The Pacific Islands Forum and Australia's backyard diplomacy

Australia tends to think of the Pacific as its backyard, a phrase that Pacific Island leaders have sometimes pointed out reflects a rather particular view of the relationship. The Pacific Islands Forum, the main intergovernmental organisation in the region, brings together Australia, New Zealand, and more than a dozen Pacific nations in a body designed to coordinate on trade, security, climate, and economic development. How that forum works, and where it has run into difficulty, illuminates both the possibilities and the limits of Australian influence in its own neighbourhood.

What the Pacific Islands Forum does

The Forum, established in 1971, provides a platform for Pacific leaders to meet annually and reach collective positions on issues of regional concern. Its secretariat, based in Suva, Fiji, coordinates work across a range of areas including fisheries management, trade agreements, climate finance, and regional security. The Forum has produced several significant regional frameworks, including the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations and the Biketawa Declaration, which provides a framework for regional responses to security crises.

The Forum is not a powerful supranational body. It operates by consensus, and its ability to compel action by member states is limited. Its significance lies mainly in its role as a platform for shared positions, a vehicle for collective advocacy at global bodies such as the United Nations, and a space for the Pacific voice to be heard in dialogue with larger partners including Australia and New Zealand.

Tensions within the Forum

The Forum has faced genuine internal tensions. In 2021, several Micronesian members temporarily withdrew following a dispute over the selection of the organisation's secretary-general, a crisis that was ultimately resolved but that exposed underlying divisions between Melanesian, Polynesian, and Micronesian sub-regions. Climate change has also produced friction: Pacific Island nations that regard insufficient global climate action as an existential threat have at times been frustrated by what they see as inadequate commitment from Australia, the Forum's largest economy.

China's growing presence in the Pacific has been a significant new variable. Several Pacific nations have signed security and economic agreements with China in recent years, prompting Australia and its partners to sharpen their own engagement and funding offers. The competition for influence within the Forum framework and through bilateral relationships has intensified, and Pacific leaders have shown they are willing to use this strategic interest to extract better development terms from multiple partners simultaneously.

Australia's approach and its limits

Australia is by far the largest economy in the Forum and its largest aid donor in the Pacific. It has significant diplomatic and security presence across the region and has defence cooperation agreements with several Pacific states. In recent years, Australia has increased its Pacific engagement substantially, including through a dedicated Pacific-focused foreign policy framework and increased climate finance commitments.

Yet Australian influence has limits. Pacific leaders have made clear that they expect to be treated as partners, not dependants, and that their priorities, particularly on climate and sovereignty, deserve to be taken seriously on their own terms. The 'Pacific Way' of decision-making by consultation and consensus sits uneasily with the more transactional approach that tends to dominate major-power diplomacy.

What it means for Australia

The Pacific is the one region where Australian foreign policy decisions have the most immediate and direct effect on neighbours. How Australia manages its Forum relationships affects its broader reputation as a regional power, its security environment, and the welfare of Pacific communities with deep family ties to Australia. Getting Pacific diplomacy right is not a peripheral concern; it is central to what kind of country Australia is in its own neighbourhood.

The bottom line

The Pacific Islands Forum is a modest institution with an outsized role in Australia's diplomatic life. The competition for regional influence has made the Forum more important, and the expectations Pacific Island leaders bring to it more demanding, than at any point in recent memory.

This article was compiled by AI and screened before publishing. See our editorial standards.