‘The Albanese Government’s Pacific agenda...aims to better integrate us with the region around us.’
Pat Conroy, Australia’s Minister for Pacific Island Affairs, August 2024.
Australia’s ambition to integrate with the Pacific is not new. It reflects a long-standing and bipartisan aspiration to knit Australian and Pacific economies, institutions, infrastructure and societies together. What is new is the pace, volume and depth of initiatives being pursued.
The past 18 months has seen the Falepili Union come into force, an expansion of the Pacific Engagement Visa scheme, an Australia-PNG National Rugby League (NRL) Partnership, the expansion of ABC Radio Australia across the Pacific, the Pukpuk Treaty, the Nakamal agreement (not yet signed) and the Pacific Banking Guarantee – to name just a few initiatives.
Each announcement has been met with a mix of celebration, condemnation or ambivalence, depending on one’s vantage point.
As geostrategic competition intensifies, these initiatives reveal natural tensions between strategic, economic, developmental and domestic political interests for Australia and its Pacific Islands partners.
This paper seeks to surface the tensions shaping Australia’s integration agenda to contribute to a clearer understanding of its priorities and assumptions, and to support a more explicit articulation of the end-state that integration is ultimately meant to achieve.
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