In offering security and economic integration to the South Pacific, Australia is starting gently with small steps. The soft-and-slow approach to integration has the best chance of success, because South Pacific states will embrace the …
The Australian government has tabled the text of the security agreement it signed with (former) Solomon Islands prime minister Manasseh Sogavare during his visit to Australia in August this year. The agreement has been billed …
Australia spent years saying no to a central role in the mounting crisis in Solomon Islands. Then, in 2003, Canberra did a huge U-turn and led the intervention that ran for 14 years and ended …
Three things Australia didn’t want to do in the South Pacific came to culmination this year. Two of them were things Australia hadn’t wanted to do, but then changed its mind on. Having made the …
As Julie Bishop recently stated in a major speech on Australia’s relations with the Pacific islands, the region is ‘of great importance to Australia’ as ‘our nearest geographic neighbours’. Reflecting the region’s proximity, Australia has …