<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <docID>327858</docID> <postdate>2024-08-29 12:24:03</postdate> <headline>‘Take the lane’: Albanese denies US Pacific police plan</headline> <body><p><img class="size-full wp-image-327859" src="https://citynews.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/20240828161429992069-original-resized.jpg" alt="" width="900" height="601" /></p> <caption>Anthony Albanese says Australia will spend $400 million to set up a Pacific police force. (Lukas Coch/AAP PHOTOS)</caption> <p><span class="kicker-line">By <strong>Ben McKay</strong> in Nuku'alofa</span></p> <p><strong>A day after landing his Pacific Policing Initiative, Anthony Albanese has denied a senior US official's claim that Kevin Rudd convinced the Americans to call off plans for their own regional force.</strong></p> <p>Mr Albanese won support from the region for the initiative at the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Nuku'alofa, Tonga, this week.</p> <p>Australia is spending $400 million to set up the multi-national police force, which will have the capacity to deploy across the region during strife or major events.</p> <p>It will also include a coordination hub in Brisbane and "centres of excellence" in Papua New Guinea and up to three further Pacific cities.</p> <p>It is not uncontentious. Melanesian officials, including Solomon Islands diplomat Collin Beck and Papua New Guinean official Leonard Louma, have both offered guarded criticism prior to its announcement.</p> <p>The policing initiative is widely seen as an attempt to keep Chinese security and police out of the region under the forum's "by Pacific, for Pacific" mantra.</p> <p>On Wednesday, a New Zealand journalist took a video of Mr Albanese in discussion with US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell at the forum summit.</p> <p>"We had a cracker today getting the Pacific Policing Initiative through. It's so important. It will make such a difference," Mr Albanese said.</p> <p>Mr Campbell replies: "It's great. I talked with Kevin about it. We were going to do something ... but we did not. So you've given you the whole lane. Take the lane."</p> <p>"You can go us halvies on the cost if you like. It will only cost you a bit," Mr Albanese replied.</p> <p>The video is significant as it suggests Australia is acting on Pacific policing either in coordination with the US, or after US efforts failed.</p> <p>Nations across the Pacific hold different geopolitical positions - from firm allies of the US like Australia, to warmer relations with Beijing like the Solomon Islands.</p> <p>Speaking on Thursday morning, Mr Albanese said it was a "private conversation" and denied the US would be joining Australia in footing the bill.</p> <p>"Kurt Campbell's a mate of mine. It's us having a chat," he said.</p> <p>Mr Campbell is US President Joe Biden's point man on the Asia-Pacific region and is viewed as an architect of AUKUS, the trilateral pact with the US and UK that will see Australia obtain nuclear-powered submarines.</p> <p>Mr Albanese denied Mr Campbell's suggestion the US had plans for their own Pacific police force, or that Mr Rudd - now Australia's ambassador to the US - talked him down.</p> <p>"He didn't say that. He didn't say that," he insisted.</p> <p>"He said he'd had a discussion with Kevin about it ... chill out people."</p> <p>The journalist was accredited and allowed to be in the forum where the video was taken, but Mr Albanese attacked her for behaving inappropriately.</p> <p>"It's up to them, to whoever did that, to think about their own ethics when it comes to journalism," he said.</p> <p>"People are coming up behind, trying to try and take conversations ... I myself, if I were a journalist, I would not do that."</p> <p>Radio NZ Chief News Officer Mark Stevens said "RNZ stands by its reporter and its reporting".</p> <p>"Having spoken to our reporter, there is nothing to suggest they acted unethically or outside of our rigorous editorial policies," he said.</p> <p>On the second day of visit to Tonga, Mr Albanese flew to the northern island of Vava'u for a forum leaders retreat.</p> <p>There, he will join the leaders of 17 forum nations in an all-day closed-door retreat to discuss the region's thorniest issues: New Caledonia, climate change and more.</p> <p>Mr Albanese said a forum fact-finding mission to Noumea - planned before the summit but scotched by colonial power France - would go ahead later this month after talks in Tonga.</p> </body>