Australian Opposition’s Support for Beijing’s Pacific Ambitions Comes to Light

Deputy Leader of the Opposition Richard Marles addresses a media conference in the press gallery at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on Dec. 7, 2020. Sam Mooy/Getty Images

Just months before Beijing signed a contentious security deal with the Solomon Islands, the Australian Labor Party’s deputy leader, Richard Marles, it has been revealed, advocated for the Chinese regime’s involvement in the Pacific.

The comments from Marles, who is the former parliamentary secretary for Pacific Islands Affairs, were unearthed by The Australian newspaper on April 22 and comes as the opposition centre-left Labor Party ramps up its attack on the governing centre-right Coalition for its handling of Pacific relations.

Beijing has recently concluded a security deal with the Solomon Islands government that will allow the Chinese regime—with the consent of the Solomons—to dispatch police, troops, weapons, and even naval ships to “protect the safety of Chinese personnel and major projects in the Solomon Islands,” based on leaked pages from the document.

Experts have warned the deal could open the door for rapid militarisation of the region, and extend the reach of the People’s Liberation Army from the South China Sea to the South Pacific—a strategically critical position just 1,700 kilometres (1,050 miles) from the northern Australian city of Cairns.

Police stand guard outside parliament in Honiara, Solomon Islands on Dec. 6, 2021 Mavis Podokolo/AFP via Getty Images

In a mini-book published in August, Marles wrote that any action Australia took to deny Beijing access to the Pacific on strategic grounds would be a “historic mistake.”

“Australia has no right to expect a set of exclusive relationships with Pacific nations,” he wrote in “Tides that Bind: Australia in the Pacific.”

“They (Pacific island nations) are perfectly free to engaged on whatever terms they choose with China or, for that matter, any other country,” he wrote.

In a 2019 speech to the Beijing Foreign Studies University, Marles said he was aware of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) growing role in providing aid to Pacific nations.

“Let me be crystal clear: that was and has been a good thing. The Pacific needs help and Australia needs to welcome any country willing to provide it. Certainly the Pacific Island countries themselves do,” he said.

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“To define China as an enemy is a profound mistake. To talk of a new Cold War is silly and ignorant,” he also said.

The deputy leader’s speech was delivered at the height of the Trump administration’s U.S.-China trade war and followed the decision by the Australian government under former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to block Huawei’s participation in the 5G network in 2018.

Australia was also coming to grips with several incidents of CCP-backed foreign interference, which contributed to the downfall of then-Labor Senator of New South Wales Sam Dastyari.

Current Prime Minister Scott Morrison has seized on the comments.

“The person who would want to be deputy prime minister in a Labor government, Richard Marles, actually was advocating for the Chinese government to do exactly what they are doing,” he told Channel Nine on April 22. “I find it outrageous that Labor would criticise us when their own deputy leader was actually advocating what the Chinese government has been seeking to do in our region.”

Marles himself stood by the comments, saying it did not contradict Labor Party policy.

Deputy leader of the Australian Labor Party, Richard Marles at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia on March 29, 2022. Martin Ollman/Getty Images

“Well it’s a statement of fact, but the point here is this: Australia needs to earn the right to be the natural partner of choice,” he told Nine’s Today show. “We are in a strategic contest with China. We win in the Pacific and we win that by earning the right to be the natural partner of choice.”

The Labor Party has blamed the current Australian government for the situation in the Solomon Islands, however, Peter Jennings of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said it would be of little consequence which party was in power.

“This is not a problem of Australia’s making,” he told Sky News Australia. “It is the making of Prime Minister (Manasseh) Sogavare of the Solomon Islands, who I think many people would agree, appears to have been co-opted by the Chinese.”

“There’s a lot of speculation around Honiara that there is a great deal of Chinese money washing around the elites in the country, and I don’t think that that’s unconnected to the agreement that’s now been struck.”

Corruption has plagued the national government, with Erin McKee, the U.S. ambassador to Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu, warning in December against the misuse of aid funding following violent protests that saw the Chinatown precinct in Honiara razed.

“I ask you to decide for yourself what type of development and future you want for you and your families. Do you want aid that benefits one person, one party, and one bank account?” she said in a statement.

The protests were the culmination of ongoing dissatisfaction with the Sogavare government over issues such as poor service delivery, bribery, and weak economic development.

“Natural resources are removed from our islands, and our people are poorer after that,” according to a statement from Matthew Wale, opposition leader of the Solomon Islands. “No tangible sustainable development has resulted from this exploitative economy. The country’s wealth goes overseas through unrestrained transfer pricing, aided, and abetted by the country’s leaders.”