The South West Pacific Heads of Maritime Forces (SWPHMF) met Wednesday in an exclusive meeting in Nuku’alofa, held at the Leadership Centre, Masefield Naval Base.
“This meeting is a chance for the heads of maritime forces to share knowledge, skills, and action plans to ensure the safety of the largest ocean in the world, the Pacific,” said Commander of Tonga Royal Navy Taniela Tuita.
This year is the seventh meeting of the South West Pacific Heads of Maritime Forces (SWPHMF) and second to be hosted by Tonga.
Under the theme, “Pursuing maritime security through information sharing and closer coordinates” Navy leaders from 14 members of the South West Pacific came for the meeting, as well as partner members and observers.
Component Commander Tonga Navy CMDR Tuita said the importance of having collective information from members of the South West Pacific maritime forces, especially to look at challenges with our ocean’s security.
“They came to testify on challenges, including climate change, trafficking drugs, and trafficking in humans, illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, and natural disasters,” he said.
Australia’s Chief of Navy, VADM Mark Hammond said that the South West Pacific Heads of Maritime Forces meeting is important for the economic security of our nations.
“This is one of the most important dialogues from a strategic sense that I get to attend. There is no economic security without maritime security for our nations.
“We have a lot in common with both island nations and the majority of the members of this forum… this dialogue is an important opportunity to discuss the challenges that we share, opportunities to partner together to resolve some of those challenges, and to strengthen the maritime security architecture in the region to assure economic prosperity,” he said.
“We’re a large island nation [Australia] but we’re still an island nation and we derive our economic well-being from the sea. Our ability to trade, the tourism that comes with being a coastal nation, and the seabed cables that connect us to the global financial system and the internet.
“Tonga, I think appreciates more than anybody after the underwater volcanic eruption. So I’d like to say that there is no economic prosperity without maritime security for our nations,” he added.
New Zealand’s Acting Chief of Navy, CDRE Andrew Brown said there’s importance in sharing and understanding information for better maritime security.
“Sometimes there’s almost too much information. So it’s a matter of understanding what information we have all got and how we share it and how it can be fused together to really assist with decision making. Because the South West Pacific is a very, very large area, and trying to gather information and put that together to inform decision making is a major challenge.
“The theme of information sharing is a very good opportunity just to discuss and table how we do that better,” he said.
CDRE Brown said that climate change should be treated as a threat to maritime security.
“Because all nations in the Pacific are seeing the impact of climate change, and whether that’s a physical impact on the rising sea waters, or whether that’s an impact on weather and so there’s more weather events etc. That has a roll on effect that affects a nation’s ability to be secure and be prosperous and that type of thing. That’s another challenge to a maritime country like New Zealand.”
CDRE Brown also elaborated on big security concerns in the South West Pacific, regarding the crimes involving illegal drugs and those types of things being brought into the Pacific or coming via the Pacific.
He said this meeting in Tonga is a first step to address these crimes on the Pacific Ocean.
“Well the first thing is like what we’re doing here, is to communicate together, information share. Have developed relationships with each other so that we are able to pick up the phone at any stage when there is a crisis and we know each other or we are partnering nations, that’s the first thing.”
“Then there’s lots of the information sharing that can inform an information decision making process like the foreign fisheries authority that information can be fed into them, and then they can start to know actually that illegal fishing is starting to move from this area to this area, and then we can work together to police that or provide a level of surveillance over that.”
CDRE Brown also noted the importance of our communications and information safety in relation to maritime security.
“We have so much data and communications that is occurring via undersea cables and the security of those cables, whether they’re impacted by weather or a natural event like what happened here, or whether it’s another nation trying to interfere, those data cables and undersea cables are really important. So that’s that linkage with patrol and looking after our oceans with our prosperity and economics.”
When asked about the great power rivalry for partnerships in the region, both Australia and New Zealand recognised the environment is increasingly challenging.
Australia’s Chief of Navy, VADM Hammond said, “I think our nation has observed that great power competition is increasing, that there is less certainty about the future in the security environment and that was certainly a key finding of our recent Defence Strategic Review and that was coupled with an assessment of strategic warning times, now a thing of the past. So I think the awareness of great power competition is increasing, but equally there is a very acute awareness of the sovereign rights of nations to determine their own future.
“So I think all of that is at play at the moment and Australia continues to partner with like-mindeds who want to preserve the peace, prosperity and security of our region in an environment that is increasingly challenging,” he said.
New Zealand’s Acting Chief of Navy, CDRE Brown said, “I think the great power intensification is starting to become more obvious but it’s not a competition and shouldn’t be a competition.”
“We should all be doing whatever a nation wants and that’s the most important thing about a forum like this. It gives a nation a voice to actually say what they want or need and then for another nation to say we can help you with that, in the right way. And so that’s New Zealand’s Navy stance. We’re here to listen, at a nation’s needs, not to tell them what they need. That’s important.”
The next SWPHMF meeting will be held in Fiji next year.
The first meeting was held in New Zealand in 2017.
The South West Pacific Maritime Forces includes Tonga, Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, New Caledonia Armed Forces (FANC), Kiribati, New Zealand, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor Leste, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
Partner Members including United States Coast Guard – 14th District and the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency.
Palau, Republic of Marshall Islands(RMI), and the Federated States of Micronesia were attending as observers.
There were also guests at the meeting, the Pacific Fusion Centre and the United Nations Office of Drugs & Crime