Anthony Albanese has been mobbed by children in Samoa after being granted a chiefly title in the village of Satapuala, as the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting wraps up in the Pacific island nation.
Satapuala was decked out in Australian flags and inflatable kangaroos for the occasion, and villagers broke into song to welcome the prime minister on arrival.
Mr Albanese was granted a matai or chiefly title of "Toeolesulusulu" before wading into a crowd of children to hand out netballs and rugby league balls.
The prime minister told the assembly the title was a "great honour for the Australian people".
One villager told the ABC before the ceremony he was delighted to see Mr Albanese accept the honour.
He said he hoped Mr Albanese would return to the village soon, and that the prime minister now had an obligation to help locals when they called upon him.
Mr Albanese said the chiefly title is a "great honour for the Australian people". (PMO)
After the visit, Mr Albanese joined a host of Pacific leaders to mark the first deployment of the "Pacific Police Support Group" under the Pacific Policing Initiative endorsed just two months ago in Tonga.
A group of around 40 police officers from 10 Pacific countries have been sent to Samoa under the initiative to provide security at CHOGM, along with dozens of Australian officers and around 100 New Zealand police.
The prime ministers of Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and Tuvalu – along with senior ministers from Nauru, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea – attended the event with Mr Albanese and New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
Mr Albanese joined Pacific leaders to mark the first deployment of the "Pacific Police Support Group" under the Pacific Policing Initiative. (PMO)
Both Vanuatu and Solomon Islands endorsed the initiative at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga, but have also sounded a note of caution, warning it shouldn't be used as part of a broader strategy of containment.
The federal government sees the strong turnout of Pacific leaders as a powerful endorsement of the plan, which the federal government has funded to the tune of some $400 million.
It's designed to boost police capability across the Pacific but is also aimed at ensuring there are no security "gaps" in the region that could be plugged by China.
Beijing has already sent officers to conduct training in Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Kiribati, and is intent on striking additional policing pacts with Pacific Island nations.
Mr Albanese told reporters after the event that police had worked hard to deploy officers just two months after the plan got formal endorsement.
"The Pacific family needs to provide security for the Pacific, by the Pacific, and that's what this initiative is about," he said.
He brushed off a question about China's security ambitions, saying "this is about the Pacific family looking after each other".
Samoa's prime minister and Fiji's Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka also heaped praise on the policing initiative during the ceremony.
Tonga's Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni – who previously said he was open to Chinese police assistance to host Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting – said the new plan was "encouraging".
He added it was "no secret that the Pacific region is in intensifying geopolitical interest" and that regional policing was "evolving rapidly".
"It is not just about safety and security in the domestic sense – in a globalising world nothing is strictly domestic anymore," he said.
"Transnational crime, drugs and human trafficking, cybercrime — these are big transboundary issues that Pacific states cannot face alone."
It comes as the CHOGM meeting wraps up in Samoa, with leaders flying out of the Pacific island country after their private retreat.
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