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Labor will be unveiling its plan to tackle China’s growing influence in the Pacific by lifting engagement in the region and challenging the country’s expansionism after criticising the current Australian Government over the Sino-Solomons security pact.
Under the plan, which is to be unveiled on Tuesday, the ABC would get $8 million a year to deliver Australian content to Pacific nations.
Aside from this, a $6.5 million Australia Pacific Defence School will also be set up to help train personnel from the country’s regional neighbours.
The plan comes as two new opinion polls show Labor in a winning position ahead of the May 21 election.
Labor foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong stated that diplomatic and soft power initiatives, as well as defence partnerships, should be key to Australia’s relationship with the Pacific.
“What we have to do is leverage Australia’s strengths and our strengths are our closeness, our proximity, our people-to-people engagements, our cultural ties,” she said.
Senator Wong said Labor had consulted with Pacific partners while developing the plan, but would not confirm how many soldiers would be trained in the defence school per year.
Under Labor’s Pacific broadcasting and publishing initiative, content into the region will promote “Australian identity, values, and interests”, while partnerships and training with Pacific journalists will be strengthened.
Increased funding for the public broadcaster is one of seven key points in the party’s plan to step up in the Pacific.
The ABC cut its shortwave transmissions into the Pacific five years ago, which Senator Wong said was the wrong thing to do.
Funding for aerial surveillance under the Pacific Maritime Security Program would be bolstered by $12 million a year to help Pacific nations guard against illegal fishing and drug smuggling.
The election promise will be unveiled on Tuesday by senior Labor members who say the prime minister “dropped the ball” in the Pacific after a security pact was inked between the Solomon Islands and China.
Security experts fear the deal could lead to a Chinese military base, although both nations have denied this, with a Chinese spokesman saying overnight such speculation was “fake news”.
Senator Wong said Labor’s plan focused on Australia’s strengths to restore it as a partner of choice in the Pacific.
“China has more money than Australia does to put into development assistance or other forms of infrastructure grants and the like … but the whole package is designed to leverage Australia’s strengths,” she said.
“We have to play our best game, not try and engage with others in their game. And of course, this isn’t a game, this is about shoring up our region in the face of a very aggressive and assertive China.”
Meanwhile, the latest Ipsos poll shows Labor leading the primary vote by 34 points to the coalition’s 32.
On a two-party preferred basis, 50 per cent would vote Labor and 42 per cent the coalition, while eight per cent of respondents were undecided.
With AAP
Eliza Sayon is an experienced writer who specialises in corporate and government communications. She is the content producer for Public Spectrum, an online knowledge-based platform for and about the Australian public sector.
