ADJOURNMENT

Senator SHOEBRIDGE (New South Wales) (19:46): I and my party, the Greens, are very concerned about the way in which this government, the Albanese Labor government, works in the Pacific, forming partnerships in the region with our Pacific neighbours and friends not with a deep commitment to share peace but with a 'divide and conquer' mentality. The 'blue Pacific Ocean of peace' has been discussed for years by civil society and governments within the Pacific.

The Blue Pacific Ocean of Peace Declaration covers nuclear disarmament, demilitarisation and the addressing of climate change. Instead of seeing Labor work with countries across the region to deliver on that vision, we have instead seen Labor hijack the term and start applying it in their own terms. They did it recently in the defence agreement with Fiji.

In that agreement, reached without any of the broader Pacific community in the room, the Albanese Labor government did real damage to the concept of the blue Pacific Ocean of peace without ever passing it through the kind of forum-wide negotiation and consultation that the original proposal was meant to represent. We now see this framework of 'divide and conquer' abusing concepts such as the blue Pacific Ocean of peace to strongarm individual agreements with our Pacific neighbours and friends and place them in a defence context, ignoring the underpinning drive of nuclear disarmament, demilitarisation and addressing climate change that was behind the very concept from the start.

These arrangements are increasingly being made with a handful of elites in some of these countries and ignore the broader civil movement and the support given to those concepts behind the Blue Pacific Ocean of Peace Declaration. The Pacific Women Mediators Network said: You can't talk about peace with simply saying that it is the absence of violence or conflict.

We have to talk about peacebuilding in the operationalisation of the Ocean of Peace Declaration, and that has been clear for us from the start. It is critical that the future or the operationalisation of the Ocean of Peace Declaration through the Pacific Islands Forum needs a stronger focus on peace building in practice, not simply from seeing peace through a traditional security or militarised lens, but through a civilian lens, through a civil society lens, through a people-centered lens.

Pacific historian Marco de Jong said: … regional civil society asked for a peace centre, but maybe they got a military base instead. This has, in effect, shifted the focus of the Declaration itself towards deterrence, and the countering of China through military means. We need to listen to these voices.

At the Pacific Islands Forum, there was another meeting that went ignored. Our Pacific island neighbours from Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front of New Caledonia, who come together in the Melanesian Spearhead Group, came together and called on Indonesia to allow an independent investigation by the United Nations's human rights commissioner into West Papua.

Last month I met with West Papuan activists right here in parliament, and I was joined by other by some of my other colleagues, including Senator Scarr. They detailed heartbreaking stories facing military persecution and being forcefully driven from their homes. Indonesia is a partner to Australia.

We are neighbours. We have mutual interests. But friends tell hard truths to each other, and we should be calling out human rights abuses when we see them.

The least we can do is to join our Pacific neighbours in the Melanesian Spearhead Group and support that independent human rights investigation in West Papua. I want to be clear: what's happening in West Papua is a disaster, not just for West Papua but for the world—the largest single deforestation and displacement crisis in our region—and there must be more than silence from our government.

I want to finish today by actually listening to what our Pacific neighbours are saying, what they said at the Pacific Islands Forum and what they're saying about us as a neighbour. Vanuatu's minister for climate change, Ralph Regenvanu, at the Pacific Islands Forum responding to the UN report on global heating, said: Loss and damage are a reality that currently exists in my country, in the countries represented here.

It will only accelerate with any overshoot, encompassing economic and non-economic losses that no finance can fully restore. … Our lands, our ancestral lands, our heritage, our identity. … Australia is not doing enough. So the very least a country like Australia should be doing is stopping future expansion and it's not doing that. You need to stop expansion.

You need to start transitioning away. Friends, partners, neighbours—we listen and we should respect. It's not politics for the Pacific; it's about survival.