Australia Pacific big brother or big bully

The Australian government has used its diplomatic weight in the Pacific to divide small island states in their efforts to lobby for climate action, according to a report by Greenpeace endorsed by former Pacific leaders that has been launched at COP26.

In a forward to the report, Pacific Bully and International Outcast, Anote Tong, a former president of Kiribati and an elder statesman of both Pacific and climate change politics, criticises the commitments Australia brought to the climate summit.

Former Kiribati president Anote Tong says the changing climate policies in Australia and New Zealand have been “a huge source of disappointment for us”.Credit:Jason South

Attending the talks without improving Australia’s comparatively low 2030 emissions target or rejoining the global climate financing effort it abandoned does not “reflect a genuine or meaningful contribution to addressing this existential threat,” he writes.

“The one weakness in the force of our campaign [for global climate action] has been the lack of unity in purpose with the larger members of our Pacific family. It has been a huge source of disappointment for us to witness the constant changes of climate policies with the eddies of political parties in power, in both Australia and New Zealand,” he writes.

At COP26 in Glasgow this week, Scott Morrison announced the Australian government would boost Australia’s climate finance commitment, aimed at helping Pacific and South-east Asian neighbours with the effects of climate change, by $500 million to a total of $2 billion.

Morrison told reporters that the money would not be provided to the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund, which signatories to the Paris Agreement committed to supporting.

“Now, we’re not putting this through our worldwide institutions or other groups like this,” he said. “We’re doing this because we want to make sure that the climate finance investments that Australians make are being invested in our backyard, amongst our Pacific Island family, and amongst our south-east Asian partners and friends.”

Former Tuvalu prime minister Bikenibeu Paeniu writes that since he became the first leader to sign the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change at Rio de Janeiro in 1992, Australia’s position on climate change “has not changed and may even be getting worse when it comes to climate change”.

“In those days I used to think of Australia’s climate change diplomacy as highly un-human â€" in other words, it had no Pacific human face in it,” he writes. “Sadly, it is still the same today.”

“I used to think of Australia’s climate change diplomacy as highly un-human”

Bikenibeu Paeniu

The report alleges that as far back as the Howard government, Australia sought to weaken climate language in communiques at regional forums, and that in Pacific Islands Forum meetings in 2015, 2016 and 2019, it again attempted to use its power and its aid money to block regional consensus on emissions reduction.

It alleges that in 2019, the Australian government tried to change the first clause of the Boe Declaration on Regional Security, which was signed in the Boe region of Nauru in 2018. The Greenpeace report alleges Australia objected to the wording that “climate change remains the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific”.

It further claims that Australia “greenwashes” its aid by claiming that general aid programs are related to climate efforts.

The report quotes former Labor Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Gareth Evans as saying that Australia’s “credibility in all sorts of ways depends on our being seen to be responsible, good international citizens and Australia is putting that reputation very much at risk on the climate front”.

In a statement, a spokesperson from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the Pacific Islands Forum operated on a basis of partnership and consensus, underpinned by “open and respectful” exchange of views between members.

Australia would continue to respect the confidentiality of forum meetings, including the annual leaders’ retreat, they said.

Australia was proud to join two declarations that called for urgent climate change action, which reaffirm climate change remains the single greatest threat to the peoples of the Pacific, they said.

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Nick O'Malley is National Environment and Climate Editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He is also a senior writer and a former US correspondent.Connect via email.

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