On Wednesday, 14 October, three speeches were given in Canberra at three different venues. The President of Palau spoke at the Australian National University. Tuvalu’s Minister for Climate Change and Environment, Maina Talia, spoke at the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) conference. Australia’s Minister for Resources, Madeleine King, spoke at the National Press Club. Together, they highlighted the gap between what the Pacific is telling us, and what Australia is saying back.
Thu 15 Oct 2026 11.12 AEDT
H.E. Surangel S. Whipps, Jr. President of the Republic of Palau, with ANU vice chancellor and Pacific leaders’ delegation Australian National University. 14 October 2026
We are making progress in the transition to renewable energy at home, while remaining the world’s second-largest exporter of fossil fuels by climate-pollution content. Our neighbours are being asked to live with the consequences while we continue to profit from the cause.
This protest was the latest escalation in Rising Tide’s campaign calling on ANZ to rule out funding the North to East Australia (NEA) pipeline.
On Wednesday, 14 October, three speeches were given in Canberra at three different venues. The President of Palau spoke at the Australian National University. Tuvalu’s Minister for Climate Change and Environment, Maina Talia, spoke at the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) conference. Australia’s Minister for Resources, Madeleine King, spoke at the National Press Club.
Together, they highlighted the gap between what the Pacific is telling us, and what Australia is saying back.
Halfway through President Surangel Whipps Jr’s address at the ANU, the alarms went off. The auditorium paused. Someone in the room remarked that, given the subject, the timing was entirely appropriate. They were right.
The President was speaking about the climate crisis. Science has been sounding that alarm for decades. Yet we treat the noise as an interruption instead of a warning. This is an immediate, current, existential threat, and the only sensible response to an alarm is to act.
Whipps had just returned from Pre-COP in Fiji and Tuvalu, which Australia helped organise and co-fund. He had followed the media commentary here about who attended and what it cost. “Media scrutiny is important,” he said. “But so is perspective. And while cost matters, so does value.”
He called Pre-COP the most successful in its history. For the first time, Heads of State and Government were invited, at a meeting where leaders do not normally attend. Yet some dismissed it by “counting the leaders who were absent, rather than recognising the significance of those who came.” One commentator wrote that “all the big names were missing.”
So Whipps talked about size. Pacific states, he said, are custodians of nearly 20 per cent of the Earth’s surface. Their fisheries supply more than half the world’s tuna. Their currents shape rainfall and harvests across the globe. “The truth is, humanity actually depends upon our Blue Pacific for its food, climate stability and connectivity.”
Leaders of many of the largest emitters (except for Australia) were not there, he conceded. “But the Big Ocean States were. We came organised. We came prepared. And we came with solutions.”
Minister Talia, speaking to ACFID on the same morning, called Pre-COP “a resounding success.”
Most importantly, he said, communities in Tuvalu and Fiji “were able to witness firsthand what this international climate diplomacy was all about.” Leaders who visited Tuvalu left “with an impression of just how vulnerable our low-lying islands and states are to the devastating impacts of climate change.” The physical presence of leaders on Tuvaluan shores, he said, “means everything for those whose very lives, culture and future are at stake.”
Yet “the stark realities remain,” Talia said. “Our entire nation is under threat. For Tuvalu and other coral nations, we are standing on the absolute edge of survival.”
Talia then put a question to Australia. “Being a good neighbour is doing what ought to be done, doing the right thing,” he said. “Are they good neighbours to the Pacific or not? That is a question Australia should be pondering.”
The word he used for neighbour is tuākoi, a foundational concept in Tuvaluan culture. It means far more than the person next door. To be a tuākoi is to carry obligations of sharing, reciprocity and caring for others, especially the vulnerable.
That is how family speaks. It does not ask for charity. It asks those closest to it to do their share. At the Pre-COP in Tuvalu, Talia put it this way: “Today, we paddle in the same direction. When many paddles move together, even the longest journey becomes possible.”
Whipps made the same point. “The Pacific may feel these impacts first, but we share one region. What reaches our shores today will reach yours in Australia soon after.”
Talia was clear about what a good neighbour would do. “We cannot afford an overshoot,” he said, and the world needs “bold decisive action for more countries to lead us away from a fossil fuel dependent global economy.” He called on government, civil society, local communities and faith-based organisations to “stand together and push back against major greenhouse gas emitting polluters and fossil fuel exporters.”
Climate COPs are vital platforms, he said, but “they are simply not delivering at the speed that the crisis demands.” That is why he attended the first Transition Away from Fossil Fuels meeting in Santa Marta, Colombia, and why Tuvalu co-hosts the next one in July. The goal is “a dedicated platform where like-minded nations and civil society leaders can forge an unambiguous roadmap to phase out fossil fuels rapidly.”
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Whipps was just as clear and measured. “We are not asking countries, including Australia, to switch off fossil fuels overnight, but to start planning a fair transition that looks after workers and cuts costs for consumers.” The test, he said, is whether our decisions are “taking us towards that future, or locking us more deeply into the past.”
That is the promise of the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels agreement Australia has signed. It is also the job of the COP31 President of Negotiations, a role Australia holds.
That same day, at the National Press Club, Minister for Resources Madeleine King delivered a very different message.
She called Australia “a resources superpower.”
She said, “no Government has done more for our resources sector than the Albanese Labor Government.” She had introduced a National Gas Reservation Scheme that morning, and said, “we must keep developing gas for export for our regional partners.”
She argued that “we must continue exporting traditional commodities, like gas and coal, while our export markets still need them.”
Meanwhile, Minister Talia told ACFID that “the continuous export of fossil fuels must stop,” and that “we cannot continue to open up coal mines and gas plants, which is the root cause of all of this.”
Whipps told the ANU that “the Pacific is not a chessboard. It is our home.”
Our fossil fuel exports are sold as regional security. The region is telling us they are the threat.
Three speeches, one city, one day. By Talia’s measure, which Australia should be pondering, the Press Club speech was not the voice of a good neighbour. Nothing in it reckoned with the Pacific leaders speaking elsewhere in Canberra.
So, what would acting on the alarm look like?
First, no new coal and gas approvals. The Hunter Valley Operations coal mine and Woodside’s Browse gas project are the tests, and offsets must not be allowed to wave them through.
Second, a national fossil fuel phase-out plan that matches Australia’s TAFF commitments, with real support for workers and communities.
Third, Australia should sign the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. If we want to be taken seriously as COP31 President of Negotiations, we need to back the Pacific’s call for a framework to end fossil fuel expansion and manage a fair phase-out.
Some will still ask whether Pre-COP was worth what it cost. Whipps said that is a fair question, and gave his answer. Judge it “not by who was in the room,” but by what is delivered at COP31: “Projects prepared. Finance committed. Systems commissioned. Diesel displaced. Benefits reaching communities.”
“Hold us to that measure,” he said. We should, and we should hold ourselves to it too. We can keep calling ourselves a resources superpower. Or we can be a good neighbour, a tuākoi, to the Pacific family. We cannot do both.
Louise Morris is Head of Fossil Fuel Transition at the Australia Institute, with 20 years’ experience encompassing climate, energy, forest protection, and law reform in the not-for-profit sector, and federal politics.
