It’s trite but true to say that all politics is local. Foreign policy rarely gets a look in at election time in Australia. Moreover, the conventional view is that the divisions between the two major parties on foreign policy questions are narrow enough to make little difference at the ballot box.

For many of Australians, our knowledge of the Pacific is superficial: a week spent lazing by a pool or docked in a port on board a cruise ship. However, the overarching significance of our relationship is that as a large regional player, stability and prosperity within the region matters as much to us as it does to our neighbours.

The release of the White Paper on Developing Northern Australia was met with relatively little fanfare. In some ways, this is unsurprising. The scale of other recent development initiatives such as China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank somewhat dwarf the Commonwealth’s plan for the north.