Australian National Role Conceptions In The South Pacific:2008-2022

The South Pacific is located in the southern hemisphere portion of the Pacific Ocean,stretching longitudinally from Australia and Papua New Guinea in the west to South America in the east,and latitudinally from the equator to the Antarctic Ocean.As the most disadvantaged region,the island countries in the South Pacific are remote and sparsely populated,with insufficient labour and natural resources,and poor infrastructure and government services failing to achieve sustainable economic development.Australia,the most developed country in the South Pacific,has long been incoherent and inconsistent in its foreign policy on the South Pacific,oscillating between neglect and intervention and showing the ups and downs of interest.While the most active powers in the region have traditionally been Australia,New Zealand,the United States,and France,a number of other powers are increasingly involved,most notably being China,Russia,Indonesia,Japan,and India.States in the South Pacific are likewise taking a more active role in world affairs.With the geopolitical environment in the region becoming more complex,Australia places more strategic importance on the South Pacific.Based on Holsti’s study of national role conceptions,this paper attempts to examine Australian national roles in the South Pacific.National role theory and content analysis provide the analytical framework and the method for the paper.The database of this paper includes individual speeches and addresses about the South Pacific of Australian top policymakers from 2008 to 2022.After analysing all materials,the paper finds that in this period Australia expressed eight national roles in the South Pacific:defender of faith,regional-subsystem collaborator,faithful ally,developer,regional leader,family member,regional protector,and bridge.In all roles,regional-subsystem collaborator,developer,regional leader,and faithful ally are the four most stable identities constructed by the Australian government in the region.Further analysis reveals that Australia’s foreign policy on the South Pacific is usually more active in the early years of a new government and then declines,while there exists a consistency between the Australian Labor Party and the Coalition in identifying the national roles of Australia in the South Pacific.And the role of regional-subsystem collaborator,family member,regional protector,and defender of faith exerted the greatest impact on foreign policy in 2018,when Australia behaved most actively in the South Pacific.Sensing the change in the external geopolitical environment,Australia reoriented its national roles in the South Pacific to further integrate into the South Pacific region and to maintain closer ties with Western countries.Certain roles also imply Australia’s exclusion of China.