Countries of the South Pacific have good reason to encourage China and other countries to assist them with infrastructure. And there is nothing that Australia should, or could, do about it.

But climate change is far more important

Vanuatu is reported to have knocked back a security pact with Australia because the pact would have given Australia a veto over Chinese support for infrastructure projects. Without naming China, Vanuatu Prime Minister Jotham Napat said members of his coalition government were concerned that the Australian deal would limit the country’s ability to strike arrangements with other countries to fund the development of critical infrastructure.

What arrogance for Australia to behave in such a way. No wonder the deal was not ready for Anthony Albanese to sign.

In 2022, the Solomon Islands struck a security pact with Beijing. Our Foreign Minister Penny Wong complained about the deal because it was kept secret. She applied a test to the Solomon Islands that she does not apply to the US. Asked whether US aircraft operating from Tindal could carry nuclear weapons, Wong gave us the usual play on words that the US “will neither confirm nor deny” that its aircraft are carrying nuclear weapons. But she expects South Pacific countries to tell Australia about their security arrangements.

We have a patronising view that the South Pacific countries are “family”, and that the region is our ” backyard”. Countries of the region are developing and asserting their independence, but we fail to recognise it. Add to that the anti-China hysteria of our own media who find China under every rock.

The assumption by our media, never spelt out, is that China will behave as aggressively and violently as the US has done for centuries in endless foreign wars. But China is not behaving that way. It does not militarily threaten the US and its allies. However, it refuses to accept the global hegemony that the US insists on for itself.

Western countries, including Australia, have exploited the South Pacific region for decades

Jerry Grey has pointed out that the region has experienced decades of land theft, resource exploitation, civil disorder, discriminatory legislation, labour abuses, forced migration of islanders out of, and foreigners into, the region. Think of our slave trade in bringing Kanaks to Queensland.

After World War II, parts of the area were devastated by the testing of nuclear weapons by the US, UK and France. Some parts became, and remain to this day, nuclear wastelands.

The Western colonial attitude continues with soothing words, but little real action on climate change and rising sea levels, problems caused overwhelmingly by rich countries such as Australia.

Climate change, not China, is the real threat in the South Pacific.

With their experience of Westerners, it is not surprising that many South Pacific countries seek improved relations with an emerging China.

The media beat-up a few years ago was the Chinese debt trap in the South Pacific.

In 2018, David Wroe in The Sydney Morning Herald warned us about a Chinese naval base in Vanuatu. It didn’t happen. The Vanuatu Government said it “was not aware of any such proposal”. It seems that the Vanuatu Government was interested in a new wharf for cruise ships.

With the same anti-China hysteria, Matthew Knott in The Sydney Morning Herald told us, without any hard evidence, but a clear inference, that a base in the Solomon Islands or Vanuatu would bring the Chinese military within just 2000 kilometres of the Australian mainland and upend the current balance of power in the South Pacific.

Knott’s claim to fame is that he was one of the seven who, almost three years ago, gave us the infamous Red Alert in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that we must be ready for war with China within three years!

But would the Chinese really want a military base in the Solomon Islands to threaten us? Did Knott ever think of asking himself that question instead of falling again and again for all the Washington inspired anti-China hysteria that is recycled through the Five Eyes?

In fact, the threat to Australia would be minimal because China would not be able to defend the 7000-km-long supply line back to China. And, in between, are two very large US bases in Guam and the Marshall Islands.

The worst that could happen is that China sees a military base in the region as a signal that the Pacific is no longer a US lake. But the military value to China would be minimal.

Independent countries in the South Pacific must find some satisfaction in playing China off against the US and Australia with our dubious records in the region.

The best way for Australia to establish legitimate influence in the region is not by acting as a proxy for the US military, but by negotiating with regional countries entry rights to Australia for their nationals for study, work, reside and to become Australian citizens. That is something that we can do, and China and the US would find very difficult.

As the late Percy Allan put it in Winning hearts and minds in the Pacific Islands:

“The best way for Australia to convince the Pacific Islands they are part of our family is to sign a Compact of Free Association with those too small to be economically viable and not aligned to the US or France. Such a Compact would give their citizens special entry rights to Australia in return for them not accommodating foreign military bases or security guards.

“That is something China could not match since indigenous islanders don’t aspire to live in Asia. On everything else, aid, investment, security forces, gratuities, etc., China can outbid us.

“There is nothing we can do to keep China out of the Pacific Ocean. It has freedom of navigation rights just as we insist our navy does in the waters off China. We do not recognise the East and South China Seas as belonging to China’s sphere of influence so we cannot expect China to accept the Solomon and Coral Seas and beyond as part of Australia’s and New Zealand’s patch.”

But most importantly, we must stop behaving like an overbearing and patronising colonial master.