Australia’s strategy of denial in engaging with its ‘Pacific family’

share_windows This article appeared in Crikey on September 15 2025.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attended the 54th Pacific Islands Forum last week. During a short press conference in Honiara, Albanese mentioned our ‘Pacific family’ four times.

Despite that warm and fuzzy metaphor, the cold reality is that Australia sees the Pacific as a battlefield for control and influence. Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong told us last year that ‘we’re in a state of permanent contest in the Pacific — that’s the reality’. The contest she is referring to is, of course, between China and the US-led allies.

The real threat to PICs

Few Pacific Island countries (PICs) like having to deal with political pressure from Beijing, and each has to navigate the tension between remaining friendly with Taiwan and accepting Beijing’s largesse, which for some nations has become indispensable to building their infrastructure — roads, hospitals and schools. Confronted with juggling the pros and cons of China’s influence, they push back at Beijing where they can and compromise where they need to.

However, despite this common predicament in relations with China, two aspects deserve attention. First, as the latest research from Edward Chan suggests, military engagement is a low priority for both China and most PICs, which typically do not share Australia’s perception of China as a security threat. PICs see climate change as their existential threat, a particularly urgent one for some small, low-lying island countries such as Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands.

Second, most PICs don’t want to be forced to pick a side. As Michael Wesley points out, Australia needs to understand that the ‘name of the game is increasing the options that they have’, not limiting them. Again, research shows that PICs choose to cooperate with China on certain fronts, especially climate change and humanitarian assistance.

These two certainties, taken together, can explain why the Australia-Tuvalu Falepili Union treaty has become such a controversial deal. The agreement will create a special visa pathway for Tuvalu’s residents to escape the threat of rising sea levels due to climate change. In return, Tuvalu will ‘mutually agree with Australia any partnership, arrangement or engagement with any other state or entity on security and defence-related matters’. The deal, signed by then prime minister of Tuvalu Kausea Natano, angered some of his political opponents, including former prime minister Enele Sopoaga, who believed it ‘is neocolonialism at its worst’, saying, ‘Tuvalu was being asked to hand over its sovereignty to Australia’.

Keeping everyone happy

Other island countries prefer to keep their options open and hedge their bets. A vivid example of this was the Solomon Islands government publishing two media releases on the same day, one thanking China and the other thanking Australia for donating vehicles for the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting.

In 2022, the Solomon Islands signed a memorandum of understanding with China on policing cooperation, which Penny Wong called the ‘worst foreign policy blunder in the Pacific Islands since the end of WWII’, criticising the Morrison government of ‘going missing’. Then, in late 2024, it signed an agreement with Australia, which committed $190 million over four years to help build up the Solomon Islands police force. Media reports framed this explicitly as attempting to limit China’s security presence in the region.

But Australia has not always been successful in doing so. On coming to power in Vanuatu early this year, Prime Minister Jotham Napat scrapped a 2022 bilateral security agreement with Australia. In response, Australia came up with a new deal — the ‘Nakamal Agreement’ — which it was hoping to sign on the way to the Pacific Islands Forum. But this deal has been postponed because some members of Vanuatu’s coalition government are concerned it could limit infrastructure funding from other countries, including China.

Also, Vanuatu is not convinced Australia has done enough on climate change. Its climate minister, Ralph Regenvanu, pointed to Australia’s policy on fossil fuels and energy transition:

'The argument Australia has been making that the domestic transition is sufficient under the Paris Agreement is untenable. You’ve got to deal with fossil fuel exports as well … There is work to do if Australia is to be seen as a credible security partner in the Pacific — and that work starts at home.'

While frustrated with the lack of progress in Vanuatu, Australia triumphantly announced a new security agreement with Papua New Guinea over the weekend, signalling the total integration of the two nations’ defence forces, despite numerous risks to Australia outlined by Joanne Wallis, director of the Security in the Pacific Islands research program in Adelaide. Apart from the cost issue, other concerns include what the practical enforcement mechanisms are behind the treaty, what Australia would do if PNG were involved in border violence with Indonesia, and how PNG’s Pacific neighbours might react if Manus Island were to become a submarine base.

The timing of the news is poignant, if not somewhat ironic: PNG is also celebrating the 50th anniversary of its independence from Australia, its former colonial master.

A dysfunctional family

Labor has made tangible progress in inserting Australia as the security partner of choice for our Pacific neighbours. But its engagement with PICs has so far been shaped by what Wesley calls the ‘strategy of denial’:

'Australia’s strategy in the Pacific and South-East Asia … seeks to build collective resistance to Beijing’s hegemony in the region, denying China the deference that it seeks. This strategy of denial requires convincing our Pacific and South-East Asian neighbours that China is, A, bent on hegemony in the region; B, that China’s hegemony would be worse than America’s in the past; and C, that the best way of securing their interests is to side with the US and Australia against China. It is a strategy that either misunderstands or overlooks the interests of the Pacific and South-East Asian states.'

The ‘Pacific family’ rhetoric may help subvert the perception of Australia as a sub-imperial power, functioning as a ‘regional sheriff‘ for the United States. It also aims to dispel the suspicion that Australia itself, despite its own colonial past, in turn adopts a neocolonial posture towards its Pacific neighbours. But unless Australia seriously addresses these two issues, our actions in the Pacific may continue to be viewed through these lenses.

Liam Moore puts it bluntly, stating that despite Australia’s rhetorical actions, ‘sustained inaction on climate change and a paternalistic, instrumental view of Pacific states have placed Australia outside of the core community of Pacific actors’. Indeed, as he states, ‘While Australia continually espouses itself as a central figure in the Pacific family, the inequality of its relationships with Pacific states and actors suggests this is not a safe or harmonious family.’

It would seem particularly important for Australia to heed this message, given our aspiration to host the COP31 in partnership with the Pacific in 2026.