Pacific leaders tighten police agreement with Australia as concern rises about China influence

Apia, Samoa: Pacific leaders are tightening a police agreement with Australia at a time of rising concern about Chinese influence across the region, publicly backing the plan in Samoa on Saturday.

Leaders from eight Pacific nations joined Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to support the policing initiative, even as some of them strike trade and security deals with China.

The support came soon after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was welcomed to a Samoan village and given the honour of being named a local chief, as children waved Australian flags and cheered the visitors.

The colourful ceremony, with Samoans singing as Albanese passed footballs with children, began a day of serious diplomatic business at a Commonwealth meeting that aims to address climate change, ocean health and the history of slavery.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the village of Satapuala in Samoa on Sunday.Credit: Pool

Albanese said the policing agreement showed the region could manage its own security.

“This initiative had the unanimous support of Pacific nations,” he said.

“The Pacific family needs to provide security for the Pacific by the Pacific, and that’s what this initiative is about. Pacific neighbours want to look after each other. We do that in times of crisis.”

Asked if Pacific leaders should be worried about the influence of China, he said: “Well, this is about the Pacific family looking after each other.”

China blindsided the Morrison government three years ago when it struck a security pact with Solomon Islands, while it has invested heavily in many island nations.

In a sign of that investment, a Chinese company has been building the road in Samoa that King Charles III and Queen Camilla have used to travel from their temporary residence to the capital, Apia, for the Commonwealth meeting this week.

Leaders from Fiji, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Tuvalu joined Albanese to back the policing plan, in something of a diplomatic win when leaders are busy at the Commonwealth meeting.

The event on Saturday morning gave formal support to the Pacific Police Support Group, which has a training headquarters in Brisbane and is setting up teams in Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

Albanese told the Pacific leaders he hoped to see two more centres opened in other island nations.

New Zealand has also led the initiative, which was endorsed at the Pacific Island Forum in Tonga in August, and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said it showed there was an “alignment of values” among the member nations.

“We’ve always had strong levels of bilateral engagements across the Pacific and within the Pacific,” Luxon told this masthead.

Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni said in April he would be open to accepting Chinese security support for the Pacific Islands Forum, an option he did not pursue in the end, but he attended the event with Albanese on Saturday to back the policing plan.

Sovaleni did not mention China but told fellow leaders on Saturday that he welcomed the policing plan.

“It is not just about safety and security in the domestic sense – in a globalising world, nothing is strictly domestic any more.

“Transnational crime, drugs and trafficking, cybercrime: these are big trans-boundary issues that Pacific states cannot address alone.”

While Solomon Islands had a security agreement with China, the country’s Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele, attended the event on Saturday. Others attending included Tuvalu Prime Minister Feleti Penitala Teo, Samoan Prime Minister Afioga Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa, and Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka.

The Commonwealth meeting ended with an agreement to act on climate change and environmental threats to the oceans, but a tense stand-off over whether the United Kingdom should apologise for slavery.

Caribbean nations led a push for reparations from the UK but were denied this by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

The communique at the end of the meeting said the national leaders “agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation” about the past, but did not specify the outcome.

The statement referred to the trade in enslaved Africans as well as “blackbirding” — the practice in Australian history of forcing Pacific Islanders to work in Australia. Albanese told reporters at the gathering that blackbirding was a sorry chapter in Australian history.

King Charles and Queen Camilla left Samoa at noon on Saturday with a tribute that obliquely acknowledged the sovereign’s age and health struggles.

“I shall always remain devoted to this part of the world and hope that I survive long enough to come back again and see you all,” he said, after a farewell ceremony on a day of heavy wind and rain.

The royals’ departure ended a seven-day visit to the Pacific including their time in Sydney and Canberra. Charles is expected to resume treatment for cancer when he returns to the United Kingdom.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.