China could have Solomon Islands military base within four weeks

Australia is being warned to expect Chinese ships and aircraft to arrive in Solomon Islands within four weeks under a security agreement that has rocked the federal election campaign and sparked a ferocious Labor attack on the Coalition for waiting too long to try to stop the deal.

Security experts said the Chinese government would act swiftly to implement the deal by sending military forces to the Solomons during the election campaign in order to capitalise on the caretaker period in Australian politics and match the rapid development of bases in the South China Sea.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing in 2019.Credit: Reuters

A leaked draft of the pact sparked headlines on March 24 after months of talk about ties between China and Solomon Islands, but the federal government did not send Minister for the Pacific Zed Seselja to meet Solomons Prime Minister Manessah Sogavare until April 13.

The speed of that response is now the subject of an extraordinary clash over security and defence in the middle of an election campaign. Labor leader Anthony Albanese has accused Prime Minister Scott Morrison of failure on national security, a key issue where the Coalition believes it has greater support among voters.

With the United States sending a senior envoy to the islands to respond to the deal, Labor accused the government of failing to dispatch Foreign Minister Marise Payne to the region to fend off the Chinese advance after news of the agreement leaked on March 24.

Morrison said the outcome was serious but not a surprise given China’s attempts to interfere in the region. He said he had known of the negotiations for some time and believed it was better to deal with the matter quietly rather than send a cabinet minister to “stamp around” on the issue.

But Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce heightened the concern by saying “we don’t want our own little Cuba off our coast” in a reference to Russian influence over a close neighbour of the United States during the Cold War and the site of the greatest nuclear missile flashpoint since World War II.

Albanese called the deal a “massive foreign policy failure” and said he would have sent foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong to discuss the agreement with Solomon Islands Prime Minister.

“This deal between China and the Solomons was foreshadowed last August – the government was warned,” Albanese said.

“And yet only in recent days did the government bother to send a junior person across to the Solomons.”

Former foreign affairs minister and Liberal Party deputy leader Julie Bishop called the agreement “deeply disturbing” and said it could change the dynamic of the region by leading to Chinese military bases in the islands.

“I believe our foreign minister should be on the next plane to the Solomon Islands to talk with the government to see what’s actually been agreed,” she told the Ten Network.

Payne said on Wednesday night that this was “a very serious decision that Solomon Islands has made”.

“We are deeply disappointed that they have chosen to go down this path,” she told the ABC’s 7.30 as she defended the government against claims that it had let down its guard.

“Australia, frankly, has been at the forefront of these discussions about the geostrategic realities that we face in the Pacific.”

Albanese also confirmed that if elected as prime minister he would personally go to Solomon Islands to discuss the issue directly with Sogavare.

In a key point of dispute, Solomon Islands Opposition Leader Matthew Wale has said he told Australian diplomats about the security talks with China last August but the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade issued a statement late on Wednesday disputing the date of the meeting and saying he did not raise the China deal.

Payne responded to the March 24 leak with a statement the next day expressing concern but the government confirmed on Wednesday that she was at a dinner with business figures when Seselja was sent to Honiara.

New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta held talks in Fiji on March 28. By April 9, the US had decided to send its National Security Council Co-ordinator for the Indo-Pacific, Kurt Campbell, to the Solomons to discuss the deal.

Payne was also busy during this period on sanctions against Russia, discussions with Ukraine and a meeting with NATO leaders in Brussels on April 7 that included talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. She was engaged in campaign activity after Morrison called the election on April 10.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Peter Jennings said Chinese ships and aircraft were likely to arrive in the Solomons within weeks because the deal would “absolutely” lead to a military base.

“We can expect China to seek to consolidate this development very quickly by actually moving assets there, so we should expect cargo planes to arrive and ships to arrive and they’ll be unloading all manner of stuff,” he said.

“Their model is what they’ve done in the South China Sea, which is to move quickly and decisively before people are able to gather their thoughts and resist.

“So I would imagine we would see something happen before we get to our election.”

Jennings rejected the key Labor claim that the deal could have been prevented or foreseen in recent weeks when Australia’s challenges in the Pacific were due to bipartisan neglect over decades.

“It’s frankly absurd that Labor is seeking to blame Chinese bad behaviour on the federal government,” he said.

“Could we have done more after the leak of the document? Yes, absolutely, we should have engaged in more sustained senior diplomatic effort approach the Solomons government and Sogovare in particular.”

Australian National University emeritus professor of strategic studies Hugh White said it was “fanciful” to suggest the outcome would have been different if a different person had been sent to the Solomons because China was certain to have a greater influence over time.

“If there’s a war it is significant that China would have a base as close to us as the Solomons but that is a challenge for our defence planners because they would have to make sure we have the capacity to neutralise such a base,” White said.

“That can be done with the right kind of investments in missiles and that’s the challenge, rather than to spend too much money on tanks, for example.

“Could we have prevented it? I don’t think we can prevent China becoming substantially more influential in the south-west Pacific because China will simply become too big and too rich and too important for these countries to ignore.”

The bigger challenge, White said, was to develop a stronger engagement with the Pacific that was not based on aid funding and was not driven by fear over Australian security.

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