“I think the only country, the only leader that can help carefully navigate that back together is Prime Minister Albanese.”
Campbell, who met with Foreign Minister Penny Wong this week, urged Albanese to be ambitious rather than cautious in any meeting with Trump, declaring it “a time to demonstrate Australian leadership”.
Trump speaks with reporters on the White House lawn. He criticised an Australian ABC reporter during the exchange.Credit: AP
“I think Australia can make an argument for the United States to continue to step up in the Pacific,” he said. “Australia cannot manage this enormous strategic competition alone.”
Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, told the same event that “a principal driving factor in the pan-regional disruption that we are facing is the rise and rise of China, strategically, militarily and economically.”
The failure to sign the defence treaty during Albanese’s visit to PNG is another setback in the Pacific after Vanuatu abruptly shelved plans to sign a security deal with Australia during his visit last week.
Difficulties in organising a quorum of PNG cabinet ministers during the nation’s 50th anniversary of independence celebrations delayed the finalising of the pact.
Albanese and PNG Prime Minister James Marape instead signed a communique agreeing on the text of the delayed treaty, which still needs to be approved by PNG’s cabinet.
Albanese sought to shrug off the delay by suggesting that the treaty could be signed within weeks during a possible visit by Marape to Australia in October.
“This treaty will elevate our relationship to the status of an alliance,” Albanese said, stressing it was PNG’s idea to strike the agreement.
“It will be Australia’s first new alliance in more than 70 years, and only the third in our entire history, along with the Anzac treaty with New Zealand and the United States.”
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Asked if the failure to sign the treaty on Wednesday was embarrassing, Albanese said that “we respect sovereignty and we respect the processes of the Papua New Guinea government”.
At a joint press conference, Marape was emphatic that China had played no role in delaying the treaty.
“This is in no way, shape or form Chinese have any hand in saying don’t do this,” he said.
“In fact, in the next two days or so, I will dispatch our defence minister to go first to China, and elsewhere – USA, France, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines – to inform all exactly what this is all about.”
Former PNG defence force commander Jerry Singirok said he had “no doubt” some of Marape’s cabinet members would raise concerns about the treaty, a document he argued has “serious sovereignty and constitutional implications” for PNG.
“We believe this was an ambush on behalf of the Australian government,” he told this masthead.
“I think Prime Minister Albanese wanted to do this secretly, taking advantage of the 50th anniversary. The proposed treaty undermines our constitution and our sovereignty and needs to be debated on the floor of parliament and taken to the public.”
Singirok added: “Becoming entangled with Australia’s alliance with the US is a big red flag … China is not a threat to us, it’s an economic partner.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian made a veiled criticism of the pact at a press conference in Beijing, saying: “China believes that any country’s co-operation with island countries should value their independence and push their development as priority, stay open and committed and not target any third party.”
Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Michaelia Cash and defence spokesman Angus Taylor said that “repeated failures in the Pacific are undermining Australia’s standing in the region”.
”The prime minister seems more interested in chasing the optics with signing ceremonies in the Pacific and photos opportunities, than doing the substance of the work needed to line these agreements up properly,” they said.
As this masthead revealed last week, the treaty includes a clause committing the two nations to “act to meet the common danger” in the event of an attack on either country, putting the relationship on par with Australia’s military alliances with the United States and New Zealand.
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To be known as the “Pukpuk Treaty” after the Pidgin word for “crocodile”, the pact would grant the Australian Defence Force unimpeded access to designated facilities in PNG and allow Papua New Guineans and Australians to serve in each other’s militaries.
Mihai Sora, director of the Pacific research program at the Lowy Institute, said: “This is as much a failure for PNG Prime Minister James Marape as it is for Albanese.
“Marape has invested years of political capital in the relationship with Australia. He wants to be the prime minister that ushers in a new age of deep strategic ties between PNG and Australia.”
While Albanese and Marape downplayed the delay as a logistical issue, Sora said that “the treaty clearly has its detractors in the PNG system” and that it “would be naive to imagine that China hasn’t been lobbying furiously against the deal”.
Joanne Wallis, professor of international security at the University of Adelaide, said: “The government’s inability to get either the PNG treaty or the Vanuatu Nakamal agreement over the line suggests it may have tried to overreach in the commitments it is offering to, and expecting from, its Pacific partners.
“The PNG cabinet has wisely chosen not to rush their decision, and I hope that their Australian counterparts take the same approach.”
Wallis added that the Albanese government “needs to explain far better to the Australian people the case for moving beyond the existing security agreement with PNG to a full treaty that will offer a security guarantee to a large, complex country that shares a challenging land border and is engaged in ongoing secessionist struggles”.
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