![\"Prime](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/845966358c1965d9343cf386b4a139abba4db6ce.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nAustralia\u2019s bid to block China from gaining a security foothold in the Pacific through ports, airports and other sensitive critical infrastructure assets has been dealt a blow, as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was forced to scrap plans to sign a sweeping $500 million treaty-level agreement with Vanuatu.<\/p>\n
Albanese hoped to kickstart a major fortnight of diplomacy in the Pacific by finalising a long-awaited deal with his Vanuatu counterpart during a visit to the capital of Port Vila today, but political jostling in Vanuatu meant the 10-year agreement was put back on ice at the last minute.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Vanuatu counterpart Jotham Napat in Port Vila on Tuesday.Credit: Michael Read<\/p>\n
Vanuatuan Prime Minister Jotham Napat said the key sticking point was that the pact, known as the Nakamal Agreement, could overly restrict Vanuatu\u2019s ability to receive funding from other nations for critical infrastructure projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of my ministers and my MPs feel it requires more discussion, particularly on some of the specific wordings in the agreement,\u201d Napat said during a joint press conference.<\/p>\n
Beijing last year funded a new presidential palace for Vanuatu and welcomed the Melanesian nation\u2019s \u201cactive participation\u201d in its Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, raising concerns in Canberra about deepening ties with China.<\/p>\n
The setback is a blow for the Albanese government following its success at negotiating treaty-level agreements with Tuvalu and Nauru, which grant Australia defacto veto rights over any security and military agreements with countries including China.<\/p>\n
Albanese said he and Napat \u201cmade good progress\u201d during their meeting and would keep working towards striking an agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth sides will go through our processes, but we\u2019re very confident that the agreement can be reached, and I\u2019m reassured by the discussion I\u2019ve had with the prime minister,\u201d Albanese said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s bid to block China from gaining a security foothold in the Pacific through ports, airports and other…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-130271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}