Source — AITW Ep030 — Australia's High Commissioners to Solomon Islands and Samoa Discuss Diplomacy in the Pacific¶

Episode Metadata¶

Field	Value
Episode number	30
Title	Ep. 30: Australia's High Commissioners to Solomon Islands and Samoa discuss diplomacy in the Pacific
Publication date	2019-10-02
Recording date	Wednesday, 11 September 2019
Guests	Rod Brazier (High Commissioner to Solomon Islands); Sara Moriarty (High Commissioner to Samoa)
Allan present	Yes — hosts in studio at ANU Crawford School; Darren calls in
Format	Two-guest interview; Allan as MC; Darren as remote questioner

Summary¶

Allan hosts two Australian heads of mission — Rod Brazier (Solomon Islands) and Sara Moriarty (Samoa) — in studio at the Crawford School. Darren participates by phone. This is an interview-focused episode; Allan's analytical contributions are present but lighter than in analysis episodes. The episode introduces two significant details: Rod Brazier is identified as "an old friend" and a former ONA colleague — corroborating the breadth of Allan's intelligence community network; and Allan punctures Morrison's "beyond diplomacy" Pacific framing with a single sardonic sentence that doubles as a compressed definition of what diplomacy is. No reading/watching segment.

Topics covered: the nature and context of Solomon Islands and Samoa; RAMSI and Australia's $3 billion intervention; the Morrison "step-up" in the Pacific; China's engagement in both countries (including Solomon Islands' Taiwan recognition question); climate change; the Pacific Labour Scheme; and the daily practice of head-of-mission diplomacy. The episode is recorded in mid-September 2019 but released in early October.

Key Quotations¶

"I hate to break it to the PM, Darren..."¶

"I hate to break it to the PM Darren but it hasn't actually gone beyond diplomacy at all, what he's doing here by identifying connections is diplomacy in its most classic form."

— [00:22:08.270 --> 00:22:19.150]

Context: Darren quotes PM Morrison's speech at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji (January 2019), in which Morrison said that talking about "vivale" (family) is "to go beyond diplomacy... something deep and something rich... which connects peoples more than any other words or documents can." Allan deflates the framing without rudeness. Morrison's claim is that invoking Pacific family relationships transcends the transactional language of diplomacy; Allan's counter is that identifying connections and deepening relationships through shared bonds is exactly what classic diplomacy does. The comic timing is characteristic — "I hate to break it to the PM" is conspiratorial with the listener rather than adversarial — but the substance is precise and slightly pointed. The sentence is also self-referential: it rehearses the argument Allan made more formally in Ep027 ("diplomacy is a skill set, not a thing"), now compressed to one sardonic line.

Billy Hughes and the "hands off the Pacific" doctrine — 1919¶

"I recently came across a statement by the Australian Prime Minister about the South Pacific. The PM said we are committed by inexorable circumstances to the doctrine hands off the Pacific. It was Billy Hughes in 1919 rather than Scott Morrison in 2019 and it was Japan rather than China that he had in mind but the point is that Australia has been focused on the region for a very long time."

— [00:09:32.750 --> 00:10:49.150]

Allan uses the Hughes quote as a structural historical grounding: Australian anxieties about Pacific strategic competition are not China-specific or Morrison-specific, but structural and ancient. The parallel is carefully constructed — 1919/2019, Japan/China, Hughes/Morrison — and deployed with characteristic economy. "I recently came across" suggests research rather than rehearsed repertoire; he found the quote to make a point about continuity. The framing also subtly checks the tendency to see the current China competition as unprecedented. Allan then moves to the Morrison step-up: "there's no proper answer to this question of where and how we engage. It's always going to be a matter of balance."

Introduction of Rod Brazier — ONA colleague¶

"Rod is an old friend, he and I were colleagues in the Office of National Assessments several years ago, and he has a long background in Southeast Asia, including working for the Asia Foundation in Cambodia, Malaysia and Indonesia, but he's also worked in AUSAID, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and as head of East Asia Division in DFAT."

— [00:01:26.590 --> 00:02:58.310]

A biographical disclosure embedded in a guest introduction. Allan introduces Rod Brazier not merely as a distinguished career diplomat but as "an old friend" and a former ONA colleague. That the High Commissioner to Solomon Islands began his career (in part) at ONA before moving through AUSAID, PM&C, and DFAT into head-of-mission roles is itself revealing about ONA's place in the national security network — it feeds into, and draws from, the broader foreign policy apparatus. For Allan's biography, the detail corroborates the extensive network he built during his ONA tenures.

Australia's Pacific engagement cycles¶

"It sometimes seemed to me that Australian engagement with the South Pacific goes through quite regular cycles. Sometimes we've wanted to roll up our sleeves and get heavily engaged in the region helping directly to fix problems and sort things out and at other times we've thought it preferable to stand back and let the regional governments take the running and work out for themselves what they want. Now of course there's no proper answer to this question of where and how we engage. It's always going to be a matter of balance but with the Morrison government's specific step up we're going through one of those periodic activist phases."

— [00:09:32.750 --> 00:10:49.150]

Characteristic analytical framing: Allan identifies a structural cycle — interventionist/activist vs. hands-off/developmental — and resists prescribing which is correct. "There's no proper answer... it's always going to be a matter of balance" is his standard epistemological move when facing questions that reduce to one-size-fits-all policy. He observes the current phase without endorsing or condemning it. The Billy Hughes historical parallel follows immediately, grounding the structural observation in a 100-year arc.

Closing — "great people serving Australia"¶

"Yeah as Darren and I keep saying these are challenging times for Australian foreign policy and it's really reassuring to know that out there keeping watch pursuing our interests so we have such great people serving Australia so Sara Rod huge thanks for coming on the podcast and for speaking to us."

— [00:48:10.670 --> 00:48:35.700]

An unusually warm closing for Allan. He expresses "reassurance" at meeting practitioners who are active in the field — a genuine sentiment rather than a courtesy. The phrase "keeping watch" is characteristically precise: it invokes the intelligence-community register (watchfulness, vigilance) for diplomatic work, which for Allan are not separate domains. He names the challenge ("challenging times") but the emotion here is gratitude and admiration, not anxiety.

Biographical Fragments¶

Evidence type: Corroborating (strengthens existing evidence)

Rod Brazier is "an old friend" and ONA colleague — "he and I were colleagues in the Office of National Assessments several years ago." Allan knew Brazier well enough to describe him as "an old friend" before introducing him to the podcast audience; they shared at least an institutional placement at ONA. Brazier's career includes AUSAID, PM&C, and East Asia Division Head (DFAT) — suggesting ONA was a formative rather than terminal career posting for both of them. This corroborates the breadth and depth of Allan's ONA-era network. (Ep030)

Style and Method Evidence¶

Historical scaling: Billy Hughes 1919 deployed as structural context — Australia's Pacific anxiety is structural, not China-specific. Demonstrates Allan's habit of locating present phenomena on long historical arcs.
"I hate to break it to the PM": Comic understatement as analytical instrument. One sentence deflating a rhetorical move, redefining it precisely, and landing a point about what diplomacy actually is — all without aggression.
The structural-cycle framing: "Activist phases" vs. "hands-off phases" as the recurring diagnostic for Australia's Pacific posture. Used to contextualise the step-up without endorsing it as a permanent choice.
The guest-introduction-as-biography: Allan's introduction of Brazier is characteristically precise — multiple roles listed in chronological order, the ONA connection named first as personal before being contextualised by subsequent career. He always knows where people have been.

Reading, Listening and Watching¶

No reading/watching/listening recommendations in this episode.

Open Questions¶

How long did Rod Brazier and Allan overlap at ONA? Allan says "several years ago" — given Brazier's subsequent career arc (East Asia Division Head, then HC to Solomon Islands), the ONA posting was likely in the 2000s or early 2010s. Does this overlap with Allan's confirmed DG tenure (~2011–2014), in which case Brazier worked under him, or was it an earlier analyst-era overlap?
Allan mentions the RAMSI cost as "about three billion dollars" — this figure is well established in the literature. Does he return to RAMSI lessons in later episodes?
The Solomon Islands Taiwan recognition question (was it about to switch to Beijing at recording date, September 2019?): Solomon Islands did switch from Taiwan to PRC recognition in September 2019 — very shortly after this recording. Does Allan address this development in a subsequent episode?