Australia’s foreign minister has met her Solomon Islands counterpart for the first time since the South Pacific island nation signed a security pact with China.
Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs Marise Payne yesterday said she met Solomon Islands Development Planning and Aid Coordination Minister Jeremiah Manele in the Australian east coast city of Brisbane as he transited through the airport on Friday night.
“Australia has been consistent and clear in stating our respect for Solomon Islands’ sovereign decisionmaking, however we have reiterated our deep concerns about the security agreement with China, including the lack of transparency,” Payne’s office said in a statement.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Payne’s office said the pair agreed that Australia remained the Solomon Islands’ security partner of choice and that the Solomon Islands would not host a foreign military base less than 2,000km off Australia’s northeast coast.
Manele could not be contacted for comment yesterday.
Australian Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment Dan Tehan told Australian Broadcasting Corp that the two ministers had a “very productive conversation.”
A Chinese base in the Solomon Islands was not in the interests of the region, Tehan said.
“What we want to do is to be making sure that we’re presenting a very strong case as to why it is incredibly important that we don’t see militarization of the Pacific islands,” Tehan said.
Tehan said Payne and Manele also discussed how Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government needed to keep working on the bilateral relationship.
Morrison’s coalition is seeking a rare fourth three-year term in elections on May 25.
The China-Solomon Islands security pact announced last month has become a major focus of the election campaign.
After details of a draft pact were released, Australian Minister for International Development and the Pacific Zed Seselja flew to the Solomon Islands’ capital, Honiara, on April 12 to unsuccessfully ask the government to abandon it.
The opposition Labor Party said at the time that Payne, a more senior minister than Seselja, should have been sent instead.
Opposition leader Anthony Albanese welcomed Payne’s meeting with Manele.
“It’s about time,” Albanese said.
Albanese has also criticized Morrison for not telephoning Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare since the pact was signed.
Morrison has said he was following the advice of intelligence officials.
The Labor Party has condemned the pact as Australia’s worst foreign policy failure in the Pacific since World War II. Albanese has promised closer engagement between Australia and its South Pacific island neighbors if Labor wins government.
Australian Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews has suggested that Beijing timed the pact’s announcement during an election campaign to undermine her Liberal Party’s prospects for re-election.
CREDIT-GRABBER: China said its coast guard rescued the crew of a fishing vessel that caught fire, who were actually rescued by a nearby Taiwanese boat and the CGA Maritime search and rescue operations do not have borders, and China should not use a shipwreck to infringe upon Taiwanese sovereignty, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The coast guard made the statement in response to the China Coast Guard (CCG) saying it saved a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Chuan Yu No. 6 (全漁6號), a fishing vessel registered in Keelung, on Thursday caught fire and sank in waters northeast of Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The vessel left Keelung’s Badouzih Fishing Harbor (八斗子漁港) at 3:35pm on Sunday last week, with seven people on board — a 62-year-old Taiwanese captain surnamed Chang (張) and six
RISKY BUSINESS: The ‘incentives’ include initiatives that get suspended for no reason, creating uncertainty and resulting in considerable losses for Taiwanese, the MAC said China’s “incentives” failed to sway sentiment in Taiwan, as willingness to work in China hit a record low of 1.6 percent, a Ministry of Labor survey showed. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also reported that the number of Taiwanese workers in China has nearly halved from a peak of 430,000 in 2012 to an estimated 231,000 in 2024. That marked a new low in the proportion of Taiwanese going abroad to work. The ministry’s annual survey on “Labor Life and Employment Status” includes questions respondents’ willingness to seek employment overseas. Willingness to work in China has steadily declined from
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
The number of pet cats in Taiwan surpassed that of pet dogs for the first time last year, reaching 1,742,033, a 32.8 percent increase from 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday, citing a survey. By contrast, the number of pet dogs declined slightly by 1.2 percent over the same period to 1,462,528, the ministry said. Despite the shift, households with dogs still slightly outnumber those with cats by 1.2 percent. However, while the number of households with multiple dogs has remained relatively stable, households keeping more than two cats have increased, contributing to the overall rise in the feline population. The trend
RSS