By Tuesday, 16 September 2025, 7:33 Am Opinion: Binoy Kampmark

Copyright scoop

Bullies, never able to hit upwards, always kick down. The
United States beats their vassals in the Indo-Pacific and
Europe with vulgar presumption. Their vassals kick down to
their own appointees, expecting compliance and respect to
various degrees. Australia, long known as Washington’s
regional deputy sheriff, looks down on its Pacific Island
neighbours as basket cases for charity, potential enclaves
for terrorism, and vulnerable to the temptation of rival
powers. The language of a relationship falsely described as
friendship is better seen as one of financial asymmetry,
strategic use and a mockery trapped in the formaldehyde of
colonialism. Australians are both confused tourists and
mercenaries in the region – and it

On the sidelines of the 54th
Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Honiara in the
Solomon Islands, Australian officials had made it clear that
all Pacific Island media would have no role in covering the
September 10 press conference with Australian Prime Minister
Anthony Albanese, held, with boisterous irony, at a sports
facility funded by the People’s Republic of China. Papua
New Guinea’s National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) was
told that “the presser was only for Australian
journalists.”

When he was asked by an
Australian journalist, Stefan Armbruster, about the bar on
Pacific journalists attending the press gathering, the
words, delivered with snotty indifference were: “I don’t
know what you are talking about mate.” Armbruster
expressed his dissatisfaction with the whole matter, insisting
that this had “to stop and Pacific journalists treated
with respect.”

The Fijian Prime Minister, Sitiveni
Rabuka, tried to soften matters by assuming
that this was an entirely Australian matter, and therefore
something for the Australian Prime Minister and his coddling
minders. Landlords, it would seem, must have their day,
while native scribblers should repair elsewhere. “The
press conference was his so his press people would have made
that arrangement, and they might have restricted access to
it, and it’s got nothing to do with the Pacific Island
Forum.” The Fiji
Sun was less accommodating, complaining that “the
exclusion was both confusing and detrimental to the
representation of regional media.” The decision threatened
“to reinforce a narrative that Australia is more focused
on controlling its own story than on being a responsible
regional partner to Pacific communities.” Rarely has a
paper been so relevantly sharp.

On September 12, the
Pacific Freedom Forum released
a message condemning the exclusion. “This
‘shameful’ act represents a direct assault on press
freedom and democratic principles within our Pacific
region,” complained the PFF chair from the Solomon
Islands, Robert Iroga. “You cannot claim to be part of the
Pacific family while silencing Pacific voices. You cannot
talk about partnership while blocking journalists from doing
their jobs. This cannot happen in our region, at our own
forum.” He went on to fume that, “The decision to
restrict media access exclusively to Australian outlets
while excluding regional journalists demonstrates a
troubling disregard for transparency and democratic
accountability.”

Appositely enough, these complaints
mirror a state of constrictive circumstances that affect
Australia’s own relationship with the United States, the
paternal bully and Freudian Daddy Canberra struggles to do
without. Australian officials do little to enlighten the
press corps in their country about what, exactly, is going
on with such momentous agreements as AUKUS, or the next
security bash with America’s uniformed finest.
Canberra’s near criminal expenditure on nuclear powered
submarines that Australia will never have with any degree of
autonomy, in exchange for bolstering US naval shipyards and
creating imperial naval hubs in Australia for deployments
against China, is something that the Albanese government
remains silent about. Their preference is to do things in
plain sight.

Better information, without
exception, is always to be found in the US State Department
and the Pentagon. The US intelligence facility in Pine Gap
in the Northern Territory, ostensibly described as a jointly
run outfit with Australian personnel, does nothing to inform
the residents of the territory, or of Australia, about its
role in maintaining US hegemony. Guest lists to events on
the base rarely feature locals, and certainly not the local
political representative. The facilities have, with little
doubt, been used for such unsavoury acts as
directing drone strikes against areas of the world most
Americans, or Australians, would be unable to locate, spells
of strategic bombing, and sharing intelligence with allies
no Australian journalist would ever be allowed to officially

It may well be that the Albanese
government’s inexorable gravitation to secrecy is starting
to look, rather disconcertingly, like that of his
pathologically clandestine predecessor, Scott Morrison.
Exuding the confidence that comes from a heaving electoral
majority, and the concern that his policies might be
subjected to greater scrutiny than he would wish, Albanese
is embracing the dark magic of the controlled narrative, the
heavily curated truth. If so, such moves are cloddish,
insensitive and foolish to the vulnerable island states
whose support he so desperately needs. “Not to put too
fine a point on it,” suggests
Dan McGarry of the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting
Project, “but if Australia wants the Pacific to choose it
over China, maybe it should make the differences easier, not
harder to see.”

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a
Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He
currently lectures at RMIT University. Email:
bkampmark@gmail.com

© Scoop Media