The Pacific’s cocaine highway: will Australia’s $600m deal really help?
- Written by: Weekend Times
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a $600 million program to strengthen aerial and maritime surveillance across the Pacific, targeting the narco-submarines and small vessels used to move drugs through the
region.
He made the announcement at the Pacific Islands Forum in Palau.
Read more: Leaders missing and China ‘furious’: the Pacific Islands forum off to a decidedly shaky start
The Pacific is increasingly becoming a halfway point for transnational drug smuggling. Its island nations are hard to police and law-enforcement agencies are thinly staffed. This means it’s a haven for drug traffickers.
Albanese hopes the new initiative will combat the surge of drugs making their way into Australia: in May, Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Krissy Barrett said 17 tonnes of illicit drugs (mostly cocaine), had been seized in the Pacific since January. In all of 2025, that figure was less than 5 tonnes.
The AFP states most of the illicit drugs being trafficked to and through the Pacific are destined for Australia.
What’s in the deal?
The funding sits under the Waqa Moana Initiative (named after a large, sturdy canoe) – a Pacific-led maritime security initiative to counter illicit drug trafficking.
The Australian government said the deal would involve several initiatives, including:
$49 million for the AFP to invest in new counter-transnational and organised crime programs across the region (in addition to the $140 million the AFP is contributing over the next four years to support regional security objectives, including Waqa Moana)
$312 million for the Department of Defence over the next ten years to support efforts to counter transnational and organised crime in the region.
Minister for Pacific Island Affairs Pat Conroy said:
Drug trafficking is having a devastating impact on Pacific communities. This initiative responds to the calls of regional leaders to do more, and to step up regional coordination to address this scourge.
Beyond drug trafficking, the program also aims to address the erosion of social cohesion and ease the health burden that cocaine and methamphetamine are placing on island communities.
Why is the Pacific a problem for Australia and New Zealand?
Two shifts over the past decade explain most of it.
The first is the expansion of Australian and New Zealand outlaw motorcycle gangs into the islands – mainly the Rebels and the Head Hunters, whose members include people of Pacific Island descent from countries such as Fiji and the Cook Islands. These gang members can be a link between South American and Mexican cartels and the Pacific – a connection that barely existed ten years ago.
Read more: The price of meth has been plunging in NZ. Are Mexican cartels driving the drop?
The second is deportation policies. Australia and New Zealand return people with criminal records to Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands after living in Australia or New Zealand. Many who arrive without support turn or return to crime.
Why is this new deal needed?
There are four reasons why this is needed.
1. The region is difficult to police. Pacific nations are scattered across roughly 25,000 islands, with about 2,000 of them inhabited. Maritime boundaries are highly porous and, in most places, subject to little or no surveillance.
Law enforcement agencies are thinly staffed, infrastructure is limited and customs and police often cannot share intelligence easily. Together, these gaps make the Pacific an attractive route for shipments bound for Australia and New Zealand.
2. Traffickers have plenty of ways in. Narco-subs carrying tonnes of cocaine can be beached and unloaded without police or local communities knowing. Remote landing strips allow “black flight” importations. This is when small twin-engine planes are used to ship drugs into a country by flying below aerial radar detection, often at night, making them near-impossible to track.
Even pleasure crafts, which rarely attract attention considering how vital they are to tourism in the region, can be used by smugglers.
3. The islands have become a warehouse. The region’s remoteness allows syndicates to stockpile cocaine and methamphetamine in the Pacific, sell some of it locally, and hold the rest before moving it into the Australian and New Zealand markets at an opportune time.
4. Local communities are paying for it through increased violent crime, with users turning to theft, intimidation and standovers to fund addictions or settle debts.
Regional authorities also report organised crime groups generating fear across whole communities, eroding public safety. Some national health systems are feeling the strain too, with hospital admissions rising for psychosis symptoms believed to be linked to methamphetamine use.
How bad is the drug problem in Australia?
Bad, and not improving.
A 2026 European Union Drugs Agency analysis comparing 28 countries found Australians and New Zealanders were among the highest combined per capita consumers of amphetamine, methylamphetamine, MDMA and cocaine.
Australian and New Zealand cocaine use remains among the highest per capita anywhere.
Will the Waqa Moana initiative work?
Whether the new deal actually reduces supply remains to be seen.
The $600 million is money Pacific Island nations badly need, so hopefully it should have some impact against this rising threat. But with Australian and New Zealand demand for cocaine as strong as it is, the question is how far $600 million can stretch against it.
Vincent Hurley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
