In the final episode of Joanne Wallis's quest, Gordon Peake asks photojournalist Ben Bohane to examine defence training as a tool of statecraft and how it's responding to the new geo-strategic climate. Reporting during a major cyclone in Vanuatu, they discuss how climate change is the biggest security issue and navigating geopolitical storm clouds that is defence cooperation.
In episode seven we delve into the sector that has the biggest pieces of statecraft in budgetary terms - governance and public administration programs. These programs showcase the inner works of bureaucracy and have ubiquitous influence in the Pacific. Gordon Peake has been trying to explain to his parents, in laws and kids what he does for a living all the time seized with worry as to whether all the governance programs he has been involved in add up to much.
In episode six we dive deep into the crypts of financial management to unearth which statecraft dividends accrue when money is given as loans to governments in the Pacific. Influence is notoriously slippery and crafty in the finance sector - which raises the question of who has the most influence, those who give the money or those who receive it?
In the fifth episode of our investigation into statecraft in the Pacific, we take a closer look at education scholarships as a tool of soft power. What impact do they have - on the individuals who receive them, and on the nations involved? The University of Adelaide Professor Joanne Wallis talks with Gordon Peake about their Statecraftiness story map.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, an army of gender advisors toiled across the Pacific. Gender advisors work in a system they eagerly want to change, swerving their way through atmospheres of complex bureaucracies and evolving cultural norms.
In the next part of our voyage to understand statecraft in the Pacific, Gordon Peake phones in expert views on the race to build and control telecommunications infrastructure in the Pacific. Along the way, somewhat ironically, he encounters the very obstacles to communication that these same telecommunication infrastructure initiatives are meant to be addressing.
We kick off University of Adelaide Professor Joanne Wallis's quest by examining one of the most ubiquitous tools of statecraft in the Pacific - police reform - and the extent to which it has garnered influence in Solomon Islands.
There are so many announcements of new programs and projects in the Pacific these days but how much impact and influence do all the efforts actually bring? University of Adelaide Professor Joanne Wallis sends writer and podcaster Gordon Peake on a quest to find out.