A week of awkward regional diplomacy for Australia

Canberra's South Pacific policing initiative and defence cooperation agreement with Indonesia seek to preserve the US-led order. But is blocking China really what other regional countries want?

- Hugh White

Last week was a busy time in Australia's regional diplomacy. On Aug 28 in Tonga, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese won agreement from Australia's small Pacific Island neighbours to a new Australian plan to coordinate and integrate police training and operations across the South Pacific. Then, a day later in Jakarta, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles signed a new Defence Cooperation Agreement designed to strengthen security ties with Australia's other close neighbour, Indonesia.

Both initiatives are squarely aimed at what has become the primary objective, and increasingly the only objective, of Australia's regional diplomacy. They are about resisting the Chinese challenge to America's place as the leading power in Asia, which Canberra regards as simply essential to Australia's future. But, in each case, the initiatives themselves and the atmospherics surrounding them only served to highlight the deep problems with this approach to the profound strategic transformation now under way in Asia.

They show how fruitless Australia's efforts to draw its neighbours into a coalition to support Washington against Beijing are proving to be.

Indeed, they risk becoming counterproductive by reducing Australia's influence and credibility at a time when relations with its neighbours will become more important than ever before as the role and weight of outside powers dwindle.

Let's start with the Pacific Policing Initiative, which was signed off at the annual leaders' meeting of the South Pacific Forum. It envisages the establishment of four specialist centres across the South Pacific to which all the forum members will be able to send their police for training, plus a "development and coordination hub" located in Brisbane which will allow Pacific police forces to draw on the resources of the Australian Federal Police.