Australian, island nations’ police to respond to Blue Pacific emergencies

FORUM Staff

A new multinational police force based in Australia will provide security for Blue Pacific nations while also serving as a deterrent to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) push to embed itself with law enforcement agencies in the region.

The $271 million Pacific Policing Initiative, underwritten by Australia, includes a new training facility in Brisbane and up to four centers across the Pacific for specialized regional training. Also included is the formation of a Pacific Police Support Group, a cadre of officers to be deployed to Blue Pacific nations during natural disasters, other emergencies and major events.

“By working together for security of the entire region, we’ll be much stronger and we will be looked after by ourselves,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said. “We will provide substantial long-term support to ensure that this initiative succeeds and delivers on the aspirations for our region.”

The 18-member Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) unanimously endorsed the proposal, including Solomon Islands, which signed a policing and security agreement with the PRC in 2022.

“The entire Pacific is the biggest unpoliced space in planet Earth,” Papua New Guinea (PNG) Prime Minister James Marape said during the PIF’s meetings in Tonga in late August 2024, according to news reports. PNG will host one of the regional training centers, Marape said.

Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni said it is “really important to have a Pacific-owned and Pacific-led initiative” to tackle increasingly serious crime. Blue Pacific countries frequently confront drug trafficking, illegal fishing and economic crimes across a region that includes millions of square kilometers of ocean.

“Most of the problems we face are regional problems … so it’s our responsibility to develop our own policing initiative,” Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said. “I’m sure it will succeed for our benefit.”

Australia and New Zealand have historically provided policing support to the region. Establishing a regional police presence took on greater urgency in February 2024, when Kiribati acknowledged that Chinese uniformed officers were in the island nation to assist with community policing and a crime database, Reuters reported. That followed the secretive, three-year police cooperation agreement between Solomon Islands and the PRC. Later, PNG rebuffed Beijing’s overtures for a similar arrangement.

“We do not believe importing security forces from the PRC will help any Pacific Island country. Instead, doing so risks fueling regional and international tensions,” the United States State Department said after the Kiribati-PRC cooperation became known.

Experts say such policing arrangements are part of Beijing’s strategy to expand influence in the region, including gaining access to economic markets and potential military sites that could threaten host nations’ sovereignty.

“The PRC is employing police to pursue its security interests in Pacific Island countries, particularly those that do not have a military,” Peter Connolly, an adjunct fellow at the University of New South Wales in Australia and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., wrote in a May 2024 essay for the National Bureau of Asian Research, a U.S.-based think tank.

PRC police advisors “are executors of China’s strategic intent. … A police presence is more easily normalized than a military one, can affect the local rule of law, and can generate greater influence and access within the host nation,” Connolly wrote.

“Furthermore, the expansion of China’s police assistance could exacerbate unrest or cede sovereignty to the PRC.”