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Albanese and Rabuka drink cava.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese receives a traditional kava drink during a welcome ceremony alongside Fiji's Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka at the Grand Pacific Hotel in Suva on 6 July 2026. (Getty/Leon Lord)

Australia’s Pacific diplomacy is on a hot streak – will it last?

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6 July 20264 min read

Australia’s Pacific diplomacy is on a hot streak – will it last?

Australia’s Pacific diplomacy is on a hot streak – will it last?

Last week, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Vanuatu’s Prime Minister, Jotham Napat, signed the Nakamal Agreement (Opens in new window) in Canberra, a security pact that, among other things, bars foreign military bases from Vanuatu’s soil. Today, Albanese is in Suva, where he and Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka have signed not one but two new instruments: the Vuvale Union, elevating a long-standing partnership to treaty status, and a surprise mutual defence pact (Opens in new window), 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 is due to travel 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 (Opens in new window)), Tuvalu (the Falepili Union (Opens in new window)) and Nauru (the Nauru-Australia Treaty (Opens in new window)).

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 (Opens in new window) across three pillars – security, economics and people-to-people ties (Opens in new window) – 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 (Opens in new window) 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 (Opens in new window).

These are meaningful diplomatic wins for Australia in what foreign minister Penny Wong has called Australia’s state of “permanent contest (Opens in new window)” 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% named Beijing as having the most influence (Opens in new window) versus 33% for Canberra, a reversal of 2025’s result. The finding sits inside a broader souring on Albanese’s foreign policy: 54% now rate his government’s foreign policy performance (Opens in new window) 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 (Opens in new window), 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 (Opens in new window), leading a coalition that has spent the past nine months absorbing one blow after another. Two deputy prime ministers, Manoa Kamikamica (Opens in new window) and Biman Prasad (Opens in new window), 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 (Opens in new window)” 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 (Opens in new window).

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 (Opens in new window) 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 (Opens in new window) 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.

About the author

Connor Graham

Connor Graham is a Research Fellow in the Pacific Islands Program at the Lowy Institute.

Topics

Australia Fiji Vanuatu Solomon Islands