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Published daily by the Lowy Institute

  • 10 Nov 2025
    • Climate change
    • United Nations
    • Pacific Islands
    • Fiji
    • Papua New Guinea
    • Vanuatu

    Pacific Islands: Without literacy, climate resilience is nigh on impossible

    Serena Sasingian
    Strategic competition has left gaping holes in regional health and education goals. The parameters need to be reset.
  • 3 Nov 2025
    • Australia
    • Diplomacy
    • Pacific Islands

    The Pacific Olympics legacy Australia needs to build for Brisbane 2032

    David Peedom
    From medal moments to tourism corridors, a Pacific-focused sports diplomacy strategy could transform regional ties.
  • 31 Oct 2025
    • Australia
    • Defence & Security
    • Pacific Islands
    • Solomon Islands

    Solomon Islands can have a military, but it shouldn’t need one

    Blake Johnson
    If Pacific security initiatives are done right, the region’s non-conventional threats can be better addressed.
  • 30 Oct 2025
    • Defence & Security
    • Maritime Security
    • International law
    • Pacific Islands

    Sunken ships, rising risks: Pacific shipwrecks and maritime security

    Sheridan Ward
    Securing the region goes well beyond military bases and undersea surveillance.
  • 27 Oct 2025
    • Aid & Development
    • Climate change
    • Pacific Islands

    Pacific development: The essential local ingredient for sustainability

    Jack Whelan
    Donor agencies are discovering what should have been obvious: Pacific islanders are best placed to solve Pacific problems.
  • 27 Oct 2025
    • Pacific Islands
    • Bougainville
    • Papua New Guinea

    Bougainville’s independence deadline exposes peace agreement gaps

    Kevin Pullen
    With 2027 looming, unfulfilled provisions and post-referendum delays risk undermining 30 years of peace.
  • 20 Oct 2025
    • Australia
    • Defence & Security
    • Pacific Islands
    • Papua New Guinea

    The Pukpuk Treaty is a defence deal PNG’s youth can prosper from

    Serena Sasingian
    Structured opportunity for PNG’s population matters more than geopolitical debates about this partnership.
  • 9 Oct 2025
    • Australia
    • Defence & Security
    • Pacific Islands
    • Papua New Guinea

    PNG should ratify the Pukpuk Treaty and move beyond a self-limiting mantra of “friends to all”

    Oliver Nobetau
    “The righteous choose their friends carefully, but the way of the wicked leads them astray.” Proverbs 12:26
  • 7 Oct 2025
    • Australia
    • Defence & Security
    • Pacific Islands
    • Papua New Guinea

    The Pukpuk Treaty is about keeping China at bay, not military strength

    Sam Roggeveen
    The pact with PNG aims to preserve Australia’s regional standing by making Chinese military access harder.
  • 2 Oct 2025
    • Australia
    • Defence & Security
    • Pacific Islands
    • Fiji
    • Papua New Guinea
    • Tonga

    Delays on the Pukpuk treaty with PNG were Australian missteps, not failures

    Blake Johnson
    The Papua New Guinea agreement represents a landmark not just for its signatories but the region as a whole.
  • 2 Oct 2025
    • Australia
    • Climate change
    • International law
    • Pacific Islands

    Applying a national security lens to the International Court’s climate change opinion

    Danielle Ireland-Piper
    When islands sink, do nations disappear? The Court says no.
  • 19 Sep 2025
    • Aid & Development
    • Australia
    • Global Issues
    • Pacific Islands
    • Papua New Guinea

    Global health at risk: Why Australia’s leadership matters

    Jennifer Tierney
    Washington’s aid freeze threatens decades of progress against infectious diseases across Australia’s neighbourhood.
  • 17 Sep 2025
    • Australia
    • Defence & Security
    • Pacific Islands
    • Papua New Guinea

    Australia-PNG: When mutual defence becomes mutual embarrassment

    Mihai Sora
    It was always going to be a hurdle for PNG to change its non-aligned foreign policy.
  • 17 Sep 2025
    • Climate change
    • Pacific Islands

    Is the Green Climate Fund starting to deliver for the Pacific?

    Georgia Hammersley
    Early signs of progress are emerging, but a drive for scale risks sidelining the region.
  • 16 Sep 2025
    • Australia
    • Climate change
    • Pacific Islands
    • Fiji
    • Nauru
    • Samoa
    • Tonga
    • Tuvalu

    Reality bites: Why the global dengue epidemic matters to Australia

    Philippa Nicole Barr
    The mosquito-borne disease is more than a health emergency – it symbolises the injustice of climate change.
  • 8 Sep 2025
    • Pacific Islands

    The Pacific’s diplomatic retreat from great power competition

    Hansley Gumbaketi
    Regional leaders are excluding outside powers as they seek consensus on a way to safeguard both unity and diversity.
  • 4 Sep 2025
    • Pacific Islands

    A test of unity: Can the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ meeting keep the family together

    Mihai Sora
    Pacific leaders will gather in Honiara for big declarations on security and climate, but regional fragmentation poses a pressing challenge.
  • 2 Sep 2025
    • Asean
    • Indonesia
    • Pacific Islands
    • Papua New Guinea

    Indonesia’s move to welcome PNG into ASEAN is a win-win

    Akhmad Hanan
    Expanding the Southeast Asian bloc is good for the region, and will ensure Jakarta’s leadership position.
  • 14 Aug 2025
    • Pacific Islands
    • New Caledonia

    New Caledonia peace plan stumbles at the first hurdle

    Denise Fisher
    The main pro-independence coalition has rejected an accord struck in Paris.
  • 14 Aug 2025
    • Pacific Islands
    • Papua New Guinea

    At 50, Papua New Guinea deserves a more complete story

    Peter Raynes
    One of ancient roots, contemporary challenges and enduring spirit.
  • 13 Aug 2025
    • Australia
    • Pacific Islands
    • Vanuatu

    Australia pays premium price for Pacific partnership

    Mihai Sora
    Vanuatu has just shown how small states can rewrite the rules – and the cheques – on their own terms.
  • 12 Aug 2025
    • Australia
    • Pacific Islands
    • Papua New Guinea

    Tok Pisin: Speaking PNG’s main language is more than cultural courtesy

    Bernard Yegiora
    From NRL teams to university exchanges, shared language holds the key to Australia's Pacific relationship success.
  • 8 Aug 2025
    • Australia
    • Pacific Islands
    • New Zealand

    Australia and New Zealand’s Pacific approach diverges

    Hansley Gumbaketi
    A test of regional unity is shaping – potentially to the benefit of all.
  • 4 Aug 2025
    • Australia
    • Pacific Islands

    Multicultural but monolingual: Australia’s Pacific disconnect

    Sheridan Ward
    If Australia wants to truly join the Pacific family, speaking the languages would help.
  • 29 Jul 2025
    • France
    • Pacific Islands
    • New Caledonia

    New Caledonia has more guns than almost anywhere else on Earth. What does that mean for self-governance dreams?

    Sheridan Ward
    Political unrest and weak registration systems have created a firearms problem that may undermine the territory’s political future.
  • 16 Jul 2025
    • France
    • Pacific Islands
    • New Caledonia

    New Caledonia’s Bougival Accord offers path beyond independence deadlock

    Denise Fisher
    Voters in the French territory must now decide at a 2026 referendum whether to accept dual citizenship and statehood within France.
  • 9 Jul 2025
    • Australia
    • Migration
    • Pacific Islands

    Visa free Pacific-Australia travel is the next logical step in the relationship

    Edward Cavanough
    And is even more important as Trump dials down American engagement in the region.
  • 7 Jul 2025
    • China
    • Australia
    • Diplomacy
    • Pacific Islands

    League versus union: Australia’s rugby diplomacy needs a game plan

    Hugh Piper
    Does Australia really want to fund rival codes against each other in Pacific competition with Beijing?
  • 25 Jun 2025
    • China
    • Defence & Security
    • Maritime Security
    • Pacific Islands
    • United States

    China’s South Pacific foothold and how to prevent it

    Henry Yep
    A wargame scenario imagines a United States hemmed in and exposed during a regional conflict. It’s all too real.
  • 23 Jun 2025
    • Climate change
    • Pacific Islands

    Lost at sea: How Tuvalu’s plight holds lessons for the future

    Sheridan Ward
    The archipelagic Pacific nation has called for an international sea level rise treaty, and here's what that looks like.
  • 17 Jun 2025
    • Australia
    • Pacific Islands
    • Public Opinion

    Australia overtakes China in the Pacific as America vacates the lane

    Mihai Sora
    Public perceptions of influence measured in the latest Lowy Institute Poll see Australia surge ahead as the “permanent contest” unfolds.
  • 12 Jun 2025
    • Australia
    • Pacific Islands
    • Papua New Guinea

    Australia-PNG relations at 50: Pride, politics and the price of partnership

    Mihai Sora
    What if more locals decide that Australia is rewarding bad behaviour at the top of PNG’s politics?
  • 4 Jun 2025
    • Aid & Development
    • China
    • Pacific Islands
    • Papua New Guinea

    How Papua New Guinea is rewriting Pacific education partnerships with China and more

    Bernard Yegiora
    District-led programs are driving a new demand for technical degrees and signalling a new agency in foreign relations.
  • 29 May 2025
    • Intelligence and security
    • Global Issues
    • Pacific Islands
    • Fiji

    From transit hub to drug market: Criminal syndicates transform Pacific threats

    Jose Sousa-Santos
    Regional leaders have been slow to grasp the infiltration of Pacific security agencies by criminal organisations.
  • 28 May 2025
    • Australia
    • Climate change
    • Pacific Islands

    Technology can power Australia to lead climate diplomacy with Pacific family

    Stephen Minas , Christian Lohberger
    Hosting a global climate conference in partnership with the Pacific will need domestic climate ambition and stronger international support.
  • 20 May 2025
    • Pacific Islands
    • New Caledonia

    A strategic reset for New Caledonia: France offers quasi-sovereignty, and a looming census may reveal Indigenous majority

    Denise Fisher
    It’s said demographics is destiny, as Australia’s closest eastern neighbour is finding out.
  • 19 May 2025
    • Australia
    • Pacific Islands
    • Fiji
    • Nauru
    • New Zealand
    • Papua New Guinea
    • Solomon Islands
    • Tuvalu
    • Vanuatu

    After listening, what’s Australia’s next move in the Pacific?

    Mihai Sora
    Pacific governments will ultimately judge Australia on concrete actions rather than friendly gestures.
  • 15 May 2025
    • Aid & Development
    • Pacific Islands

    Pacific health systems: Breaking the aid dependency cycle

    Pala Leka
    Donor dependency is not a path to health sovereignty in the region.
  • 2 May 2025
    • Pacific Islands
    • Solomon Islands

    Bursting the Solomon Islands stability bubble

    Jon Fraenkel
    A mass cabinet exodus sets up another leadership change amid shifting Chinese influence in the Pacific nation.
  • 1 May 2025
    • Aid & Development
    • Australia
    • Pacific Islands

    What the Pacific sees at stake in the Australian election

    Isabelle Zhu-Maguire
    Climate policy, aid and regional respect hang in the balance.
  • 14 Mar 2025
    • Maritime Security
    • Trade
    • International law
    • Sustainability
    • Pacific Islands

    Sunk costs: Pacific shipwrecks and the urgent call for the Nairobi Convention

    Sheridan Ward
    An international accord to clean up shipwrecks and other waste from commerce on the high seas already exists. The region should get on board.
  • 12 Mar 2025
    • Australia
    • Defence & Security
    • Pacific Islands
    • Papua New Guinea

    Papua New Guinea: Shhhhh … don’t use the word “Alliance”

    Oliver Nobetau
    PNG’s sovereignty need not come at the cost of the safety and well-being of its own people.
  • 3 Mar 2025
    • Pacific Islands
    • New Caledonia

    New Caledonia: A small step forward

    Denise Fisher
    The first comprehensive talks in four years at least sees the parties together in the restive territory.
  • 3 Mar 2025
    • Aid & Development
    • Pacific Islands
    • Development Assistance
    • Australia and the Pacific
    • Australian Development Assistance
    • China and the Pacific

    Is this the end of aid as we know it?

    Soli Middleby
    The task for Western aid is not to rebuild what existed before, but to reduce dependency altogether.
  • 24 Feb 2025
    • France
    • Pacific Islands
    • New Caledonia

    New Caledonia: A troubled France seeks agreement about the future

    Denise Fisher
    With local elections overdue against the backdrop of recent strife comes the latest pitch for peace.
  • 17 Feb 2025
    • Climate change
    • United Nations
    • Pacific Islands
    • United States

    What the Pacific has said about Trump’s Paris pull-out

    Isabelle Zhu-Maguire
    Listen to the region and the message is clear – wrong way, go back.
  • 12 Feb 2025
    • Pacific Islands
    • Papua New Guinea

    A “National Interest Analysis” would strengthen PNG’s foreign policymaking

    Patrick Kaiku , Molly Kola
    Robust domestic procedures are crucial, not least to improve public understanding of government actions.
  • 6 Feb 2025
    • Climate change
    • United Nations
    • Pacific Islands
    • China and the Pacific
    • Fiji
    • Papua New Guinea
    • Samoa
    • Solomon Islands

    The global contest for the Pacific

    Michael Wesley
    Geopolitical fears of growing Chinese influence in Oceania are not the only interest Australia has in the region.
  • 5 Feb 2025
    • Pacific Islands
    • Papua New Guinea

    Sir Julius Chan: PNG’s “last man standing”

    Ian Kemish
    Reflecting on a political life championing local development and courting international controversy.
  • 3 Feb 2025
    • Pacific Islands
    • Fiji

    Strong leader preferred – Fiji’s coup legacy

    Mosmi Bhim
    Complete democratisation will remain a challenge for Fiji while former military officers continue to dominate politics.
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