Australia and the Pacific

Penny Wong, Australia’s new Foreign Minister, has quickly headed to the Pacific Island region inside her first week in the role. Wong’s intentions appear twofold: a counterbalance to the eight-nation tour of the Pacific by China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, also occurring this week, and to

Australia has long claimed a special relationship with Pacific island countries as their largest regional trade, investment, security and development partner. But these same countries have been frustrated and disappointed by Australia’s failure to address the issue which poses the gravest single

Son Excellence l’Ambassadeur, Your return to Canberra is welcome. Rebuilding ties with Australia after the understandable hurt caused by the “stab in the back” will take time. But, if I may be so bold as to suggest, it is time to move on to the more pressing matter of New Caledonia, its

Last week Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom announced a new security partnership (AUKUS) and, in the process, put an end to the Attack class submarine program negotiated by France and Australia in 2016. After calling the decision “a stab in the back”, French Foreign Minister

Book review: Richard Marles, Tides That Bind: Australia In The Pacific (Monash University Publishing, 2021) There’s much to like in Richard Marles’ new essay on Australia’s relations with the Pacific, Tides That Bind. Above all is the author’s passion for his subject. Those who

Baby BRIs It is now almost three years since Prime Minister Scott Morrison muscled up to China’s infrastructure building Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with $3 billion in varied funding to create an Australian alternative mostly in the Pacific. So, it was notable to see that when the Council of

When US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Pacific Island leaders about the dangers of “economic coercion” and “retribution” in an address on 2 June, he echoed a familiar view. By virtue of their “smallness” and “remoteness” Pacific Island states are presumed to be vulnerable

The recent stoush between the Australian government and social media giant Facebook, with its eight-day-long ban of local news from its platform, had results that were not confined to Australia. Facebook’s block of Australian news also highlighted the vulnerability of information security in the

The recent move to cut billions of pounds from the United Kingdom’s foreign aid budget was long feared by advocates. As result, one minister has flagged her resignation, and others have made threats to cross the floor. The reduction of the UK’s aid spend from 0.7% to 0.5% of gross national

Australia plans to spend a lot more on defence to confront what Prime Minister Scott Morrison says will be “a post-COVID world that is poorer, that is more dangerous, and that is more disorderly”. A chorus of voices have responded that Australian foreign policy risks becoming unbalanced, with

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has a problem. Australia’s Pacific Island neighbours urgently want industrialised economies to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions and make policy commitments beyond existing pledges. Senior ministers in the Morrison government, however, do not accept the latest

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has copped flak for claiming that Australia regarded the Pacific countries as vuvale (a Fijian term for family). He was under fire again following the Pacific Island leaders meeting in Tuvalu last month, for emphasising Australia’s aid contributions to the region and

The so-called Quad group of Indo-Pacific maritime democracies – Australia, India, Japan, and the United States – is a valuable grouping, although it is still underutilised in many ways. One of the most effective ways that these countries could work together to enhance maritime security in the

The Pacific has undergone a foreign policy renaissance of sorts, with politicians and policymakers falling over themselves to proclaim their commitment to the region and its vital importance to Australia. Leaders of both major parties have been increasingly speaking about the region, while starting

A refreshing wave of Pacific-mania is sweeping Canberra. There’s new postings, a new Office of the Pacific, a high profile visit from the prime minister to the region, and two major announcements on Pacific infrastructure: the creation of the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for

The aid industry is complex. Dozens of bilateral donors, hundreds of multilateral agencies, and thousands of non-governmental organisations litter the development landscape in all corners of the globe. In aid jargon, this is known as “fragmentation”. Conventional aid-effectiveness literature

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has now established an Office of the Pacific, a measure foreshadowed in 2018 as part of Australia’s Pacific “step up”. Ewen McDonald, formerly High Commissioner in Wellington and a Deputy Secretary in DFAT, has been appointed head of the Office.