· In short: Australia is moving to create a large training facility in Brisbane for Pacific islands police officers, who would be deployed in response to regional crises. 

· The initiative is designed to strengthen Australia's position as the main security partner in the Pacific, as China intensifies efforts to strike bilateral policing deals. 

· What's next: Australia hopes regional leaders endorse the plan when the Pacific Islands Forum meets in Tonga in August.

Australia is moving to establish a 200-strong cohort of highly trained Pacific police officers which could be deployed to regional hotspots under an ambitious initiative designed to bolster law enforcement and strengthen the government's strategic position in the region.

The new group is a centrepiece of the Pacific Policing Initiative, which the Australian Federal Police (AFP) has been quietly working on for the last two years, and which it hopes will be endorsed at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting in August.

As part of the plan, the AFP is working to set up a large and sophisticated training facility in Pinkenba near Brisbane Airport, which would draw in rotations of police officers from across the Pacific.

The new "Centre of Excellence" is expected to include a firing range as well as tactical response training facilities, and would be able to host up to 50 police officers at a time.

Those officers would then join a "Pacific Police Support Group" which could then be deployed — in teams of up to 75 officers — to Pacific nations which request help to deal with natural disasters or other emergencies.

Under the plan, the AFP is also hoping to set up several new policing "skill centres" in Pacific nations across the region, to offer further training in specialised areas.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has already announced that Australia and Papua New Guinea will set up a regional police recruitment and training centre in Port Moresby which could serve as a model.

One Australian official involved with the plan told the ABC that the initiative was a direct response to Pacific requests to bolster local police forces by ramping up training and capability.

They said it would also reinforce Australia's strategic position as the Pacific's main security partner as Beijing intensifies efforts to strike bilateral policing deals in the region.

China has already successfully deployed police training teams to a number of Pacific nations, including Solomon Islands and Kiribati, and has been pressing hard to do the same in other countries like Papua New Guinea.

It has also set up a Pacific police training centre in China, where it has hosted officers from Vanuatu and Solomon Islands.

The Australian official said while Beijing was trying to "pick off" Pacific nations by striking bilateral policing agreements, the new initiative would be driven by the whole Pacific region and its key security priorities.

The Pacific Policing Initiative will not be cheap, with an estimated price tag of more than $400 million, on top of the $317 million already provided to the AFP in the 2023-24 budget to help bolster Pacific engagement.

But the government will also need to tread carefully to ensure it is not seen to be undermining Pacific sovereignty in pursuit of its strategic interests.

AFP Assistant Commissioner Nigel Ryan told the ABC that it had "worked collaboratively with all Pacific policing partners over many decades and is working with our Pacific partners on various policing initiatives".

"Importantly, any policing initiatives need to be Pacific-led with support, consultation and collaboration among Pacific police stakeholders to meet Pacific policing needs," he said.

The ABC has been told that police chiefs across the region have been enthusiastic about the initiative and have been working with Australian officers to bed down how it will work.

But some officials in the region are worried that it could duplicate existing policing cooperation efforts, and that Australia risks creating confusion if it pushes ahead too quickly with the plan.

One Pacific source and one Australian government source also told the ABC that the Pacific Islands Chiefs of Police (PICP) Secretariat had reservations about the new initiative. The PICP did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the ABC.

Support needed for 'complex challenges'

The new initiative could also face some complex political and legal hurdles.

Pacific nations will also need to set up a legal framework which would allow foreign police officers from Australia and other Pacific countries to operate within their borders.

Tonga's Police Commissioner Shane McLennan told New Zealand media outlet 1News — which first revealed many of the details of the new initiative — that his officers were already working on implementation.

"We've got some legislation we are going to propose for our government here in Tonga that will allow a deployable force to come into the country and have the required protections while they're here but under control of local jurisdictions," he said.

Another senior police officer from the Pacific — who requested anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on the record — told the ABC that the initiative had been popular with police chiefs.

He said that the Pacific needed additional support and training to tackle increasingly complex criminal challenges, including the flow of illegal drugs into and through the region.

But he also warned that Australia would have to tread carefully when setting up skill centres in the region, because several Pacific nations would likely jostle to secure funding for the new institutions.

Plan awaits endorsement

Australia is hoping that Pacific leaders will provide high-level political endorsement of the plan when they gather at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting in Tonga's capital Nuku'alofa in late August, although it's not yet clear what shape that endorsement might take.

A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson said it was "aware of discussions to strengthen regional cooperation to ensure Pacific police forces have the capability they need to meet current and future internal security requirements and respond together in times of need".

But they said it was "premature" to discuss endorsement at PIF because the initiative was "still being designed by Pacific police forces".

"Any policing initiatives will need to be Pacific-led with support, consultation and collaboration among Pacific police stakeholders to meet Pacific policing needs," they said.

Pacific transnational crime expert and senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Jose Sousa-Santos, said such initiatives to strengthen Pacific policing capabilities were critical for the region.

"But it is unclear whether this bolsters the existing regional law enforcement architecture … or weakens it by possibly creating a competing Australian-led architecture," he said.

Mr Sousa-Santos said it was also unclear whether the proposed deployment group would be mandated at the regional level under existing frameworks to deal with crises, such as the Biketawa Declaration.

"If it isn't, it could be perceived to undercut key regional mechanisms," he said.