Building a more resilient Pacific: The allies and partners agenda

Look, let's kick off.

I think I kick off with you, Lavinia, because I want to talk about the Pacific, because I love talking about the Pacific and specifically this spree of agreements that Australia has been signing.

I'm sure people are aware over the last year and a half, we have seen Australia go on an almost frenetic spate of agreements being signed.

We've seen, of course, the agreement with Tuvalu.

We've seen the Historic Defence Treaty with PNG.

We've seen the Nauru Treaty.

Now, of course, we've got agreements probably being signed with Fiji and potentially Vanuatu in the next couple of weeks as well.

What's driving this? do you think, Lavina? Is it going to work? What's Australia trying to do? What are some of the pitfalls it has to deal with? And what do you think our prospects of success are?

Well, if you look back to when Penny Wong, now foreign minister, was the opposition spokesperson for foreign affairs before the last, not the last election, the election before.

Yeah.

One of the things that she famously said in critique of the Morrison government was that the Solomon Islands signing a security treaty with China was the worst failure of Australian foreign policy in the Pacific.

since World War II, and she charged the coalition government with dropping the ball and allowing Beijing to gain a strategic foothold in the Pacific.

Now, Prime Minister, sorry, Hedy Wong, not Prime Minister Wong, Foreign Minister Wong, now talks about Australia being in a permanent state of contest in the Pacific for influence.

Now that she is in government, she also has to face the reality that China is persistent.

We might see the spate of security agreements that Australia has signed, but that's not going to be the end of the story.

This is going to be a persistent contest that goes on, that we will see China trying to undermine those security agreements or trying to form alternative security agreements with the same countries.

on its own.

Now, what I would say is that, you know, for some people, they might look at this spate of frenetic activity and might think that there's no design or plan behind it, that it's just a whack and mole.

We'll go to Vanuatu, we'll sign that agreement.

We'll go to PNG, we'll sign that agreement.

I think that that is a bit unfair, personally.

I do actually think the government does have a strategy in the sense that it is trying to sign as many of these agreements as possible.

And while policing to us might seem very mundane, for the Pacific, for many Pacific Island countries, they don't have militaries.

Policing is it.

That is their form of security cooperation.

Look, let's kick off.

I think I kick off with you, Lavinia, because I want to talk about the Pacific, because I love talking about the Pacific and specifically this spree of agreements that Australia has been signing.

I'm sure people are aware over the last year and a half, we have seen Australia go on an almost frenetic spate of agreements being signed.

We've seen, of course, the agreement with Tuvalu.

We've seen the Historic Defence Treaty with PNG.

We've seen the Nauru Treaty.

Now, of course, we've got agreements probably being signed with Fiji and potentially Vanuatu in the next couple of weeks as well.

What's driving this? do you think, Lavina? Is it going to work? What's Australia trying to do? What are some of the pitfalls it has to deal with? And what do you think our prospects of success are?

Well, if you look back to when Penny Wong, now foreign minister, was the opposition spokesperson for foreign affairs before the last, not the last election, the election before.

Yeah.

One of the things that she famously said in critique of the Morrison government was that the Solomon Islands signing a security treaty with China was the worst failure of Australian foreign policy in the Pacific.

since World War II, and she charged the coalition government with dropping the ball and allowing Beijing to gain a strategic foothold in the Pacific.

Now, Prime Minister, sorry, Hedy Wong, not Prime Minister Wong, Foreign Minister Wong, now talks about Australia being in a permanent state of contest in the Pacific for influence.

Now that she is in government, she also has to face the reality that China is persistent.

We might see the spate of security agreements that Australia has signed, but that's not going to be the end of the story.

This is going to be a persistent contest that goes on, that we will see China trying to undermine those security agreements or trying to form alternative security agreements with the same countries.

on its own.

Now, what I would say is that, you know, for some people, they might look at this spate of frenetic activity and might think that there's no design or plan behind it, that it's just a whack and mole.

We'll go to Vanuatu, we'll sign that agreement.

We'll go to PNG, we'll sign that agreement.

I think that that is a bit unfair, personally.

I do actually think the government does have a strategy in the sense that it is trying to sign as many of these agreements as possible.

And while policing to us might seem very mundane, for the Pacific, for many Pacific Island countries, they don't have militaries.

Policing is it.

That is their form of security cooperation.