Australia looks to sideline China in ‘far-reaching’ Pacific policing deal

Australian officials are confident of locking in regional support this week for an ambitious Pacific-wide policing pact they hope will help stymie Beijing’s energetic efforts to gain a security foothold in the region.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will travel on Tuesday to the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga, with the Pacific Policing Initiative set to be one of the key agenda items alongside tackling climate change and the recent unrest in New Caledonia.

The initiative, to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, would see a regional training centre established in Brisbane, centres of law enforcement excellence set up across the Pacific and the formation of new multinational police units that could rapidly deploy across the region when trouble arises.

Anthony Albanese and Tuvalu’s then-prime minister Kausea Natano struck a landmark pact at last year’s Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting.Credit: AAP

Pacific police chiefs have compared the initiative to bodies such as EUROPOL (the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation) and AMERIPOL (the Police Community of the Americas) that combat crime beyond national borders.

Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni will seek official endorsement from fellow leaders for the initiative at the forum and request that Pacific police chiefs develop an implementation plan to drive it forward, according to a statement agreed to by Pacific foreign ministers earlier this month.

Pacific police leaders met in Brisbane in July to discuss the initiative, which has the enthusiastic backing of Tonga’s police commissioner Shane McLennan, the chairman of the Pacific Chiefs of Police.

The initiative has sensitivities and would require laws to be changed in many Pacific nations to allow foreign police officers to operate within their borders.

A former COVID-19 quarantine centre at Pinkenba, near Brisbane airport, is seen as an ideal location for a regional training facility when it is handed over to the Australian Federal Police.

Australian officials, who were not authorised to speak publicly, said they were confident the policing initiative would receive widespread support, despite the possibility of posturing from some Pacific leaders with close ties to Beijing.

Mihai Sora, a Lowy Institute expert on the Pacific and former diplomat in the region, said the “far-reaching” initiative was “about Australia playing a much bigger role in providing policing support in the Pacific”.

“This is about closing the space for an external actor like China to become involved in regional security,” he said.

“Australia will be at pains to demonstrate that this is a Pacific-led initiative, so it is important for Pacific leaders to endorse it and buy into it.”

Pacific leaders are struggling with a lack of trained police officers despite rising crime rates and transnational drug syndicates setting up across the region, Sora said.

Chinese police have deployed in the Solomon Islands and Kiribati, despite Australian officials insisting that security and policing matters should be handled only by Pacific nations including Australia.

Albanese and Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Feleti Teo will announce during the forum that a landmark climate resettlement treaty announced last year has officially entered into force.

The Falepili Union will create a special visa pathway for the Pacific nation’s residents to escape the threat of climate change and give Australia effective veto power over any possible security pact between China.

This masthead revealed in May that Australian officials were forced to scramble to prevent China and Papua New Guinea from striking a policing pact on the eve of a visit by Albanese to PNG.

“The Chinese are unrelenting on this,” an Australian official familiar with the negotiations but not authorised to speak publicly said at the time.

Albanese announced in June that Australia would help the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force increase its size from 1500 to 3000 officers, and the government is spending $200 million to boost PNG’s policing and national security services.

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