Why are our leaders so loose in the Pacific?

There’s something about the Pacific Islands, Australian leaders and private conversations going public.

In 2015, Peter Dutton, then a frontbencher in Tony Abbott’s government, apologised after a boom microphone caught him joking with Abbott and then-social services minister Scott Morrison about the plight of Pacific Island nations facing rising sea levels as a result of climate change.

“Time doesn’t mean anything when you’re about to … have water lapping at your door,” Dutton said, responding to a comment from Abbott about meetings running late at the 2015 Pacific Islands Forum in Papua New Guinea.

The then-PNG prime minister Peter O’Neill dubbed the hot-mic remarks “most unfortunate”; then-Marshall Islands foreign minister Tony deBrum said he would ask Dutton over and see if he was laughing when king tides battered his home.

Nine years later, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was having what he says he believed was a private chat with US President Joe Biden’s top Indo-Pacific adviser, Kurt Campbell, on the sidelines of this year’s edition of the forum in Tonga. It turns out a New Zealand journalist was filming the exchange.

Similar snafus have befallen other world leaders. Just ask former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, who memorably called a Kiwi opposition leader an “arrogant prick” on a hot mic in 2022. Journalists, too, have come a cropper, like when myself and fellow reporters were recorded shooting the breeze while waiting for a press conference in Brisbane last year.

Albanese didn’t say anything embarrassing during his brief chinwag with Campbell. If anything, he displayed the relaxed, convivial style that has helped him forge strong personal connections with fellow world leaders, especially in the Pacific.

“Well, we had a cracker today getting the Pacific Policing Initiative through – it’s so important, it’ll make such a difference,” Albanese enthused to Campbell.

Albanese initially shrugged off the encounter as a chat with a mate but grew testier when reporters pressed him.

“You must be pretty bored,” he shot back, accusing the journalist who filmed him of behaving unethically. (Readers can view the footage and decide for themselves whether Albanese and Campbell should have been aware they were on camera.)

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese greets Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka at the forum.Credit: AAP

In an age of scripted soundbites and stage-managed media appearances, hot-mic moments inevitably cut through the noise of the news cycle. There’s a voyeuristic thrill to hearing public figures talk in an unguarded way.

While Albanese himself didn’t say anything particularly noteworthy, it was a different story with Campbell, the US deputy secretary of state.

“I talked to [Australia’s ambassador to the US] Kevin [Rudd] about it, and we were going to do something, and he asked us not to, so we did not,” Campbell said. “We’ve given you the lane, so take the lane.”

These were intriguing comments. Tantalising, even. What, exactly, was the US going to do but decided not to after Rudd’s intervention? The obvious but unconfirmed possibility is that the US was trying to strike a similar security deal of its own with the Pacific.

This would be controversial given that Australia has forcefully argued that security matters should be handled within the “Pacific family” – that is, by members of the Pacific Islands Forum. The US is not a member, and neither is China.

Campbell’s remark about “giving” Australia the lane also positioned its ally in a subordinate role, feeding into Beijing’s narrative that Australia is doing America’s bidding in the region rather than pursuing its own agenda.

“The Pacific is not the United States’ lane to give,” shot back the well-connected Pacific analyst and former diplomat Mihai Sora.

“Campbell’s remarks show he misunderstood the importance of Pacific leadership on matters of regional security.”

A gaffe on par with Dutton’s 2015 joke? Certainly not. An unfortunate distraction from an otherwise successful overseas trip for Albanese? Most definitely.

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