Is Australia Out Of Touch With The Pacific?

Teuila
Fuatai RNZ Pacific Senior Journalist

Analysis
– On the second day of the Pacific Islands Forum
leaders’ meeting in Palau, Australian Prime Minister Anthony
Albanese was asked about the potential participation of
Torres Strait Islanders in the Melanesian Spearhead Group
(MSG) – one of the forum’s three sub-regional
groups.

Albanese, alongside his ministers Chris Bowen
and Pat Conroy, was holding a press conference at the
leaders’ meeting venue in Koror. Bowen holds the climate
portfolio while Conroy is Australia’s minister for Pacific
Island affairs.

Conroy responded on behalf of his
prime minister.

“I was honoured to be the first
Australian minister to attend a Melanesian Spearhead Group
as an observer in Fiji [in June 2025],” Conroy
began.

“Obviously, there’s a process that is going
through where the Melanesian Spearhead Group consider
whether Australia would be an observer at the MSG. We’re
obviously keen to make that happen because we see value in
having the people of Australia as an observer through the
Australian government at the Melanesian Spearhead
Group.”

No mention of the people of Torres Strait
Island was made, even after the reporter attempted a
follow-up question.

The MSG, which as a starting point
acknowledges Torres Strait Islanders as part of its
Melanesian family, holds a different view.

The group’s
newly appointed director general Anna Naupa, speaking to
reporters the previous day, said the MSG’s preference was
for Australia to include its Melanesian communities, like
Torres Strait Islanders, when engaging with
it.

“Because of our attention to our Indigenous
Melanesian peoples, very much that is the preference, is
that we bring and we connect our communities with each
other,” Naupa said.

It is a difference in outlook that
reflects some of the wider challenges to Australia’s
engagement in the Pacific region.

Sometimes the
subtleties and nuances of regional politics can be lost or
completely dismissed by the Australians.

Climate
contradictions

Other times it feels like Australia
does not fully appreciate – outwardly at least – how closely
watched it is by smaller Pacific nations.

For example,
one of the major developments at the leaders’ meeting was
the release of a report from the UN Environment Programme,
which stated that overshooting the Paris Climate Accord goal
of 1.5C was now unavoidable.

It came a day after
Albanese’s government supported the opening of a new
fracking project in the Northern Territory.

It was
also confirmed during the week that Albanese’s government
had approved the
expansion of an open-cut coal mine in
Queensland.

Vanuatu’s Climate Minister Ralph
Regenvanu, fresh from a climate media briefing on the UN
report release, pointed the finger squarely at the Forum’s
largest member in Koror.

“Australia is a great partner
for the Pacific in helping adaptation and renewable energy
pathways, and that’s all good,” he said.

“But as I
said … in the press conference, fossil fuels remain the
primary driver [of rising temperatures]. And if you expand
fossil fuels, you’re not recognising the declaration you
signed up to yourself, which is Boe, which says it’s the
greatest single threat to the peoples of the
Pacific.

“So that is a contradiction that Australia
needs to find a way out of,” Regenvanu said.

Similar
to previous years, climate change featured heavily in the
leaders’ meeting communique this year.

Leaders signed
off on the Belau declaration for urgent and inclusive
climate action to keep 1.5C within reach through it. As part
of that, the Boe Declaration was recalled.

Leaders
also reaffirmed that “climate change remains the single
greatest threat to the security, livelihoods, wellbeing and
future of the peoples of the Pacific”.

For his part,
Albanese did not miss a beat when questioned about whether
his government’s commitment to the climate crisis was
geniune.

“We all need to do more,” he told
reporters.

He also made the point that Pacific leaders
understood Australia’s current reliance on fossil fuels and
“have respect for the position that we’ve taken” – directly
contradicting Regenvanu’s words.

“They also understand
with the transition [away from fossil fuels] – because
they’re dealing with it as well – that the transition can’t
happen overnight, that it requires strategies and policies
to be put in place,” Albanese said.

It’s not new for
countries in the Pacific to have different outlooks – but
when it comes to these regional big issues, there’s a gap
between the Australian view and those of the Pacific islands
that may suggest a lack of understanding of the latter by
the former.

Security arrangements

In regard to
traditional security, Australia’s been building an array of
treaties and bilateral agreements with different partners
across the region over several years and particularly in
recent months.

These include the Ocean of Peace
Alliance or Veitacini Treaty with Fiji, which other parties
may eventually join, the Nakamal agreement with Vanuatu, the
Pukpuk treaty with Papua New Guinea, the Nauru-Australia
Treaty and the Falepili Union with Tuvalu.

Despite
that, it will likely have come away from this year’s forum
feeling slightly short-changed because there were signs of a
handbrake being applied on this security stuff, amid
concerns from Pacific islanders about where it’s all
heading, and how quickly it’s going that way.

As part
of the Forum’s peace and security agenda, the Joint Heads of
Pacific Security (JHOPS) which is headquartered at
Australia’s Department of Defence, has been tabled under the
review of the regional architecture.

The JHOPS brings
together the heads of police, military, customs and
immigration agencies from across the region. Japan and the
US are observers.

Civil society group Pacific Action
Network on Globalisation (PANG) has raised serious concerns
about the insertion of JHOPS and a regional deployment
framework into the forum-led security
architecture.

Its main concern is the lack of scrutiny
over the process, and the potential legal structures that
may result which lock Pacific nations into security
arrangements they hadn’t foreseen or agreed to.

In
Koror, PANG along with the Pacific Regional NGO
Organisations Alliance was represented by Joey Tau.

He
told RNZ Pacific he was pleased leaders had only agreed in
principle to recognise JHOPS as part of the Forum-led
security architecture, noting in the communique that further
consultation would be needed.

Similarly, the Waqa
Moana maritime security initiative targeting illicit drug
trafficking, backed heavily by Australia, was only agreed to
in principle by leaders, with the overall decision seeking
more consultation.

To add to that, the proposal from
the Solomon Islands for a regional security treaty, which Australia’s
said it is open to, has been kicked down the road.
Leaders chose to note the proposal and acknowledged further
consultation among members.

Overall, as Tau, pointed
out, there are still major questions over the direction of
the reform of the forum’s regional architecture, and the
processes and people guiding it.

“We’re in a state
where, not only external parties, but member states who are
part of the whole architecture are driving security
agreements, compacts, initiatives, without proper
consultation,” he said.

For Australia, which has
steadily increased its activity and engagement in the
region, particularly aroud security, it may be questioning
where exactly the speedbumps emerged at last week’s Forum
leaders’ summit.

The resourcing it brings will always
afford it a seat at the table, and there’s no doubt its
investment in the Pacific in areas such as sport,
particularly rugby league has gone down well.

But
understanding how to discuss contentious issues and
negotiate in Pacific circles are not skills that come
automatically with ‘big ticket’ agreements and promises –
they are honed through relationships, experience and being
in the room.

Time in the region will also let you know
that more often than not, decisions turn on a dime, as the
absence of several leaders from the forum showed last week.
It’s all part and parcel of politics in the Pacific
region.

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