Rebellion, carbon border adjustment mechanisms and doctors’ wives in inner city Liberal seats. When Prime Minister Scott Morrison locked onto the existential message in this week’s United Nations climate change report it seems to have been about how foreign

The announcement of the Build Back Better World (BW3) infrastructure and investment plan following the G7 summit last month has been greeted with scepticism by some who question its ability to compete with China’s financial outlays for its much-vaunted Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). What

More than a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, how much outside financial support is the Pacific receiving and how far does this go in helping the region weather the crisis? This time last year in The Interpreter we took stock of the provision of Covid-19 related external financial assistance to the

In his first overseas trip as US President, Joe Biden has flagged he intends to rally European allies in a critical “battle between democracies and autocracies”, and “make it clear to Putin and to China that Europe and the United States are tight”. Biden is not the only one in

Southeast Asian governments are aware of the intersecting challenges of water security and disaster governance. The importance member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations place on this dual imperative is reflected in the Kuala Lumpur Declaration on ASEAN 2025: Forging Ahead

In Australia’s budget last year, delayed until October responding to the unprecedented global health and economic crisis brought on by Covid-19, the Coalition government increased spending on foreign aid from $4 billion to $4.417 billion for the financial year 2020–21. The release this week of

There is a consensus among Southeast Asian governments on the need for multi-hazard disaster governance approaches. It is reflected in ASEAN member states’ efforts to strengthen their collective capacity to tackle the growing interconnection of risks and the cascading impacts and transboundary

Two worlds When the US and Japan kicked off a bid to take control of the next generation of mobile technology during a summit of their leaders last week, they also pushed the global debate over supply chains into a new orbit. A key part of US President Joe Biden’s and Japan’s Prime

Outside observers have all but given up hope that China will engage in meaningful state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform. There is a pervasive sense that rather than shrinking SOEs, China’s leaders are committed to increasing their prominence within the economy. Foreign perceptions of Chinese SOEs

Heavy rains from 29 March to 4 April caused floods and landslides in many parts of Timor-Leste, claiming more than 40 lives, displacing thousands of people and destroying critical infrastructure such as roads and bridges. Dili, the capital, has been the worst affected, as more than 12 hours of

“Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” – this recognition was a central focus of the 1996 World Food Summit. Today, Covid-

Pacific nations have mostly escaped the heavy death toll and hospital bed shortages faced by Western countries battling Covid-19, but the pandemic has dealt a disproportionately severe blow to the region’s economic ambitions. But with the rollout of vaccines and economic recovery in sight in China

Past global economic downturns have usually had a knock-on effect for military budgets, resulting in lower defence spending. After the global financial crisis led to the contraction of the world GDP in 2009, global military spending only recovered in 2015. With the World Bank predicting that the