Albanese’s horror week as the Pacific’s twice-jilted bride
He turned up first to Vanuatu to sign the Nakamal security agreement and then to Papua New Guinea to sign the Pukpuk Defence Treaty, only to have both fall over.
In the Pacific battle for influence, the Prime Minister’s failure to get either over the line – despite reassurances from his counterparts – is a humiliating blow, even if it is unlikely to spell the end of either deal.
It is tempting to blame Beijing, which will undoubtedly have lobbied hard against the agreements, for the government’s failure to finalise two pacts that would have lent real shape to Australia’s plans for a hub and spoke security network with our closest neighbours. Doing so overlooks the complex, often messy internal coalition politics of Melanesian nations, and underplays the reticence across the region to put all their diplomatic eggs in one basket.
Why would they, just as the competition for influence has delivered unprecedented leverage and benefits for a region that has felt perennially overlooked and taken for granted?
Australia clearly hoped that packing both security deals with sweeteners – $500m over several years for Vanuatu, billions of dollars in military modernisation for PNG as well as citizenship pathways for military personnel – would be enough to compensate them for taking sides.
But not everyone in Vanuatu Prime Minister Jotham Napat’s cabinet, or that of PNG leader James Marape, was ready for that level of mutual commitment with Australia.
China may have helped amplify reservations, but these are non-aligned, independent nations. The concerns are genuine. Were Pacific nations forced to choose, most would opt for Australia’s security umbrella over China. That is particularly so for PNG, which enjoys the closest relationship with Canberra and has expressed a strong preference for Australia as a security partner. It was the Marape government, after all, that pursued this defence treaty with Canberra.
And it was Prime Minister Marape who chose this week’s 50th independence celebrations as the backdrop for signing the landmark pact with Albanese that would commit both nations to mutual defence and closer military integration.
Yet the PukPuk pact asks a great deal of PNG, which for half a century has pursued a “friend to all, enemy of none” foreign policy.
Lowy Institute Pacific Island program director Mihai Sora says Marape may have been “misled by members of his cabinet with the intended effect to make him look foolish”.
Certainly, the PNG leader has lost as much face as Albanese by failing to sign the treaty.
“We know from first principles that people are highly biddable; that there would be a mix of sentiment-driven reluctance to sign up and a mix of personal gain involved in some people taking one side over the other,” says Sora. “Derailing the deal at the last minute has inflicted maximum damage on Marape.”
Trying to unpick whose reservations were a result of Chinese lobbying and which came from legitimate concerns over a deal many fear could compromise the young nation’s sovereignty is a mug’s game, but we should not forget that it was only 17 months ago – as Albanese was preparing to fly into PNG to hike the Kokoda Trail with Marape – that the PNG cabinet was on the verge of signing a security deal with China.
The fact Australia and PNG have since managed to negotiate such a landmark treaty – the wording of which the two leaders agreed to in a compromise communique – is testament to a mutual determination to elevate security ties. Wednesday’s failure will not have extinguished that.
It has exposed deep-seated reservations in PNG over the potential for the pact to diminish the country’s sovereignty, which must now be addressed.
As for Vanuatu, there were clear stumbling blocks that appeared to be unresolved even as Napat stood atop an extinct volcano in August with Richard Marles and Penny Wong and declared the agreement all-but signed, sealed and delivered.
Napat has since admitted there are concerns the deal would restrict Vanuatu’s access to critical infrastructure funding from other sources (read China).
It is also possible his cabinet was unwilling to approve the deal without first securing visa-free entry into Australia for Vanuatu citizens – a concession Napat has repeatedly insisted on but which Canberra cannot possibly agree to while Vanuatu continues its passports-for-sale scheme.
There are plenty who doubt the self-regarded “Switzerland of the Pacific” is ready to give up neutrality and sign to an Australian security veto.
This is not the first time security agreements with PNG and Vanuatu have fallen over, and it probably won’t be the last. There is no option but to keep plugging away.
Australia has learned the hard way that Pacific nations cannot be rushed, no matter how great the temptation, or how urgent the regional security imperative.
More Coverage
A warning on the rise of Japanese aggression
Like a twice-jilted bride, Anthony Albanese has had a horror week.