Australia deepens police ties with Solomon Islands
Australia says it has agreed to provide Solomon Islands with a four-year package worth AU$190 million to fund, train and help build out the country’s police force. The deal includes a new police training centre in Honiara and was presented by Canberra as a fresh foundation for its security partnership with the Pacific island state.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the agreement was intended to make Australia the security partner of choice. He said the arrangement was reached after discussions with Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele and framed the package as a significant investment in domestic and regional stability.
The announcement landed in a competitive diplomatic environment. The Solomon Islands changed recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 2019 under Manele’s predecessor, then signed a secretive security deal with China three years later. That deal alarmed Western governments and helped turn the country into a symbol of the broader contest for influence across the Pacific.
China made its own presence visible on the same day Australia announced the package, with the Solomon Islands police saying the Chinese embassy had donated roughly US$18,000 to its support fund. Beijing’s foreign ministry responded by saying no country should treat island states as a backyard and urging trilateral or multilateral cooperation instead.
The issue matters because policing capacity in the Solomons is limited. Local police number about 1,500 for a population of roughly 720,000. The force was badly stretched when anti-government unrest in Honiara turned violent in November 2021, leaving at least three people dead and much of the capital’s Chinatown district damaged.
Australia has been trying to rebuild a stronger security role since then. In June, Manele raised policing needs during a visit to Australia, and the two leaders later said the Solomons had asked Canberra to help double its police force to 3,000 over a decade, with a longer-term goal of 5,000. The new agreement moves that agenda forward, but not in a way that excludes China. Pacific analyst Mihai Sora of the Lowy Institute said the package is weaker than other recent Australian security deals in that it does not require the Solomons to scale back ties with Beijing.
That nuance is important. Australia is trying to secure influence without forcing an explicit choice. Solomon Islands appears willing to take help from multiple sides. And China continues to supply training, hardware and symbolic support. The result is a classic Pacific balancing act: security assistance is being turned into diplomacy, and diplomacy is being translated into concrete institutions like police training centres, equipment and force-building plans. The real test will be whether the new funding makes Solomon Islands safer while preserving its room to manoeuvre between Canberra and Beijing.
