Australia admits failings in Pacific, vows to counter China’s influence

Australia has admitted it had not focused enough attention on its Pacific neighbourhood but vowed to make “long overdue” amends, amid growing Chinese influence in the region.

“I think we would have to accept some criticism,” said Australia’s minister for international development and the Pacific Anne Ruston on Friday. “We have perhaps not put as much attention and effort into our own region as we should of.”

In recent months, Ruston has been at the sharp end of trying to fix that – jetting to-and-from Australia and far-flung Pacific Islands, as part of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s “step-up” in the region.

The policy includes more aid, more security help, more diplomats working in the region and more face-to-face contacts.

It is, in large part, a response to Beijing’s growing economic, political and military activity in the region.

“I think we’ve had our focus gazed much further afield for a very long time,” said Ruston. “It has certainly, more recently, been forced to be refocused back onto our own region. That’s a good thing and it was certainly long overdue.”

While Australia effectively ignored the region, China has been doling out loans and investment and scooping up natural resources and telecoms contracts.

Ruston insisted Australia’s decision to develop security facilities in Papua New Guinea and Fiji was not the same type of militarisation some accuse China of embarking on.

“This is our region, this is our area, this is where we live,” she said. “However you see the security and sovereignty of our region the Pacific is extremely important to Australia.”

The minister said Australia was discussing “tens of billions of dollars to be able to get the Pacific up to the kind of development standard, that I think Pacific aspires to have for itself”.

Canberra has committed to some ambitious projects, like helping Papua New Guinea provide electricity to 70 per cent of the population by 2030. Today the percentage stands in the low double digits.

But that is an issue that has been complicated by Australian domestic politics – which sees Papua New Guinea almost exclusively as the location of a deeply controversial offshore detention facility.

“I think it is the challenge of the job,” said Ruston of balancing domestic and international issues, admitting that Australians have not been totally won over by the idea of long-term development help.

“I think one of the things that we’ve probably failed to do is to sell the message to the Australian public about why it is so important for Australia to assist, particularly our close neighbours in the Pacific.”

Many Australians see Pacific aid as money being taken from drought-hit farmers at home, instead of seeing the “huge value and benefit it is to Australia to have strong economies around it, the benefit to Australia to have secure and sovereign nations around it”, she said.