Pacific diplomacy turbocharged for closer ties to neighbours

Penny Wong leads a bipartisan delegation to boost unity among Pacific Island nations.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong with Vanuatu Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau for the handover this week of an Australian-funded wharf to the country’s police force. Picture: DFAT

Penny Wong raises a half coconut shell of kava to her forehead and closes her eyes before pouring it down her throat. Kava diplomacy is crucial in much of the Pacific and particularly in Vanuatu, where Wong is being welcomed by the country’s most senior chiefs. She grimaces briefly as she swallows before smiling warmly at her hosts.

Wong is leading a bipartisan trip to the region where she has spent so much of her time as Foreign Minister, charming and cajoling counterparts to hold the line on China. “I’m used to it by now,” she says of the mild intoxicant that looks and tastes like muddy water but is shared as a gesture of peace and respect.

Michael McCormack crumpled after drinking a kava brew in the Federated States of Micronesia. Picture: DFAT

The same can’t be said for former deputy prime minister Michael McCormack, who is also on the trip, together with International Development and the Pacific Minister Pat Conroy and Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham. McCormack, the Opposition’s Pacific spokesman, crumples after drinking the brew two days later in the Federated States of Micronesia, requiring treatment for dehydration.

As well as Vanuatu and FSM they’ll stop in the Micronesian state of Palau. Wong went on similar trips with Coalition foreign minister Julie Bishop to Vanuatu in 2016 and Micronesia in 2018 before Wong’s immediate predecessor, Marise Payne, ended the practice.

“I was in Simon’s shoes then – I like this better,” she quips to Vanuatu’s foreign minister, Jotham Napat, after their bilateral meeting. She deploys the line several times during the trip. The affable Birmingham plays along as penance for the Coalition’s election loss. Napat is the perfect host, though he appears slightly overawed. Wong puts him at ease and he’s soon showing her photos of his daughter’s wedding.

When Labor came to office, security agencies warned that Vanuatu and the remote island nation of Kiribati were the two Pacific countries most at risk from falling under China’s sway after Solomon Islands, which signed a controversial security pact with Beijing in March.

Vanuatu owes nearly half its external debt to China and reports in 2018 that a Beijing-funded wharf could be used by the Chinese navy helped to spur the Coalition’s Pacific step-up.

The delegation led by Foreign Minister Penny Wong meet with the Vanuatu PM Ishmael Kalsakau in Vanuatu as part of a tour of the Pacific region. Picture: DFAT

But in a diplomatic turnaround, Wong and Vanuatu PM Ishmael Kalsakau, use the visit to sign a long-stalled security treaty between the countries. The legally binding agreement – just the second of its kind between Australia and a Pacific Island state – will establish an annual security dialogue between the countries and pave the way for closer policing, humanitarian and cyber co-operation.

Kalsakau’s election just over a month ago helped get the agreement over the line. Educated in New Zealand, he has taken a more cautious view than his predecessor of Chinese influence in the region.

Soon after inking the treaty on Tuesday, Wong is standing in the tropical heat, making a speech to officially hand over an Australian-funded wharf to the country’s police force. A shiny-new police boat also is being given to the small Pacific state, and it is moored on the opposite side of the jetty to Vanuatu’s Guardian-class patrol boat.

“We all have a responsibility to ensure that our sovereign decisions enhance the security of all members of the Blue Pacific, and we’re deeply proud to be the Vanuatu principal security partner of choice,” Wong says.

Not far away, a Chinese flag flutters on fishing boat – a reminder of the geo-strategic contest that has turbocharged Australia’s Pacific diplomacy and that of the US and Japan.

Wong falters as she delivers her speech to an audience of local dignitaries, many of them sweltering in dark suits and ties. She is losing her voice and pauses to ask an aide for a bottle of water. A week earlier in Washington she was rendered mute by a persistent bout of laryngitis until a doctor administered a steroid injection so she could deliver a major speech. “It’s what’s the rock stars use,” he assured her.

It was perhaps a fitting tonic for the veteran Labor minister whose punishing travel schedule since the party’s win at the May election would rival the relentlessly touring Rolling Stones.

Wong has visited so many Pacific Island countries in the past seven months, it’s easier to say where she hasn’t been. Of the current 17 Pacific Islands Forum nations, only Tuvalu and New Caledonia remain on her to-do list. Between regional trips, she has visited the US and Japan twice, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, East Timor, Brunei and Thailand.

The hectic schedule has eclipsed Payne’s.

To be fair, her predecessor’s travel was heavily curtailed by Covid-19 lockdowns.

But the Coalition’s ability to engage with Pacific nations also was hamstrung by its inability to reconcile its pro-fossil fuel stance at home with the region’s demands for the world to take climate change seriously.

“The change of climate policy has opened the door,” Conroy tells Inquirer. “The Coalition used all its political capital holding climate change at bay, they had nothing left for anything else.”

Birmingham concedes as much in Palau during a press conference with the country’s President, Surangel Whipps Jr, who says the effects of climate change are so serious “you might as well bomb us”.

The Liberal Party’s most senior moderate in the parliament says Australia’s long-running climate wars undermined the nation’s standing in the region, making it difficult to talk about the positive things Coalition was doing.

Simon Birmingham and Penny Wong during a meeting with Surangel Whipps Jr, president of Palau. Picture: DFAT

Birmingham says it’s important to heed the lessons of an election defeat, and as shadow foreign minister that means listening to the region as well as Australian voters.

“What’s clear to me from the few days that I’ve had from engagement with Pacific leaders, like President Whipps, is that it is critical for us to listen carefully and attentively to our Pacific partners, and not just to listen but to ensure that we act in concert with them,” he says.

The most important door opened by the climate shift has been to closer security engagement. The Pacific Island states have historically stood together to ensure they don’t fall victim to the will of larger powers. This tendency towards consensus is at the heart of Australia’s strategy to keep China at bay in the Pacific. Without regional unity, island states could be picked off by China, one by one.

Solomon Islands has opted for closer ties with Beijing, but the reaction of other Pacific Islands Forum members has been to stand more closely together to safeguard their sovereignty.

Federated States of Micronesia President David W. Panuelo has been a key player in cementing regional unity.

In May, Panuelo wrote a letter to fellow Pacific Islands Forum leaders warning that a Chinese proposal for a region-wide security agreement would hand Beijing control of the region’s ocean territory and communications infrastructure, and could lead to a new cold war between China and the West.

The letter was subsequently leaked, revealing the existence of the proposed deal. It sparked a diplomatic pushback by the US and Australia, and the forum’s ultimate rejection of the deal.

The Pacific Islands Forum later resolved to maintain “a family-first approach to peace and security”, effectively shutting out China from Solomons-style security agreements.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong with Micronesian president David Panuelo. Picture: DFAT

Panuelo says his is a nation that respects sovereignty and human rights, which require the rules-based order to prevail in the Pacific.

“We look after each other to make sure that forces from outside do not come and disrupt the peace and security of our region,” he says.

Palau’s Whipps has a similarly stanch view on the need for the region to stand together. He gestures towards a traditional men’s Bai house on Palau’s Koror Island that is covered with intricate designs, including a series of painted fish.

“You’ll see the surgeonfish in the middle of that Bai house,” he tells his guests.

“Surgeonfish are so important … They graze alone, but when there’s danger they come together, and that’s what we need to do. We are stronger together and this is what it’s all about.”

As Wong says repeatedly on the trip, it’s up to Pacific nations to choose “what sort of region we want”. While the Albanese government is taking tentative steps towards stabilising its relationship with China, it has no illusions over Beijing’s intentions in the region.

The relaxed Pacific diplomacy of 20 years ago is a distant memory and will never return. China will keep trying to find an opening for a permanent base or bases because that’s what the US has. Constant vigilance is required, and intensive diplomacy.

Australian Institute of International Affairs president Allan Gyngell, a former director-general of the Office of National Assessments, says no Australian foreign minister in 50 years has faced such a challenging set of circumstances.

“The ‘respectful listening’ to Australia’s neighbours that Senator Wong and her colleagues have promised requires greater energy and effort than relentless advocacy, but it is an essential foundation on which to build a successful foreign policy,” he says.

“The response to this approach has been universally positive, whether you are talking about large countries or small. Its effectiveness has been helped by ministers who have had the self-control to remain quiet when necessary and the discipline to deliver a unified message.”