Wong’s successful Pacific foray

Foreign Minister Penny Wong signing a new security agreement with Vanuatu barely six months after her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, was in Port Vila spruiking Beijing’s largesse is a significant achievement for Australia’s Pacific policy. The fact Senator Wong was accompanied by International Development and the Pacific Minister Pat Conroy, and opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham and international development and the Pacific spokesman Michael McCormack added to the importance of the deal. The most recent bipartisan visit by Australian politicians to Pacific Island states was in 2019.

The meaning of the display of cross-party co-operation would not be lost on the Pacific nations or Beijing as it seeks to muscle its way into the region. For the Pacific Island states, the bipartisanship, as Senator Birmingham said, demonstrates “that Australia’s engagement with our Pacific neighbours is of the highest priority and transcends domestic politics”. For Beijing, Senator Wong signing the pact shows how mistaken Mr Wang was if he believed that Australia and its long-established relationships with its Pacific partners could be pushed aside by offers of the same notorious Belt and Road debt-trap diplomacy and dubious security arrangements China concluded with Solomon Islands.

Full details of the deal signed in Port Vila on Tuesday by Senator Wong and Vanuatu Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau have yet to be disclosed. It reportedly covers further military, policing and cyber co-operation building on the already close ties between our two nations. In announcing the new deal, Vanuatu significantly described Australia as a core security partner. Vanuatu’s Foreign Minister, Jotham Napat, firmly denied any similar deal had been contemplated with China. “We have not established any security agreement (with China). We have not even discussed any matter in relation to security,” he said.

On June 1, Mr Wang was in Port Vila as part of his South Pacific swing, seeking to build on diplomatic and economic ties between Vanuatu and China. Reports suggested that in Vanuatu and other Pacific states he was seeking to reach agreements similar to that with Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare. But Mr Wang appears to have failed in Vanuatu, as he did when he met Pacific Island leaders as a group in Fiji.

Senator Wong’s success in reinvigorating Australia’s relationship with Vanuatu through the security pact is an important development given Beijing’s brazen ambition to supplant Australian strategic interests. Senator Wong’s determination to reassert and deepen Australia’s bilateral relationships in the Pacific, when our role as core security partner and first responder in humanitarian crises and natural disasters is being contested by Beijing, is vital.

The presence of opposition spokesmen in her travelling group, which is scheduled to go on from Vanuatu to the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau, adds to the importance of the mission. With populations of about 18,000 (Palau) and 115,000 (Micronesia), they are smaller than Vanuatu with 324,000 people. But they are of no less strategic significance in a part of the world where the big US air and naval bases on the US island of Guam are located.

During his mid-year Pacific swing, Mr Wang also targeted Palau and Micronesia with blandishments as part of Beijing’s drive for influence. Palau, however, remains one of only 13 countries that still recognise Taiwan. For a while Micronesia recognised both Beijing and Taiwan but now has opted for Beijing.

The US has longstanding close ties to Palau and Micronesia. Both have Compacts of Free Association with the US. While not impinging on their national sovereignty, the compacts give Washington responsibility for defence and security, and allow citizens of those countries visa-free entry to live and work in the US. Australia also has longstanding relations with Palau and Micronesia. Former foreign minister Marise Payne was in Palau a year ago to open the Australian embassy in Koror, the main town. For years, a succession of other Australian ministers also visited, including Julie Bishop. Senator Wong’s latest foray, with opposition spokesmen, is vital in showing that Australia is reinvigorating interest in the Pacific and standing up to China’s attempts to impose itself on the region. The visit also reflects well on the Albanese government’s efforts to reinstate bipartisan parliamentary delegations in relation to issues of vital security concern.