Vanuatu deal is significant but a harbinger of what's to come in the Pacific

Although a big moment in diplomacy, the Vanuatu agreement has come at a clear reputational cost to Australia. (ABC News: Adam Kennedy) Link copiedShareShare articleOn a cold, slate grey Sunday afternoon, Vanuatu's Prime Minister Jotham Napat and his delegation huddled in a courtyard within Canberra's historic Hyatt Hotel, far from the tropical islands of home, to be welcomed to country. The prime minister was preparing for a big day. On Monday, Napat was due to meet Anthony Albanese in Parliament House to sign the Nakamal Agreement, a sweeping strategic pact with sharp financial and strategic consequences for his country, in front of a bank of cameras. But there was something the delegation had to do before that. After the Welcome to Country from indigenous leaders, Chief Peter Marcel, from the island of Tanna, stepped forward and conducted a klinim fes (cleaning face) ceremony. There are slightly different interpretations about exactly why Vanuatu wanted to do this, and precisely what Napat and his team wanted to convey. The klinim fes is a ceremony of reconciliation, and not one undertaken lightly. Australian officials clearly saw it — at least in part — as a gesture of apology, after months of negotiations which veered between merely prolonged and the genuinely torrid, and which briefly exposed Albanese to ridicule after he travelled to Vanuatu for a signing ceremony that never actually happened. One person on the Vanuatu side — who might have their own complaints about Australia's conduct throughout the whole saga — suggested it was less about who was right (or wrong) and more about clearing the air. But either way, the underlying message was crystal clear: it was time to wipe the slate clean. And there were certainly plenty of resentments to clear away. The Nakamal Agreement is a sweeping strategic pact with sharp financial and strategic consequences for Vanuatu. (ABC News: Lilyrose Welwel) Those who have followed Australia on its long and difficult journey towards the Nakamal Agreement — its first ever comprehensive strategic pact with Vanuatu — have been around countless blind corners and run up against many dead ends. It started with the ill-fated (and short-lived) 2022 security pact, which gave birth to Nakamal 1.0 negotiations which hit the roadblock of the aborted signing ceremony. Then there was a public stoush over China's police programs in Vanuatu, before hitting more controversy as Beijing's own pact with Vanuatu heaved into view, running roughshod over a last-minute visa controversy before circling back, finally, to Monday's signing ceremony. After all that, the tension in Canberra in the lead-up to the signing ceremony (finally!) was palpable and information was very tightly held. Memories of the prime minister's embarrassment last year left plenty of scar tissue, and nobody wanted to do (or say) anything that might disrupt the carefully laid plans, or expose the government to ridicule should there be another last-minute disaster. News of the visit started to percolate ever so slowly around Parliament House almost two weeks ago, but officials busy planning it quickly clamped down when asked about it. One response, rather terse: "I absolutely cannot talk about that." More theatrically, a fourth person said they'd been specifically threatened with "horrible consequences" if they spoke to any journalists or other denizens outside the knot of need-to-knows. The "permanent contest" in the Pacific is not losing any intensity. (ABC News: Lillyrose WelWel) But the most common response was total silence. Foreign diplomats used to getting at least snippets of information from helpful Australian colleagues complained they were totally frozen out. A media briefing planned for the Friday before the prime minister's arrival was rather hurriedly cancelled (or, more charitably, pushed back). Even the prime minister's stripped-back announcement of Napat's visit, issued on Saturday, did not contain a single mention of the Nakamal, only bland assurances about how both leaders would take the opportunity to progress the relationship. The mood in Canberra has shifted markedly now the agreement is signed, and the deal is done, with a palpable sense of triumph and relief among those who led the charge. It will take years to judge the full impact of the Nakamal Agreement on the ground in Vanuatu. But there are three quick observations worth making in the slipstream of the whole controversy. First, the "permanent contest" in the Pacific is not losing any intensity. China's presence in the Pacific is often viewed in the context of geopolitical tension and rivalry. But Chinese people have been in the region for generations — these are their stories. There's no (public) evidence that China expended any serious energy or political capital trying to block Australia's landmark strategic pacts with small island states like Nauru or Tuvalu. In Vanuatu, the contest was more live, and the stak

Vanuatu deal is significant but a harbinger of what's to come in the Pacific

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