Anthony Albanese opened treaty negotiations with Solomon Islands in Honiara on Tuesday, one day after signing a mutual defence alliance with Fiji in Suva, and a day after China's navy fired a ballistic missile into the same ocean.
The Suva agreements are two treaties: the Ocean of Peace Alliance, a mutual defence pact, and the Fiji-Australia Vuvale Union covering security, the economy and the movement of people, backed by more than $1 billion over a decade for policing transnational crime and education, as well as healthcare and infrastructure. The alliance is Fiji's first with any country and Australia's fourth, after ANZUS with the United States and New Zealand and the Pukpuk Treaty with Papua New Guinea, which enters into force this week.
The treaty text commits each side to act if either is attacked in the Pacific. An armed attack on one, it reads, "would be dangerous to each other's peace and security as well as the security of the Pacific", with each party to "act to meet the common danger, in accordance with its domestic processes". "The Ocean of Peace Alliance introduces a mutual defence obligation and there's no higher obligation than to come to each other's aid at a time of need," Albanese said in Suva.
What the announcement papers do not say is whether the money is new. Neither the treaty release nor the Suva press conference set out how much of the $1 billion is additional spending and how much is redirected from existing aid programs. The question is live because of the hole left by Washington: the Trump administration's dismantling of USAID from January 2025 stripped about $119 million in US-funded projects out of the Pacific, and Australia's last budget shifted aid toward the region to cover part of the gap.
China's timing sharpened the mood. Its navy test-fired a nuclear-capable long-range ballistic missile from a submarine into the South Pacific on Monday, with Canberra given only several hours' notice, AAP reported. "There is no doubt that this is a provocative act by China, which does destabilise the region," Albanese said. "What we need is less nuclear weapons, certainly not more."
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor, who has led the Liberal Party since February, backed the government's concern from Darwin. "This is not the way to a peaceful and stable South Pacific," he said.
In Honiara for Solomon Islands' independence day, Albanese opened negotiations with Prime Minister Matthew Wale, a longtime critic of the 2022 China-Solomon Islands security pact who took office in May. Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Pacific Island Affairs Minister Pat Conroy will lead the talks, which both governments want fast-tracked. Wale's own reading of the missile test was blunt. "China is a good friend of Solomon Islands, but this is not something a friend does," he said.
The Pukpuk Treaty takes effect this week and the Honiara negotiations now have a start date. What remains open is the accounting: how much of the new Pacific commitment is new money. The government has not yet said.
