Albanese has Pacific job to do but it is not to close coal

Anthony Albanese has an important role to play in convincing our Pacific Island neighbours that we are there for the long haul and determined to protect our shared economic and security interests. Away from the pomp and curated shows of historic affection in Beijing, countering China’s growing involvement in Pacific affairs remains the main game.

Like Mr Albanese, Pacific Island leaders find themselves being feted on all fronts from the White House to the Great Hall of the People. The timing of the current visit to attend the Pacific Islands Forum is both fortuitous and fraught for the Prime Minister. He attends fresh from meetings at the highest levels in Washington and Beijing. But he cannot escape the understandable but unreasonable perception at home that he is spending too much time overseas at a time of economic hardship for many households, something reinforced by the decision on Tuesday by the Reserve Bank of Australia to lift the cash rate for a 13th time.

More delicately, Mr Albanese must find a way to push Australia’s interests with Pacific Island leaders without coming across as being a hypocrite. On the one hand, Australia is warning about the dangers of China’s debt-trap diplomacy while at the same time Beijing is trumpeting that Australia has come to its senses for a new era of closer ties and trade. Thawing relations with Australia strengthens Beijing’s hand in the Pacific.

Meanwhile, the Albanese government says that action on climate change is at the top of its priority list, something that Pacific Island leaders say they care most about. But Australia will never be able to satisfy expectations that it stop producing coal and gas. But this is the core demand of many Pacific Islanders, expressed directly by Vanuatu Climate Change Adaptation Minister Ralph Regenvanu, ahead of the Pacific Island Forum gathering on the Cook Islands. Mr Regenvanu said the fact that Australia remains the world’s third largest fossil fuel exporter, with 116 new coal and gas projects in the pipeline, is fundamentally at odds with the spirit of the Paris Agreement and poses a direct threat to the climate goals set by the international community. This point is being leveraged by climate groups and Pacific Island leaders ahead of Australia’s joint bid to host a UN climate conference with Pacific nations.

Mr Albanese’s bid to host the COP31 climate meeting in 2026 with Pacific Island nations was always going to complicate discussions. Already, Australia has agreed to rejoin the Green Climate Fund, which could cost extra billions in effective foreign aid. The Morrison government left the GCF in favour of bilateral funding in the Pacific. But Pacific leaders wanted us back in the GCF, where funding is distributed as grants.

Our fossil fuel industry is the first-order issue for the climate establishment. A UN Production Gap Report, released on Wednesday, criticised producer nations for having plans “completely misaligned with efforts to limit global warming to 1.5C”.

A group of former Pacific leaders has called on the Pacific Islands Forum to postpone a decision on whether to support Australia’s bid to co-host the 2026 UN climate conference unless Australia commits to a fossil fuel phase-out in the near future. Given the difficulties being faced economically and with meeting our own climate targets, now is not the time for Mr Albanese to be making rash promises.

Rather than focus on future UN meetings which may or may not happen, Mr Albanese must concentrate on the core task of shoring up support for the AUKUS security agreement and finding ways to bolster economic ties that will make Pacific nations less susceptible to influence from Beijing.

The absence from the meeting of Papua New Guinea leader James Marape and Solomons Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare is unfortunate. Both countries have received significant financial assistance from Beijing, as well as Australia, and are of vital importance to our shared strategic interests with the US. Mr Sogavare was also absent from a recent visit by Pacific Island leaders to Washington, where they met with Joe Biden who has pledged to ramp up US engagement in the region. Mr Biden made a point of declaring the US to be a Pacific nation during Mr Albanese’s visit in October. It is vital that both leaders remain engaged. Mr Albanese cannot afford to give too much away, but he must turn up.