Australia builds on ‘momentum’ with fresh Pacific deal
Anthony Albanese heads to Fiji to sign a landmark agreement as Australia and China face off in a diplomatic battle for influence in the Indo-Pacific.
The Prime Minister will arrive in Suva on Sunday and is expected to sign the Vuvale Union agreement with his Fijian counterpart Sitiveni Rabuka on Monday.
He will then travel to the Solomon Islands on Tuesday to advance negotiations on a new agreement with Honiara as part of a three-day Pacific tour.
The stormy tour of diplomacy does not end here; Mr Albanese will meet Narendra Modi in Melbourne later in the week.
India’s prime minister will spend three days Down Under starting Wednesday for the annual leaders’ summit between the two countries.
Meanwhile, Mr Albanese will be the first foreign leader to attend Solomon Islands’ Independence Day celebrations.
His message will be that Australia is a country the Pacific can trust.
Newly elected Solomons Prime Minister Matthew Wale made his first international trip as a leader to Australia during his visit to Canberra in June.
He, who is also president of the Pacific Islands Forum, has signaled his country will review the controversial policing agreement signed with China in 2022.
Mr Wales also called for a Pacific-wide security agreement, which he said Australia was open to pursuing.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who will also join the Pacific tour, has previously described Australia as “permanently competitive in the Pacific”.
Engaged in a diplomatic “knife fight” with China for regional influence, the Albanian government has since signed a series of security and economic agreements with Pacific Island countries.
The most recent of these is the $500 million Nakamal Agreement signed with Vanuatu, which prohibits the use of its territory for foreign military bases.
The deal collapsed last September after Port Vila raised concerns its sovereignty would be undermined by Australia’s veto of major foreign investment in critical infrastructure.
Canberra signed a historic mutual defense agreement with Papua New Guinea, called the Pukpuk Treaty, and with the world’s leading Falepian Union, a historic mutual defense agreement with Tuvalu, allowing its people to settle in Australia.
Lowy’s Pacific Program director Oliver Nobetau said Mr Albanese’s visit would be important and that he had built “momentum” with regional leaders.
“Albanese sees that this is a permanent challenge, despite all the internal pressures, and he is willing to take these steps, make these commitments and build these relationships in the Pacific,” he told AAP.
“Permanent competition, that’s a good framework because it doesn’t allow anyone to take things for granted as to where the good faith of the relationship is.”
Under the Nakamal Agreement, both Australia and Vanuatu committed to support dialogue on the dark historical practice of blackbirding, in which thousands of Pacific Islanders were forced to work and live under harsh conditions on plantations in Queensland.
They were brought from countries in the region, including Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Fiji.
Mr Nobetau said that unlike China, Australia faced “obstacles” due to its colonial past and image in the region.
“When we saw the mention of blackbirding, that was a very important step in seeing how mature these relationships could become,” he said.
Before traveling to Fiji, Mr Albanese will address the annual NSW Labor Conference in Sydney on Sunday morning.
