What the Pacific sees at stake in the Australian election

Climate policy, aid and regional respect hang in the balance.

Isabelle Zhu-Maguire

1 May 20254 min read

By the time the 2022 Australian election rolled around, the common wisdom was that then prime minister Scott Morrison had “stuffed up” Australia’s relationships with the Pacific Islands. Anthony Albanese pledged that a Labor government would “shore up” Australia’s position in the Pacific. In the days and weeks after the election, new Foreign Minister Penny Wong made repeated trips to the Pacific, promising the island nations that she was there to "listen”.

During this 2025 election season, Pacific issues have been well outside the spotlight in key debates. But Pacific Islands are still closely following the campaign, as they see a stake in Australian elections. Few will be as brazen as Papua New Guinea’s Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko in saying he would personally like to see Labor win, but that doesn’t mean they won’t have opinions.

Most obviously, there are differences in Opposition leader Peter Dutton and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s approaches to climate change. When Albanese became prime minister, Pacific leaders expressed optimism that he would push Australia’s approach to climate change in a more progressive direction. However, after his three years in government, Pacific climate advocates and leaders alike have expressed disappointment in the seeming stagnation in Australia’s climate policy. The approval of new coal and gas projects particularly rankles.

Yet the possibility of climate action with a second Albanese term still appears more promising than the prospects under a Dutton-led government. This is most evident in the Australian joint-bid with Pacific Islands to host the United Nations climate negotiations known as COP31, which Dutton has described as “madness” and said he would cancel if elected. This follows Dutton’s opposition to the 2023 Voice referendum, which proposed a new consultative body for First Nations Australians that prominent Pacific Islanders supported. Dutton has also pledged to do away with Labor’s focus on First Nations foreign policy, despite arguments that Indigenous rights are important to diplomacy in the region.

Samoa, November 2024 (Samuel Phelps/DFAT)

Dutton’s nuclear energy drive also cuts across Pacific attitudes. Dutton’s preferred path to mitigating carbon emissions is to build nuclear power plants, yet after the human and environmental toll of nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific, the region has staunchly rejected nuclear options in the Pacific.

Yet the nuclear question doesn’t only bedevil the Coalition. Labor is likewise committed to obtaining a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS pact with the United States and United Kingdom. AUKUS has barely featured in the election campaign, perhaps with neither of the major parties seeing an advantage in the issue, as the Lowy Poll has reflected a decline in trust for the United States under President Donald Trump. But the nuclear boats would be little appreciated in the Pacific.

More important to the security of the Pacific is aid and development. With USAID disbanded and funding mostly ceased, and the United Kingdom also cutting programs, the Pacific Islands will search for greater access to development funding.

It is clear that the Pacific Islands want to be listened to by Australia.

Australia remains the largest donor to the region. This should continue under the next government, given the common perspective in Canberra that the Pacific is an important and increasingly strategic neighbourhood. Indeed, the Coalition this week pledged to increase the loan total for the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific from $3 billion to $5 billion. Yet, as analysts have earlier noted, the Coalition made significant changes to aid delivery in 2013 without this being much debated prior to the election. The numbers will be closely watched.

Trade and migration questions also loom. With the introduction of Donald Trump’s tariffs, although since paused, Fiji received one of the highest rates internationally, 32 per cent, and even those Pacific nations in compacts of association with the United States were targeted. This will make access to Australian markets of even greater interest. With migration, and the eventual introduction of an Australian Pacific Engagement Visa, along with the more limited pathway for Tuvalu under the Falepili Union, the region will be looking for these programs to continue if not expand.

It is clear that the Pacific Islands want to be listened to by Australia. Dutton carries baggage from his role as a prominent minister in the previous government as well as his dismissive comments about “water lapping at your door” in rising sea levels, for which he has since apologised. Yet for all Labor’s rhetoric of regional engagement, commentators have expressed doubt that effective listening has occurred.

To be the “partner of choice”, the Pacific will judge the next Australian government on its genuine action to combat climate change, a generous attitude to aid and development, work to improve migration and trade pathways, and its ability to gain regional respect.

About the author

Isabelle Zhu-Maguire

Isabelle Zhu-Maguire is a PhD student at the Australian National University.

Topics

Aid & development Australia Pacific Islands