In the past week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has signed security and defence agreements with Vanuatu and Fiji, visited Fiji and Solomon Islands, and hosted leaders from Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Tonga in Brisbane.<\/p>\n
Against this flurry of Pacific diplomacy, China tested a ballistic missile in the region, reminding all players of its presence and its growing power.<\/p>\n
While the Albanese government has done much work in the Pacific and is generally on better terms with its leaders than the previous Morrison government, Australia can do more to be a good neighbour.<\/p>\n
Strategic importance<\/p>\n
British colonists in Australia \u201cdiscovered\u201d the strategic importance of the Pacific Islands in the early 1800s, worried about old European rivals France and Germany moving into the region. Australian governments rediscovered it during the two world wars. <\/p>\n
Since the late 2010s, they have rediscovered it again as strategic competition between China and Australia\u2019s ally, the United States, has intensified.<\/p>\n
This pattern of long stretches of amnesia and neglect punctuated by spurts of anxiety and activity has a cost for Australia\u2019s relationships in the Pacific. It also has a cost for Australia\u2019s security. As historian Neville Meaney once argued<\/a>, Australia\u2019s approach to its foreign policy should be summarised as \u201cthe search for security in the Pacific\u201d. <\/p>\n Our argument, developed in our new book<\/a>, is that we can break this pattern. But this will require understanding the ideas that have guided Australian foreign and strategic policy for two centuries. <\/p>\n Australia\u2019s federation was built on the legal fiction of terra nullius, dispossession, and the extraordinary wealth this brought. It created a small settler community that felt acutely vulnerable: all that wealth, but nobody nearby to protect it. <\/p>\n Australia looked north for protection, first from Britain, then from the US, and now, through the AUKUS security partnership, from both. It looked at its near neighbours in the Pacific with a mixture of suspicion and anxiety, despite being significantly larger and more materially powerful than them. <\/p>\n This historical dynamic has influenced how Australian policymakers have seen the Pacific. For decades, a fixation on island nations\u2019 \u201csmallness\u201d and \u201cweakness\u201d led Canberra to treat the region as an irritating distraction from Australia\u2019s \u201creal\u201d foreign policy objectives.<\/p>\n \u2018Family\u2019 footing<\/p>\n In 2018, Prime Minister Scott Morrison switched gears when he characterised the Pacific as Australia\u2019s \u201cfamily\u201d<\/a>. This family ideal has been continued by the Albanese government<\/a>.<\/p>\n Australia\u2019s Pacific relationships have undoubtedly improved over the past decade, exemplified by its landmark security treaties with Tuvalu<\/a>, Nauru<\/a>, Papua New Guinea<\/a>, and Fiji<\/a>, its Nakamal Agreement<\/a> with Vanuatu, But those improvements will always be limited if Australians don\u2019t grapple with our complex history with the region and how it influences our ideas about the region and its people.<\/p>\n The history we tell reveals that seeing the Pacific as an \u201cirritant\u201d or as Australia\u2019s \u201cfamily\u201d does not resolve a fundamental dilemma: the Pacific is too large and too diverse for a middle power like Australia<\/a> to secure. <\/p>\n Pacific Island countries also often have differing interests from Australia<\/a>. The result is that Australia is simultaneously unable to impose its will in the region and perceived as guilty of neo-colonial overreach when it tries to do so.<\/p>\n The China threat<\/p>\n This dilemma has existed for more than a century. It is now acute. For the first time since the second world war, Australia faces the prospect of an adversary with military superiority and vastly deeper pockets seeking greater influence in the Pacific. This is happening at precisely the moment its longtime ally, the US, appears to be in strategic retreat.<\/p>\n This dilemma cannot be resolved, but it can be better managed. The key lies in a middle-ground approach of \u201cgood neighbourliness\u201d. Australia\u2019s recent Pacific treaties suggest that this language is favoured by Pacific Island countries. <\/p>\n Falepili, the name of the 2023 treaty with Tuvalu, means \u201cgood neighbourliness, duty of care and mutual respect<\/a>\u201d. The 2025 statement of intent to sign a treaty with Tonga <\/a> characterises the Australia-Tonga relationship as one of Kaume’a Ofi, \u201cclose friendship\u201d. <\/p>\n Changing how Australia talks about the Pacific is not a diplomatic nicety. It opens the way for a genuinely different mode of Australian engagement in the Pacific that is informed by history, respects Pacific sovereignty, and creates opportunities for improvement. We argue that to be a good neighbour to the Pacific, Australia\u2019s policy should be guided by four key principles: respecting boundaries, disagreeing well, fostering self-awareness, and prioritising cooperation over coercion.<\/p>\n
\nand its ongoing negotiations with Solomon Islands <\/a>and Tonga<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n