Anthony Albanese checks his phone at a table with a plaque reading Australia and a small national flag

Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese checks his phone during the plenary meeting in Koror of the Pacific Islands Forum meeting, 2 September 2026 (Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images)

Australia’s Pacific amnesia

Australia keeps rediscovering its ignorance of the Pacific region, then forgetting to fix it.

Mathias Richter

15 September 20264 min read

A decade ago, foreign correspondent Sean Dorney claimed (Opens in new window) that Australians are embarrassed to acknowledge their history of colonial rule in Papua New Guinea. Ten years later, academics Joanne Wallis and Jack Corbett’s new book (Opens in new window)suggests Australia continues to ignore this legacy. They believe Australia suffers from amnesia, but a better understanding of its Pacific history – which extends far beyond the administration of PNG (and Naoero) – can help to explain and solve the complex foreign policy environment it currently faces.

Yet the diagnosis of Australia’s amnesia is not new, nor are calls to remedy it. Successive inquiries and commentators over the years have reached the same conclusion: ordinary Australians know remarkably little about the region or its history.

This gap is only one indicator of a broader deficit in “Pacific literacy” – a competency, familiarity and ease with the Pacific way of doing things.

But it is a deficit that carries real costs for Australia’s relationships with the region.

It requires a long-term investment in knowledge and capabilities that empower ordinary Australians to understand and engage with the region beyond moments of crisis or strategic competition.

In 1991, only 16 years after PNG’s independence, a parliamentary inquiry (Opens in new window) observed how most of Australia had “all but forgotten” it once possessed a colony. Little had been done to address the public’s ignorance of PNG and mutual understanding was “not as deep or as thorough as it should be for such close neighbours”. PNG scarcely featured in the curriculum, cultural, sporting and tourist exchanges were limited, and the media were characterised as sensationalist and ill-informed.

When the committee reconvened (Opens in new window) five years later, the situation had not improved. At a 1996 seminar, the academics Hank Nelson and Edward Wolfers warned of the declining interest and knowledge of PNG, calling for deeper understanding across universities, government, media and the not-for-profit sector. Australians’ colonial and wartime experiences had extended, personalised and reinforced ties with PNG but those who previously lived or served in the former colony were ageing and dying out. Meanwhile, the number of expatriates living north of the Torres Strait was declining.

A display during a visit by Australia's Governor-General Sam Mostyn to Samoa, 30 May to 2 June 2026 (Annika Smit/Government House)

Australia’s attention towards the Pacific has consistently waxed and waned over time, fluctuating between stagnation, neglect and engagement. In 2003, the journalist Graeme Dobell argued (Opens in new window) this cycle of forgetfulness and discovery was due to a mix of policy taboos, political failure and popular amnesia, commenting it was “extraordinary how little impact our long colonial experience has had on Australian collective memory”. He noted Australia’s amnesia was particularly striking outside of Canberra and especially concerning given that, for many Pacific nations, the defining experience of the 20th century was not war but colonialism.

Dobell’s comments were taken up by yet another inquiry (Opens in new window), which reached a similar conclusion to its predecessors: Australia’s media and education failed to secure public interest in the Pacific and continued ignorance would deplete the nation’s influence in the region. The Pacific remained peripheral to an otherwise well-informed and globally aware public but, as Dorney reminded the committee, “if you went to school these days, you would never learn about it”.

These reports made similar recommendations, with a recurring theme being to develop people-to-people connections – a consistent focus of subsequent and current government policy. However, the 1996 and 2003 reviews also recommended greater inclusion of PNG and the Pacific in the school curriculum. Currently, opportunities to teach about the region fall to the discretion (Opens in new window) of individual teachers and the national curriculum only touches on the Pacific in passing. While Kokoda features, it offers an entry into Australia’s military history, rather than an avenue (Opens in new window) to explore how Papua and New Guinea were territories under Australian rule and administration. There are some signs of progress – a Pacific Studies course for year 11 and 12 students set to begin in the ACT next year – but more can be done.

Australia needs a Pacific literacy strategy to help address the stubborn, enduring amnesia surrounding its Pacific history. This idea, too, is not new. In its submission to a 2022 inquiry (Opens in new window), the Whitlam Institute and Peacifica (Opens in new window) suggested Australia promote knowledge about the Pacific and its languages in schools, universities and the media, and develop a “Pacific Capable” strategy. Yet while the committee’s final report identified the usefulness of Pacific literacy and historical awareness for Australian diplomacy, no formal recommendations were made.

Australia’s cycle of forgetting and rediscovering the Pacific cannot be addressed through diplomacy or individual people-to-people connections alone. It requires a long-term investment in knowledge and capabilities that empower ordinary Australians to understand and engage with the region beyond moments of crisis or strategic competition. A recent parliamentary inquiry into Australia’s “Asia capability” provides a workable blueprint, proposing (Opens in new window) a ten-year national strategy to rebuild the language skills, cultural literacy and networks needed to engage with Asia. The government should also revisit the 2009 report (Opens in new window) by the Association for the Advancement of Pacific Studies in Australia, which called for a national strategy to revitalise Pacific studies and teaching. Many of its recommendations remain relevant today yet have been long neglected and forgotten.

A national Pacific literacy strategy should seek to strengthen the teaching of Pacific history, languages, literature, culture and arts in primary and secondary schools. Such an approach would equip the private and development sectors to operate and engage effectively overseas and encourage more sustained engagement with Pacific diasporas and migrant communities within Australia. It should aim, fundamentally, to ensure that Pacific literacy not be a solely technocratic capability but instead a form of civic knowledge, recognising the region as fundamental to Australia’s past and present.

About the author

Mathias Richter

Mathias Richter is the Resident Vasey Fellow at Pacific Forum, a Honolulu-based think tank focused on the Indo-Pacific.

Topics

Australia Pacific Islands Papua New Guinea Soft power Diplomacy