Pacific leaders meet in Tonga and support Pacific policing initiative

Leaders of Pacific nations held their annual meeting in Nuku’alofa in Tonga on Wednesday, with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese securing regional support for the Pacific Policing Initiative.

Albanese told reporters at the Pacific Island Forum that the initiative’s endorsement was a major objective of the meeting and that it will strengthen security in the region.

"This demonstrates how Pacific leaders are working together to shape the future that we want to see," he said.

The Tongan prime minister and incoming forum chair Siaosi Sovaleni welcomed the agreement.

"Tonga, like many foreign members, therefore, think that it’s really important to have a Pacific-led, Pacific-owned initiative that reinforces the existing regional security architecture," he told reporters.

The Pacific Policing Initiative (PPI) has three pillars; Up to four regional police training Centres of Excellence located in the Pacific; The Pacific Police Support Group (PPSG), a multi-country police capability; and a PPI Policing Development and Coordination Hub to be hosted in Brisbane, Albanese said in a statement.

There are more than 1,500 delegates from more than 40 countries at this year’s meeting of Pacific member states, all hoping to further their agendas in a region where oceans, resources and strategic power have grown increasingly contested.

Founded in 1971, the Pacific Islands Forum brings together 18 member states to discuss and coordinate responses to the issues confronting a remote and diverse region, who know that their countries, with populations as small as 1,500 people, attract more notice on the global stage when they speak with one voice.

Its leaders, from Pacific Island nations, some of them among the world’s most imperiled by rising seas, as well as Australia and New Zealand, have long been at the forefront of urging action on climate change.

For the first few decades of the forum’s existence, the annual meetings of its leaders largely escaped wider notice.

In recent years that has changed, regular forum-goers say China’s campaign of aid, diplomacy and security agreements with leaders across the Pacific has prompted a rapid expansion of the size and scope of the organization and its meetings.