KIERAN GILBERT:
A number of government Ministers have made visits to the Pacific to keep the momentum going behind Australia's engagement with the region. One of those is the Assistant Treasurer, Stephen Jones, who's in Vanuatu for a Pacific Island Forum meeting of the region's Finance Ministers. I joined him a short time ago, where I began by asking him about the economic resilience of the region following the tourism industry drying up during the pandemic.
STEPHEN JONES:
That's right. They've been hit by the double whammy of the COVID crisis which led to the closure of borders. The flow‑on effect of supply constraints right throughout the economy. Everything from the cost of fuel to building supplies, pushing inflation up and their traditional ability to be able to rely on tourism and foreign remittances from their workers working in places like Australia or in Asia have been cut off as well. So a big job to turn things around. Like Australia, they ran up a significant amount of debt over the period of COVID just to support households and businesses and the economy. But throughout the region there's a sense of hope, there's a sense of unity, a desire to want to focus on those near‑term challenges, but also to focus on the existential challenge of climate change and what it means to our Pacific neighbours.
GILBERT:
I know you've been in several talks already today, including with your Fiji counterpart. Is the industry, is tourism surging back? Now that we're sort of at the back end of the pandemic?
JONES:
The first thing to say about our friends in Fiji is that they are incredibly grateful for the support that Australia provided to them through the height of the pandemic, particularly the work we did in ensuring they had access to vaccines, which made all the difference. They had a priority of vaccines over any other sort of support because they knew that when the worst of the pandemic passed, they would be a priority destination again for Australians. And the good news is they're anticipating 12 per cent growth over the next twelve months and their hotels are choc‑a‑block full of tourists. Lots of them are from Australia.
GILBERT:
Yeah, that is good news. On the climate front, though, I'm sure this is raised with you repeatedly by your counterparts in the Pacific, but it's not just about ambition. Now they're also dealing with efforts to adapt and mitigate against the impacts of climate change already.
JONES:
Yeah, look they're in the front line of it, it's severe weather events, it's seawater inundation, it's an existential crisis for many of our Pacific neighbours. They know that we have a new approach, that we want to take the issue seriously, that we want to work in partnership with them. It is both an environmental and an economic challenge. So mitigation is a critical part of it, but also transforming our economies. And many of these are emerging economies and they have capacity, if you like, to skip over a bunch of the stages of development that we went through to go straight to renewable energy, for example, ensure as they develop their economies, they do it in a sustainable and a cleaner way. And many of the attractions of our friends and our neighbours in the Pacific is the beauty of their natural environment and they are going to have the potential to develop their economies in a way that sustains the beauty of those natural environments.
GILBERT:
We have seen in our region, obviously China increasing its influence right now, showing a great deal of aggression in responding to that visit by Nancy Pelosi. Has that come up in your talks with the Pacific Finance Ministers?
JONES:
Obviously regional security and regional relationships has come up in the discussions that we're having at the Forum. I guess the message I'm getting loud and clear is that our Pacific neighbours want to have a partnership with Australia. They see us as the partner of choice across economic and social and environmental areas of cooperation. We share culture, we share history, we share religion in common, a passion for the same sports. So we have so much more in common and if we've dropped the ball in the past, there is a real sense right across the region that Australia wants to engage as a peer and to be spending a lot more time listening and working with our neighbours instead of talking to them or talking at them. Listening, working with them to deal with our shared challenges. Whether they are national security challenges, economic challenges or environmental challenges. We share so much in common and there's a real sense of understanding of that.
GILBERT:
Has there been evidence that you've picked up of that Chinese influence that they have clearly tried to build over recent years?
JONES:
Oh look there's no doubt that China is attempting to expand and indeed has expanded its economic influence throughout the region and they're attempting to expand that into other areas as well. But the thing that is very clear to me and my engagements and with my colleagues as well, is that our Pacific neighbours want engagement around shared values, democratic values, cultural values. They don't want to be told how their future is going to play out. They want to ensure that they have self determination, they're able to chart those futures for themselves and develop in a way that they believe is best in their national interests and they want to engage with a democratic country which understands that and wants to work with them to achieve those shared aspirations.
GILBERT:
Yesterday, the Chinese Ambassador said that China is not planning a military base on the Solomons. I asked him that at the Press Club. He was definitive on that and in fact said he wants to work with Australia, that China can work with Australia in the Pacific. Is there scope for that? It seems hard to imagine right now, given how tense things are.
JONES:
There were lots of mixed messages in that address yesterday. But if one is the take out, is that there is a desire by the Chinese Ambassador in Australia for us to work more cooperatively, then that is a message that we will grab with both hands. We want to ensure we have cooperation. We want to ensure that we have a deeper level of understanding. There are a bunch of things that we are just not going to agree on. We should be upfront about those, spend most of our effort, most of our attention on the things that we can agree on and minimise the areas and the risks of misreading, miscalculation. So as the Foreign Minister said this week, dialling down the pressure on some of this so we don't get into the territory of inadvertent is in everybody's interest.
GILBERT:
And when you refer to your engagement, the government's engagement, Australia reaching out to the Pacific more and more, are you trying to create that contrast with the behaviour of the giants in our region, China particularly with that recent aggression over Taiwan? Are you trying to show that this is the way we operate versus okay, that's the sort of influence you might get there?
JONES:
The Prime Minister in the lead‑up to the election identified a huge problem in our relations with the near Pacific and he wanted to do something about it. He saw that that was in our national interest by security, diplomatic, our economic interest as well. So it's for that reason, and that reason alone, that within the first fortnight, both himself and Penny Wong were on a plane to repair our relationships and put our best foot forward. And the message that he sent and the Foreign Minister is sending to every member of the government, is that this is a whole of government activity. It's not just at the pointy end of the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, but there is a need for deep engagement across every Minister, every Ministerial portfolio, because that's what friendship looks like and that's what partnership looks like.