Comment

Paul Bongiorno
Rivalry over the Pacific intensifies

Anthony Albanese could only nod his head when the host of the Pacific Islands Forum, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele, midweek told the assembled 18 government leaders that the “world around us is changing fast”.

Just a week earlier, Chinese President Xi Jinping emphatically demonstrated that the arrival of a multipolar world was no longer hypothetical, as Beijing hosted an extraordinary military parade celebrating not only the end of World War II but also of the United States’ unrivalled dominance.

Underscoring this new reality was the participation of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, feted like a newfound friend by Xi.

US President Donald Trump was left to view it all on TV from Washington, DC, and, by his own admission, to be “very, very” impressed by it.

Manele had a warning for any national leader in the room, or the external partners excluded to appease China, that no one had a special claim on the island countries.

“[C]ompetition among powerful interests is intensifying,” he said, “and the Pacific must never be seen as an arena for others.” The Solomon Islands prime minister added that those assembled were not “passive bystanders” but nations “bound by shared values and the Pacific way”.

“The Pacific way” is a pointed reference to the emphasis these countries give to consultation, consensus and mutual respect.

Challenging for Australia are indications of an emerging consensus that Beijing has as much, if not more, to offer the Pacific than Trump’s America – or its hitherto perceived deputy sheriff in the region, Canberra.

That hit home when Albanese’s Vanuatu stopover to seal the $500 million “transformative” Nakamal deal with the Pacific nation ended with the agreement left unsigned. Prime Minister Jotham Napat confirmed that members of his coalition government were concerned the wording of the document could prevent China or other nations from funding critical infrastructure.

A Canberra source believes Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, who initialled the deal last month in a striking ceremony atop a volcano on the island of Tanna, misread the situation.

Vanuatu has form playing hard to get. In 2022, its parliament did not ratify a similar agreement made with Napat’s predecessor, Ishmael Kalsakau.

The Australia Institute’s international and security affairs director, Allan Behm, says understanding the Pacific has not been a strong point of Australian governments.

Wong says it was under the Turnbull and Morrison governments that Australia missed the chance to be “partner of choice in the Pacific”. She blames “neglect” and climate change denial and says since coming to government Labor has put in a lot of work strengthening relationships in the region.

Behm, a former government foreign affairs adviser, believes it is a mistake for Australia to compete with China for influence. Rather, he thinks this country should attempt to offer assistance in tandem with the Asian giant.

“If China builds a stadium” – as it has in the Solomons – “then we should offer to build the road to it,” he says.

Behm agrees with former prime minister Paul Keating that Australia has to forge a more independent foreign policy stance that considers the new global realities.

“No one would believe the speed in which America has lost its economic and strategic pre-eminence,” he says, adding that it’s time for more self-direction in Australia’s national interests.

James Curran, a professor of modern history at Sydney University, offered a stark summary of the situation Canberra faces in The Australian Financial Review.

“With the United States, Australia confronts now a dramatically different ally, almost certainly forever. That must trouble a whole set of assumptions made over the past two decades concerning not only interoperability and interchangeability, but the very idea of American reliability in terms of war planning and conflict. Would Trump’s America even show up to a fight?”

At the Pacific Islands Forum it was China and not the US that provided cars to ferry government leaders around. Albanese bristled when he was reminded of this, dismissing it as a trivial observation. “Seriously, it’s a car,” he said, conveniently missing the point.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley says the significant military display “we saw from the Chinese Communist Party” is a reminder that we should step up engagement with regional partnerships. She said it was more important than ever to energise the Quad – the security partnership between the United States, India, Japan and Australia.

Ley seems to have missed the meaning of India’s prime minister attending the Beijing event. Trump has succeeded, with his heavy-handed treatment of India over tariffs and that country’s dependence on Russian oil, in driving the erstwhile rivals Xi, Modi and Russia’s Vladimir Putin closer together.

Trump had already indicated he was not attending the next Quad meeting scheduled to be held in India, and Modi is reportedly refusing to take Trump’s phone calls. Yet Ley says Albanese should “step up” as former prime minister Scott Morrison did and save the “vital” Quad.

Trump is no Joe Biden and security experts have great difficulty divining the president’s foreign policy – apart from narrow, wrongheaded commercial self-interest. James Curran says Trump “could very well lean in and seek a broader deal with China”.

Ley seems to have learnt little from Morrison and Dutton’s bellicose rhetoric against China and its electoral impact on Chinese–Australian voters. She tried to make the attendance of two former senior Labor figures at the Beijing victory celebration a mark against Albanese.

Neither former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews nor former foreign minister Bob Carr could claim to be representing Australia’s diplomatic interests, despite both sounding as if they were still in office. The government sent a low-level diplomat to represent it. Allan Behm believes this was a mistake as it did not show due deference to China’s status as a world power, let alone our biggest customer.

Albanese has steered well clear of demonising China, as he did in the past two election campaigns. In discussing the challenge of migrant numbers, he has avoided any hint, unlike Ley, of blaming migrants for putting “pressures” on Australian communities. This also distinguishes the prime minister from the Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, whose comments about the government’s migration policy favouring Indians as prospective Labor voters drew criticism in the past week. In defending herself, Price said it is perfectly legitimate to discuss “mass migration”.

Research by RedBridge Group states that of the top 50 electorates with the highest proportion of first- and second-generation migrants, only two are held by the Liberals, and by the slimmest of margins.

In the past decade the biggest migrant cohorts have been from China and India. The pollster, Kos Samaras, tells The Saturday Paper that analysis before the May 3 election found a large majority of Indian voters were supporting the Labor Party.

The reason prominently given in focus groups, Samaras says, had nothing to do with policy or class but, rather, the perception among these voters that “the Liberals don’t like us”.

In the seat of Mitchell, held by Alex Hawke, Ley’s numbers man and the manager of opposition business, the Liberals’ margin was slashed to 3.8 per cent. In Berowra, held by shadow attorney-general Julian Leeser, the margin is a mere 1.6 per cent – and that is in what was once among the party’s safest seats.

Little wonder Hawke called on Price to apologise to Indian Australians. In turn, she accused him of bullying her staff and being part of the Liberals’ “woman problem”.

Leeser didn’t wait for any contrition from Price over her conspiracy theory. He apologised on Monday to his electorate’s large Indian community.

Price has obstinately refused to admit she has anything to apologise for, despite Ley and Indian community leaders saying her comments caused hurt and, coming in the wake of the neo-Nazi organised marches of the previous week, also widespread fear.

Price’s defiance of her leader and accusations of intimidation and misogyny against a key opposition figure in Hawke are either extreme naivety or hubris. Either way, it has created the reality of a Liberal Party in disarray and split between its hardline conservatives and moderates.

Certainly that is the way Sky TV’s Peta Credlin characterised it, inviting Price on her show to berate the way Hawke and Ley have handled the situation. The host handed Price the chance to “regret” that her remarks were not clearer, while insisting there was nothing for which to apologise.

Credlin, who was Tony Abbott’s chief of staff as leader of the opposition and as prime minister, compared Sussan Ley unfavourably with former prime minister Julia Gillard. If Gillard had a problem with a colleague, Credlin said, she “picked up the phone”.

Ley did not hesitate to pick up the phone late on Wednesday, after Price continued to defy her call to apologise for the hurt her comments had caused to Australians of Indian heritage and also three times in a Perth doorstop refused to state confidence in Ley’s leadership.

Price, who must have known she was deliberately destabilising Ley, told reporters matters of leadership “are for the party room”.

That was more than enough for the Liberal leader. In a statement, she said “sadly” Price’s position on the front bench is “untenable”.

Price, defiant until the end, said she “had accepted the leader’s decision”, but signalled that she will now champion her extreme right-wing agenda from the back bench. That includes attacking activists who she says are “ignoring the referendum outcome” under the guise “of that Orwellian phrase, ‘truth-telling’ ”.

Price can be assured the full support of Credlin and other Sky News after dark commentators.

The question now is how long before they all urge Angus Taylor, or any other aspiring leader, to strike.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on September 12, 2025 as "Sparring partners of choice".

For almost a decade, The Saturday Paper has published Australia’s leading writers and thinkers. We have pursued stories that are ignored elsewhere, covering them with sensitivity and depth. We have done this on refugee policy, on government integrity, on robo-debt, on aged care, on climate change, on the pandemic.

All our journalism is fiercely independent. It relies on the support of readers. By subscribing to The Saturday Paper, you are ensuring that we can continue to produce essential, issue-defining coverage, to dig out stories that take time, to doggedly hold to account politicians and the political class.

There are very few titles that have the freedom and the space to produce journalism like this. In a country with a concentration of media ownership unlike anything else in the world, it is vitally important. Your subscription helps make it possible.

Send this article to a friend for free.

RELATED READING