US President Joe Biden designated former Ambassador Frankie Reed as the first-ever US Envoy to the Pacific Islands Forum in 2022. Beijing appointed Qian Bo in February 2023 as Special Envoy for Pacific Island Countries Affairs. And now, Canberra has also deployed a special envoy to the region, even though Australia has diplomatic representation in every Pacific country and territory.
Ewen McDonald is Australia’s inaugural Special Envoy for the Pacific and Regional Affairs. He has a long record as a former High Commissioner to New Zealand and a senior career officer in AusAID and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). Now operating from Suva rather than Canberra, he also serves as Australia’s High Commissioner to the Republic of Fiji.
In an interview with Islands Business, McDonald highlighted the importance of his new role, at a time of geopolitical contest across the region.
“This is our first special envoy in the region,” he said. “It is equivalent to the most senior level of diplomacy we have anywhere, in Beijing, Tokyo, Jakarta. It’s a very strong reflection of Australia’s priority for the region and for regionalism.”
“In my previous role, I had a lot of relationships across the region, at leaders, ministerial and officials’ level,” he said. “By being in Fiji, where the Pacific Islands Forum is located, I’m able to maintain those relationships and bring more energy and priority. It enables me to go into the Forum, face-to-face, on a regular basis to build on those relationships with the Secretary General and others in the Secretariat.”
Following the election of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) government in May 2022, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Minister for International Development and Pacific Affairs Pat Conroy have visited every country and territory across the region. Since his appointment as Special Envoy last July, McDonald has also travelled to a range of meetings, from the Melanesian Spearhead Group summit in August, to the September 2023 US-Pacific Islands Forum summit at the White House and last November’s Forum leaders meeting in Rarotonga.
Before his appointment, McDonald served for more than four years as Head of the Office of the Pacific, created within DFAT in 2019 by the Coalition government led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
Designed to co-ordinate “whole of government” policy towards the region, DFAT staff in the Office of the Pacific were supported by secondments from the Department of Defence, Home Affairs, Attorney-General’s office, Treasury, the Australian Federal Police, and a range of other agencies and departments.
McDonald noted that his status as Head of the Office was important within the bureaucracy: “It gave the authority to meet the expectations of the government that we would act in a ‘whole of government’ way on its Pacific policy and implementation. When we needed to reach out to other departments from Foreign Affairs, that authority was there.”
This link between departments and agencies was shown with the 2021 decision to support the purchase of Digicel’s Pacific operations, rather than risk investment from Chinese competitors. The government guaranteed the bid by Australian corporation Telstra to buy Digicel’s telecom business in six Pacific countries: Telstra only paid a fraction of the purchase price in equity, while the remaining US$1.3 billion was contributed from Export Finance Australia, along with insurance guarantees.
During his time at the Office of the Pacific, McDonald said, “we were primarily working on the three pillars of security, economics, and people to people. It was a very demanding role when you look at some of the big things, we did like the Digicel deal, the policy work that was done, and a lot of changes to our funding.”
Re-defining security
Defence, security and intelligence co-operation is a central feature of Australia’s regional policy, shown with recent security agreements with Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu, the Falepili Union with Tuvalu, and financial support for the Pacific Fusion Centre in Port Vila.
Many people are concerned, however, that Australia’s engagement with the region is dominated by these security agendas and framed by Indo-Pacific geopolitics, rather than broader development priorities.
“We have an obligation as the largest country in the region to ensure that we are playing our part in the security of the region,” McDonald argues. “People will talk about AUKUS, but for us it’s very important for deterrence and diplomacy. We have a role in being able to maintain peace in the region and some of that requires us to play a role, not just on the diplomatic side, but also through deterrence.”
Forum Island Countries have sought to broaden the regional security debate, to include more focus on the human security and environmental security, as well as state security and transnational crime. The Boe Declaration, adopted at the 2018 Forum in Nauru, famously declared that climate change was “the greatest single threat to the livelihoods, well-being and security of Pacific peoples.”
Five years on, with massive resources allocated to AUKUS nuclear submarines, the France-Australia strategic partnership and the Five Eyes intelligence network, has Canberra got the balance right when it comes to allocating resources towards these diverse security priorities?
“There’s no doubt that there’s differences of views on the issue of security,” McDonald acknowledges. “The geostrategic challenge has increased significantly, but I think, in my opinion, it’s unfair to say that we’ve lost track of the climate aspect of the Boe Declaration.”
“The issues that we’ve just announced, such as funding for the Pacific Resilience Fund, show that Australia provided a lot of seed funding for design that allows it to be capitalised in the future. So now to put A$100 million into the PRF, to capitalise it, is a game changer here in the region. Australia was the key to that fund going forward. The thing about the fund is that it is owned by Pacific countries, which has never happened before, and we are integral to its success.”
Climate and the COP31 bid
Last month at the COP28 climate talks, Türkiye reiterated its bid to host COP31, competing with Australia to manage the Conference of the Parties in 2026.
At recent summits, Forum island leaders have reaffirmed their support for Australia’s bid. However, there are still significant voices from Pacific civil society, churches and climate ministers who are raising concern about Australia’s climate policy. They want more urgent action from the Albanese government to reduce fossil fuels subsidies, ban new coal, oil and gas projects and transition away from fossil fuel exports.
“I ask people to look at what we are actually doing,” McDonald said. “I know people want us to go fast, but we are going as fast as we can. I think there is genuine effort to transition our economy at the moment: that’s why we’re passing legislation and that’s why we are putting more money into adaptation as well.”
McDonald notes that “at COP28, our team and our minister have been standing very strongly with the Pacific on phasing out fossil fuels. The language that we negotiated at the Pacific Islands Forum is the language that has ended up in the [COP28] communiqué. I’ve had a lot of discussions where Australia’s transition is explained: the legislation of our [emissions] targets, the clear effort we are putting into clean technology, the funding we are putting behind that as well. I explain to people that we can’t transition economy like Australia’s overnight.”
Despite this, time is short to keep 1.5 alive and it’s obvious Australia’s shift away from fossil fuel emissions and exports is being slowed by mining and energy companies. Controversial COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber, the chair of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), received extensive criticism for hosting the global climate talks at the same time his company plans to double oil exports by 2027. According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Australia exports nearly three times as much fossil fuel as the United Arab Emirates every year. Will the Albanese government face similar criticism for climate hypocrisy?
McDonald stresses that Canberra is committed to working with Forum Island Countries to design the summit if Australia wins its COP31 bid: “We would design this COP and have input into this COP in partnership with the Pacific. The value of that is to bring people to the region, to see first-hand the challenges facing people around climate change.”
International development
As a former Deputy Director of the development agency AusAID, McDonald sees the aid program as a crucial part of regional engagement: “In the past, I’ve had a big role in development and I know how important it is to what we do.”
Last August, the Albanese government launched a new International Development Policy, setting the long-term direction for Official Development Assistance (ODA) with pledges of new spending and “a commitment to long-term growth of the development program.”
“The government’s new development policy is the first in nearly 10 years,” McDonald said. “It provides A$1.7 billion additional funding over the next five years, which is pretty important. It also brings in quite a rigorous evaluation framework and brings back a strong emphasis on poverty. It is underpinned by two strong thematic principles, around gender and climate, which are central to the development and well-being of Pacific countries.”
The aid program has seen significant changes over the last decade, after AusAID ceased to exist as a separate entity in November 2013, under the conservative Liberal/National party Coalition. The integration of AusAID into DFAT was difficult, with many people in the development community using words like “take-over” rather than “merger.” In 2014, the Coalition government slashed nearly 20% of the aid budget in its first budget, speeding up the privatisation of aid and increasing the role of corporate consultants in aid delivery.
“When the transition or integration happened, we did lose a lot of development capability at that point, but we also maintained some of our very good people as well,” he said. “A lot of the people involved in contracting now are those that have previously worked with AusAID. The most important thing for me is that we are measuring the performance of what we’re outsourcing, getting the value for money that we expect.”
Climate finance
Members of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) are calling for industrialised nations to urgently ramp up climate funding for adaptation, mitigation and addressing loss and damage. So where will the finance
Current climate finance from Australia is mostly drawn from the ODA budget, but Australia’s ranking among donors has fallen from ninth highest (1995) to 13th (2013) and then to 27th (2022), the fourth lowest amongst Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations. The 2023-24 budget papers suggest ODA funding will stabilise – but not increase – over the next decade. In 2025, however, OECD countries are supposed to ramp up their target for climate finance, having already failed to meet the 2020 target.
Last month, Climate Minister Chris Bowen announced that Australia would provide A$50 million to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the first contribution since 2014.
In its early days, Ewen McDonald served as Co-chair of the GCF Board for three years. During that period, he says, “we worked hard to leverage funds for the Pacific, but it was very hard to get the funding out and there are some examples where it took many years. People have said we should rejoin, so we’ve done so in a modest way until we can see whether the GCF can be simplified in terms of simplification of access, but also that the Pacific is getting the focus it deserves.”
At COP28, Australia also announced a $100 million contribution to the proposed Pacific Resilience Fund (PRF), a regional structure designed for easier access to funding for adaptation, resilience and loss and damage.
“The difference between the GCF and the Pacific Resilience Fund is that we know the PRF funding is going to the Pacific,” he added. “It will be grant funding in a simplified mechanism that enables funding to come out for small projects. In addition, we are putting in place eight Climate Access Advisors across the region to help them access these funds.”
“In the new development policy, there is quite a substantial bit of funding for leveraging private sector investment in the region, which I think is really important. The government has shown again through the money its putting into buying down risk for the private sector, we do want private sector investment, and we do want philanthropic investment in the region.”
In contrast, the Australian government is yet to commit funding to the new Loss and Damage Fund, initiated at the opening ceremony of COP28.
“In terms of loss and damage, we will be funding some projects out of the Pacific Resilience Fund,” McDonald said. “To be honest, I think that what we want to do is to have a look at the Loss and Damage Fund as it develops, so that we are assured that operationally it’s going to come out into the region. In the future, if we see that occur, we’ll give it some consideration.”
Security trade offs
At a time of US-China strategic competition, McDonald told Islands Business that “the geostrategic challenge highlights some of the areas that are important around policing and defence for the sovereignty of the region, and we’re responding to what the region is asking of us.”
He highlighted the new Falepili union between Australia and Tuvalu, signed by Prime Ministers Albanese and Natano at November’s Forum in Rarotonga. He noted the treaty has been “released into the public domain”, a not-so-subtle contrast to the China-Solomon Islands security treaty.
The ratification of the Falepili Union by Tuvalu will be contingent on the make-up of Tuvalu’s next Parliament, as people vote in national elections on 24 January. Tuvalu opposition leader Enele Sopoaga has been sharply critical: “The initiative was never consulted with the people of Tuvalu, nor was it ever raised in Parliament. It is not a climate change response. It is ceding Tuvalu sovereignty to Australia. It reverses Tuvalu’s political status to that of 45 years ago.”
McDonald disagrees with these criticisms, noting “Tuvalu came to us requesting an elevation of our relationship. Part of that is up to 280 visas to seek residency in Australia each year. Another important aspect was around the security guarantee, when the country needs support around a disaster or something that concerns them around their sovereignty that we could have people come and support them.”
Whether it’s bidding to host COP31 while maintaining fossil fuel exports, or spending A$368 billion on nuclear submarines as atoll nations desperately seek climate finance, there will be ongoing tensions around Australia’s regional priorities. Facing these challenges, Special Envoy McDonald has quite a workload as Australia expands its role in the region.
