Fallout looms as neighbour turns away

Also in peril is the significant investment that Australia has made over many years in financial resources, manpower and boots-on-the-ground support to ensure our closest neighbours remained within our sphere of influence and protection.

In 1999, the government of Solomon Islands announced a state of emergency. The islands, a three-hour flight from our shores, had become a flashpoint.

Regional areas had fractured away, socially and politically. There was enormous ethnic tension and conflict fed by lawlessness, extortion and outright murder.

Warlords, supported by packs of armed militia, ran their own fiefdoms and ruled by fear.

Local police were undermanned and undergunned, and the formal request came to Australia for help.

Diplomat Nick Warner and AFP Commander Ben McDevitt were dispatched to Solomon Islands posthaste, with well-armed AFP members and army officers and capabilities - such as Blackhawk helicopters because no roads led into the worst conflict zone, the remote Guadalcanal region - as support.

It had all the makings of a bloody conflict right on our doorstep.

How these two senior officers, using the carrot-and-stick approach, convinced the warlords to hand over their weapons and voluntarily place themselves in custody is now part of AFP folklore.

Over time, the Australian-led Operation Helpem Fren, partnering with 15 other Pacific countries, restored law and order.

The events of the past few weeks have demonstrated how badly Australia has taken its eye off the ball since then.

In the absence of our country's fulsome engagement, it has now been revealed that Solomon Islands have signed a security pact with the Chinese government to allow a military and police presence there.

The seeds to this outcome, which marks a significant shift in the balance of regional security in the south Pacific, have been sown over time, most recently at the Glasgow climate change summit through our government's lack of empathy toward the plight of our nearest neighbours and their concern over rising sea levels.

Sending Senator Zed Seselja, described on Wednesday by Labor senator Penny Wong as a "junior woodchuck", across to Solomon Islands in a last-minute diplomatic effort to, in the words of the Prime Minister, "further strengthen Australia's relationship" with the Pacific nation, was too little, way too late.

To be fair, the senator, a junior member of cabinet, was on a hiding to nothing. The damage had already been done, and the deal with China was presumably already signed.

The US, our most important strategic partner in the South Pacific, knows full well how badly this could play out, and will send one of its most senior executives, its so-called "Asia tsar" Kurt Campbell, across to salvage what he can from the mess.

In recent years Australia has contributed a not insignificant amount of money to Solomon Islands. Our "official development assistance" in the coming financial year will be just over $161 million, on top of the $312 million provided in the two previous years.

On top of our ongoing policing assistance, we have helped bolster the country's health and education systems, its agriculture and its telecommunications.

So where has it gone wrong? When red flags were raised, as has been suggested, more than a year ago, why were they ignored?

This is a diplomatic failure, and the fallout has major implications for our future regional security.