Australia knew about China-Solomons security deal before it was leaked

Australia knew about a secret draft security pact between China and Solomon Islands weeks before it mysteriously surfaced on the internet, with several government sources claiming the nation’s intelligence agencies played a role in orchestrating the leak.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Foreign Minister Marise Payne are under increasing pressure to reveal what they knew about the proposed agreement before the draft was leaked on March 24, after the Australian government this week failed to convince Honiara to abandon the deal with Beijing.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The deal could see Chinese naval vessels and troops based less than 2000 kilometres off the Australian east coast and cut off vital supply lines to the US and Asia in the event of a conflict.

“I can’t go into all the details as to how Australia is able to know the specific information, as they are security matters,” Morrison said. “But what I do know is we have always been very conscious of that threat of China being able to influence a nation in our region.”

Multiple government and security sources, who are not authorised to speak publicly, confirmed that the Australian government was aware of the proposed agreement weeks before it was mysteriously posted online.

Two of the sources said Australian intelligence agencies played a role in leaking the document in an effort to put public pressure on China and Solomons Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare.

The leak occurred two weeks before two of Australia’s top spies - Paul Symon, the head of the overseas spy agency the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) and Andrew Shearer, the director-general of the Office of National Intelligence - travelled to the Solomons to meet with Sogavare.

The claims appear to contradict statements made by both Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Pacific Minister Zed Seselja.

Payne told Sky News on Thursday the “bilateral security agreement only became known to us when it was published on social media at the end of March”.

Seselja said, “we found out about it when we saw that leaked draft”.

Credit: Illustration: David Rowe

The claims also raise questions about who had access to the document and whether Australia’s most senior ministers were briefed on a plan to leak against one of its most important partners in the Pacific.

One person not related to the Australian or Solomons government had access to the document as early as March 18, six days before it was posted online by Celsus Irokwato Talifilu. The person said the document was circulating among Pacific government and security communities in the week leading up to its publication on social media but had yet to be verified by official sources.

Talifilu, a political advisor to Sogavare’s rival Daniel Suidani, the premier of Malaita Province, posted the document on a Malaitan social media page on March 24.

The document was then posted by New Zealand-based Solomon’s expert Anna Powles on Twitter, setting off a scramble across the Pacific to verify its authenticity.

The Australian government took more than six hours to officially respond to the document on March 24 but had verified its authenticity within three.

Government sources at the time said while Australia had known of China’s broad intentions in the region and was aware of the threat of a security agreement - they had no knowledge of the specifics of the deal until it was posted on social media.

Morrison on Thursday criticised the “secret deal” for having arrangements that “are not public”.

The speed and scale of the agreement has left Canberra, Washington and Wellington racing to contain the fallout after failing to convinced Honiara to ditch the deal.

The United States on Thursday launched a diplomatic offensive in the Pacific, enlisting President Joe Biden’s top security advisor Jake Sullivan to court regional leaders alongside Indo-Pacific chief Kurt Campbell.

Danny Philip, a former Solomon Islands prime minister and confidante of current leader Manasseh Sogavare, confirmed that the final text of the deal signed with China was “very close” to the leaked draft.

Philip compared the arrangement to the Pine Gap satellite spy base jointly operated with the US just outside Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.

“People in Australia know very little about Pine Gap in the middle of the desert, the military base of the United States,” he said on Thursday.

Labor has put the mishandling of the deal at the centre of the federal election campaign, abandoning its relative bipartisanship on foreign affairs in a bid to neutralise the Coalition’s perceived strength on national security and Chinese Communist Party influence.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese said “it was beyond comprehension” that Foreign Minister Marise Payne had not been sent to Honiara after a draft was leaked of the agreement on March 24.

“The United States very much relies upon Australia and sees Australia as playing that key role of partners in the Indo-Pacific,” he said. “Australia and Scott Morrison have just gone missing.”

Payne has campaigned in must-win seats including Parramatta, Boothby, Hughes and Banks since the federal election was called, rather than travelling to Honiara to personally address China’s security deal. She has also declined to face off in a foreign policy debate at the National Press Club with her opposite number, Labor’s Penny Wong.

Payne spent Wednesday campaigning in Corangamite, an ultra-marginal seat in Victoria the Coalition is desperate to win, meeting members of the Ukrainian community in Geelong and handing out campaign fliers.

James Paterson, the chairman of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security said the key thing now for Australia is “holding Sogavare to his public commitments about the limits of the agreement”.

“No base or permanent presence,” he said.

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