Australia's Approach to Solomon Islands Needs to Prioritize Local Needs Over Geopolitics

When Matthew Wale won a parliamentary vote to become Solomon Islands’ prime minister last month, the questions came quickly: What does this mean for Beijing? Is this good news for Australia? When will the new PM tear up the 2022 security pact with China, sever ties with Beijing and declare Australia Solomon Islands’ best friend in perpetuity?

This pervasive framing treats a change of government in Honiara primarily as a development in Australia’s competition with China – a mistake Canberra should not repeat when Wale arrives for talks with Anthony Albanese on Wednesday. The important question is this: how can Australia be the partner Solomon Islands needs?

Wale’s choice of Canberra as his first official destination is being read as a signal – proof that Solomon Islands is tilting back toward Australia. But the destination choice is probably less revealing than it appears. Wale’s predecessor, Jeremiah Manele, who was a central figure in negotiating the 2022 security pact and was among Beijing’s most reliable allies in Pacific politics, also made Australia his first stop as prime minister, visiting Canberra in June 2024.

It’s true that Wale has spent years as a thorn in the side of his predecessors’ China policy. He criticised the 2022 security pact as “counterproductive to the security interests of Solomon Islands and the region” and called for transparency on Chinese police deployments.

But that scepticism has softened considerably. He led a delegation to Beijing last year, his party affirmed the one-China principle, and he has said he will only “look at” the pact rather than dismantle it. His appointment of former prime minister Rick Hou as foreign minister over the more openly China-critical Peter Kenilorea points in the same direction: Wale intends to manage the relationship with Beijing, not rupture it.

Australia has been called out by Wale himself for viewing Solomon Islands primarily through a geopolitical lens. When Australia donated rifles to the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force in 2022 – widely understood as a counter to China’s own police engagement – Wale was direct: “It is clear Australia is anxious that if they do not supply guns the China will. Geopolitical interests have surpassed national interest in this country and it is a sad state of affairs”. He had previously warned that Australia risked behaving like an “ATM machine” – a partner that expected influence to flow automatically from transactions, rather than one that has invested in genuine trust.

The concern is not that Australia has been too present in Solomon Islands, it is that too much of that presence has been shaped by what Australia wants to keep China out of, rather than what Solomon Islands actually needs. Vanuatu’s PM Jotham Napat has recently made the same point, stalling Australia’s long-delayed Nakamal Agreement over language Vanuatu feared would undermine its sovereignty.

Australia has demonstrated it is capable of more effective partnership. Australian-supported health programs helped drive malaria in Solomon Islands down dramatically in the 2000s and early 2010s – by focusing on what Solomon Islanders needed rather than what signal was being sent to Beijing. That kind of investment builds the durable trust that security agreements alone cannot buy.

The model Australia should be reaching for is its relationship with Papua New Guinea. The Pukpuk Treaty, signed in 2025, is the most significant security commitment Australia has made in decades. What made it achievable was not the particulars of the security arrangement – it was the breadth of the relationship established underneath it, built on partnerships across health, education, infrastructure and sport. When PNG PM, James Marape, signed the treaty, he described it as a product of “geography, history, and the enduring reality of our shared neighbourhood” – not geopolitics. That framing reflected years of investment in partnership that Papua New Guinea felt it owned.

Wednesday’s meeting is an opportunity to start building something similar with Solomon Islands. Wale governs on a slim majority, managing a fractious coalition while confronting pressures that have nothing to do with Beijing – a young underemployed population, a buckling health system, a logging industry in terminal decline, and a public debt that has nearly tripled since before the Covid-19 pandemic. Wale has long advocated for free education and improved healthcare as the foundations of a more stable Solomon Islands.

An Australia that shows up ready to engage with that agenda – on education, health, economic diversification and climate resilience – rather than to leverage security cooperation against Chinese influence, is one that will earn the kind of relationship it is looking for.

Australia is already Solomon Islands’ largest development partner by a considerable margin. The question on Wednesday is not whether Australia gives enough – it is whether what Australia gives is shaped by what Solomon Islands needs, or by what Australia fears. Wale has told Australia the type of partner Solomon Islands needs. If Australia heeds the call, it will do more to secure the relationship than any amount of reactive China-proofing ever could.