LAST week, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Vanuatu’s Jotham Napat, signed the Nakamal Agreement in Canberra, a security pact that, among other things, bars foreign military bases from Vanuatu’s soil.
This week, Albanese was in Suva, where he and Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka signed not one but two new instruments: the Vuvale Union, elevating a long-standing partnership to treaty status, and a surprise mutual defence pact, the Ocean of Peace Alliance.
Australia’s run of success, and its alignment with governments in the region, can easily be disturbed.
From Fiji, Albanese traveled to Honiara, where he and the new Solomon Islands’ Prime Minister, Matthew Wale, will work to conclude a treaty of their own. These compound existing agreements with Papua New Guinea (the Pukpuk Treaty), Tuvalu (the Falepili Union) and Nauru (the Nauru-Australia Treaty).
Under Nakamal, Vanuatu will consult Australia on any third-party engagements with its critical infrastructure, though the agreement stops short of granting Canberra the outright veto it originally sought.
The new Vuvale Union elevates the 2019 Fiji-Australia Vuvale Partnership across three pillars – security, economics and people-to-people ties – with Australia committing to lift Fiji’s capacity on policing, prosecution and transnational crime.
Full details of the Ocean of Peace Alliance are yet to be released, but it is believed to include commitments to consultation on security-related developments and a mutual defence obligation, mirroring language in the Pukpuk Treaty. The Solomon Islands treaty is in an earlier stage, projected to be finalised by the end of the year. During Wale’s June visit to Canberra, his first international trip as prime minister, both leaders committed to a “comprehensive” arrangement promising a substantial enhancement of Australian development assistance.
Wale has also promoted a regional security pact – a concept to which Australia is open.
These are meaningful diplomatic wins for Australia in what foreign minister Penny Wong has called Australia’s state of “permanent contest” with China in the Pacific.
They also reflect a moment in which the region’s governments are broadly amicable towards Canberra.
Indeed, given what the government has secured in the Pacific this year, the Australian public mood looks out of step.
For the second time in three years, the Lowy Institute Poll has found that more Australians believe China holds greater sway in the Pacific Islands than Australia – 39 per cent named Beijing as having the most influence versus 33 per cent for Canberra, a reversal of 2025’s result.
The finding sits inside a broader souring on Albanese’s foreign policy: 54 per cent now rate his government’s foreign policy performance as “quite poor” or “very poor”, up 13 points since 2024.
Australia is moving with urgency, banking agreements with Fiji and Solomon Islands while the political window remains open.
But Australia’s run of success, and its alignment with governments in the region, can easily be disturbed. In at least two of the capitals involved, change may come soon.
In his address to the National Press Club in Canberra last July, Fiji’s Rabuka pushed for exactly the kind of treaty-level upgrade Australia has now secured. But Rabuka is heading into an election due by early February 2027, leading a coalition that has spent the past nine months absorbing one blow after another.
Two deputy prime ministers, Manoa Kamikamica and Biman Prasad, resigned within days of each other last October after being charged by Fiji’s anti-corruption commission.
Rabuka has since conceded his party was “caught napping” and needs to lift its game before the election. Analysts consider Rabuka’s re-election prospects as uncertain at best, with the greatest threat to his leadership potentially coming from inside his own party.
In the Solomons, Wale governs with a slim majority, leading a coalition forged just this year to oust former Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele. Since independence in 1978, only two Solomon Islands leaders have ever completed a full parliamentary term and no incumbent has ever been re-elected.
Not every leader is so exposed. Vanuatu’s Napat governs under constitutional reforms designed to end his country’s history of revolving-door governments and Papua New Guinea’s James Marape leads a comparatively settled administration. Nevertheless, Australia is moving with urgency, banking agreements with Fiji and Solomon Islands while the political window remains open.
Unlike personal rapport, treaties are built to bind the governments that inherit them, not just the leaders who sign them, and on that count, Australia is gaining ground.
But no treaty text can codify the political goodwill that brought Rabuka and Wale to the table in the first place. Vuvale, arriving barely a week after Nakamal, caps one of the most productive stretches in the history of Australia’s Pacific diplomacy – on paper. The real test of that influence will come with the inevitable leadership flux that will arrive within the life of these agreements.
Source: The Interpreter – Lowy Institute
