Australia lacking a clear Pacific vision, says Richard Marles

Australia has not articulated a strategy for ensuring security in the Pacific or for helping its development, says Labor.

Opposition defence spokesman Richard Marles says Australian needs a deeper relationship with the Pacific region. Picture: Kym Smith

Labor defence spokesman Richard Marles has warned that Australia offers “at best a holding-pattern policy in the Pacific” that is devoid of vision and lacking in the leadership expected from a partner of the US.

In a damning critique of Australia’s Pacific strategy delivered overnight to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Mr Marles warned that Australia’s policy risked leaving rising Chinese ­influence unchecked and reflected the Turnbull government’s strategically limited outlook.

Mr Marles suggested improvements could be made by allowing Pacific nations access to better economic opportunities and fostering tighter co-operation, including in defence.

“We have not articulated a ­vision for the region, a strategy for ensuring its security or assisting in its development, and in the process the US looks at us with bemusement,” Mr Marles said.

“While aid is important, it is better access to our economy and a more imaginative way of co-operating on government service delivery, including defence, which will change development realities in the Pacific.’’

Mr Marles said that deeper engagement in the Pacific was the “one opportunity” for Australia to provide leadership within the context of the “alliance relationship with America”, but warned Australia was failing to step up.

“As America effectively offers its strategic weight in the service of our leadership, in return we offer at best a holding-pattern policy in the Pacific,’’ he said.

The critique comes amid growing concern over Chinese expansionism and heightened fears it could push ahead with a new military base in Vanuatu, less than 2000km from Australia. While Vanuatu and Beijing have denied plans to push ahead with a military outpost in the South Pacific, Mr Marles warned the “very idea of it must be a wake-up call for Australia”.

“The nations of the Pacific want to partner with us but not if we assume the partnership is by right,” he said. “Our relationship with Vanuatu is also about our relationship with China and in turn America.’’

Mr Marles argued for the ­Pacific to assume the same importance in Australia’s strategic calculus as the US and China.