Australia’s policies toward the Pacific will continue to be primarily driven by China’s resurgence, no matter who is elected. Commentary by Tess Newton Cain When Solomon Islands and China signed a security agreement during Australia’s last national poll in 2022, they upended a tradition that foreign policy generally gets minimal bandwidth during election campaigns. Assuming there is no such disruption this time around, we can expect little or no mention of Pacific policy as voting day draws near. If there is a change of government on May 3, regional engagement could look quite different in the next three years. Australia’s prominence in the region as the largest provider of development assistance and primary security partner means the results could have significant impact for the Pacific. Even more so with the uncertainty of what the U.S will do under the Trump 2.0 administration. With the election called, Australia’s media will be dominated by the ‘horse race’ between the two major parties: the Labor Party, currently in government led by Anthony Albanese and the Liberal/National Party (LNP) opposition led by Peter Dutton. There is a widespread belief their largely bipartisan agreement regarding the Pacific will continue, driven by a shared commitment to containing and constraining Chinese influence in the near neighbourhood. This as China remains by far Australia’s largest trading partner. Labor has made much of its engagement with the Pacific, including that foreign minister Penny Wong visited every member country of the Pacific Islands Forum in the year after the 2022 election. It also accelerated the previous LNP government’s ‘Pacific Step-up’ policy with its ‘Pacific plan’, which saw a shift to signing transactional, bilateral agreements with a heavy geosecurity orientation. It started with the Falepili Union with Tuvalu in 2023, offering climate change-driven resettlement of citizens to Australia in exchange for a security veto. One of the biggest deals was last year with Papua New Guinea. Australia will spend US$378 million (AUD$600 million) to bring a PNG rugby league team into its national NRL competition. In exchange, PNG must not talk with China on security matters. Speaking recently at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Dutton stated that if he becomes prime minister, “I want Australia to again be the clear and natural partner of choice for Pacific nations.” However, what that looks and sounds like could be another step change from what we have seen and heard in the last three years, most significantly on climate policy. The LNP has been highly critical of Labor’s moves to increase Australia’s ambition when it comes to reducing carbon emissions and shifting to a greener economy. The Pacific too has been critical of Labor, but for falling well short of what the region wants to see from their Pacific Islands Forum counterpart. One of Dutton’s policy platforms is to build nuclear power plants in seven, yet to be disclosed, locations across the country. If this were to proceed, one of the main impacts would be coal-fired power plants scheduled for closure will remain open for longer, until the dream is realised, and new coal mining projects will likely be approved. This won’t go down well in the Pacific islands region. Last year, Tuvalu’s President Feleti Teo stated: “To put it plainly – it is a death sentence for us if larger nations continue to open new fossil fuel projects.” In addition, Pacific island countries – notably Kiribati and Marshall Islands – are consistently unnerved by talk of introducing nuclear technologies into a region still living with the impacts of their colonial atomic legacies. In June, the Conference of the Parties (COP) is due to announce where next year’s global meeting will be held. A joint bid from Australia and the Pacific is up against a rival proposition from Turkiye. Whilst it hasn’t received much media attention, under Labor preparatory work has been ongoing between Australian and Pacific officials and experts to shape what an ‘Oceanic’ COP31 would look like. Nevertheless, Australia has been accused by climate activists of paying “lip-service” to climate action to secure the U.N. summit. Speaking earlier this month the LNP’s spokesperson on climate change refused to back the COP31 bid, telling AAP, “Our priority is to get costs down for everyday Australian households and businesses, that’s what matters most. Labor’s priority is hosting a global climate change summit.” Dutton’s personal credibility is low in the Pacific, where people still remember his tasteless joke about water “lapping at the door”. That was in 2015, so is likely seen as ancient history by the Australian media and political insiders. But in the Pacific, people have long memories. As of last week, the proportion of Australian development assistance directed to Pacific work has reached its highest level ever. The Pacific under Labor now receives 42 percent of the overall aid budget, totalling US$1.37 billion for the 2025-26 year. Whilst the aid budget increased by 2.7 percent compared with last year, it remains flat in real terms. Under previous LNP governments, the aid budget was cut time after time, leading to Australia becoming one of the least generous members of the OECD-DAC grouping. We have yet to hear what Dutton’s plans for the aid budget are, but there are already murmurs of concern, including from among his own party members, that there will be cuts to fund increased spending elsewhere, including in defence. This is a valid concern given what we have seen in other countries such as the USA, the UK, and Germany in recent years. Whilst LNP backbenchers are lobbying Dutton to resist going down the path of aid cuts, it is noticeable that this is being viewed through a geopolitical lens. It is about the avoidance of ceding diplomatic and influence space to China. Whatever the shade of Australia’s next government, policies toward the Pacific will continue to be primarily driven by China’s resurgence, rather than by the development needs of the people of the region. One thing we could expect, if it is a Dutton/LNP government, the transactional approach taken by Labor toward the region would at least be maintained, if not amplified….PACNEWS Tess Newton Cain is a Principal Consultant at Sustineo and adjunct Associate Professor at the Griffith Asia Institute. She is a former lecturer at the University of the South Pacific and has over 25 years of experience working in the Pacific islands region.