Vince Connelly (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a real pleasure today to rise to speak about Australia's Pacific Step-up program, which is focused on building prosperity right across our region. It recognises that Australia is part of the Pacific family. I have some personal experience in this space as well, having deployed to Solomon Islands as the second in command of a company group which was the first infantry deployment as part of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands. You can imagine my excitement as a young newly promoted captain, having previously deployed as a platoon commander to East Timor, to be getting ready to go overseas and work in support of our region and its interests again.

We were pouring over maps and satellite imagery and looking at the different threat forces, but we were also looking at some of the region's history, some of the language and some of the culture. One of the things that we learned as we looked into both language and culture was the concept of wantok. 'Wantok' in Tok Pisin literally means 'one language', but it has a cultural meaning much more significant than that. It talks about the Melanesian cultural practice of relying on one wantoks—those who speak the language; those who can share in the good times and the bad. Ultimately, this was what Australia was doing at that point in time with RAMSI. We were being a good neighbour, being a good wantok. The name of that operation was Helpem Fren, which translates to 'helping friend'. That's certainly what we were there to do. This Pacific peacemaking and nation-building operation saw the deployment of about 300 police personnel, 1,700 military people and also a range of other personnel from nine countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, PNG, Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu, Kiribati and Cook Islands. As well as military and police, there were also judges, lawyers and bureaucrats because this was truly a holistic government effort to seek to provide security but also, once we did manage to arrest the criminals who were the cause of the unrest, be able to reliably prosecute and incarcerate them as well.

I was also pleased to lead the first outpost to the Weather Coast, which is a very remote area on the southern side of the island of Guadalcanal. I figured out why they call it the 'Weather Coast'; it rained for about the first 10 days and we struggled to keep ourselves out of water as we slept. It was an amazing opportunity to go and engage with local village chiefs and talk about why we were there, doing that hand in hand with the police and medical personnel as well. The outcomes were fantastic. We had a great deal of cooperation. In fact, we had people coming to hand in weapons. Overall, we collected more than 3,700 weapons, including about 700 high-powered military style weapons, and destroyed them. We did that quite publicly to send a message that no longer would violence be tolerated in these local communities.

Australia has always been a very close friend, a wantok, to our regional neighbours, but there's never been a more vital time for Australia to stand with our Pacific family than right now in the heat of the global pandemic of COVID-19. We've seen heavy impacts on the economies and the livelihoods of our Pacific neighbours. There are impacts on these communities, which are so reliant on tourism and on remittance flows. This has seen significant economic downturn. Australia's ability to respond has been increased because of Step-up, but we are also remaining agile and are adapting programs to suit. For example, we have seen the reconfiguration of our programs such as the Pacific Fusion Centre, which is now collating information about COVID-19 now and arming our regional decision-makers with that information, and our Pacific Women program, which is expanding support for crisis centres to provide frontline services, such as counselling for survivors of domestic violence. Also, there are new visa arrangements to support the workers who are unable to travel back home to ensure they can remain here in Australia for up to 12 months. Of course, we also have our $2 billion Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific. This is part of our very long-term objective to promote economic growth in our region. The Pacific Step-up has seen support for our enduring commitment to see economic development, security and prosperity with our wantoks.

Debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 13 : 30 to 16 : 00

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