The islands of the Pacific are in some cases prsoperous with good economies and education systems while others experience widespread illiteracy and some of the highest population growth rates in the world.The Pacific is bipolar, on almost every available indicator, the Pacific’s development path is split in two. One group of Pacific islands, including Samoa...

Nic Maclellan of the Nautilus Institute at RMIT writes that a recently revealed United States request to the Australian government in the early 1960s to allow nerve gas testing in Queensland "was part of a much wider program of testing chemical and biological weapons during the Cold War" about which much remains unknown. Maclellan notes...

China runs an opaque aid program in the Pacific that has fuelled suspicions about its motives in the region and that undermines efforts to improve accountability, governance and stability. Despite concerns about China's aid program, China and Australia share broadly similar interests in the region and Australia and other donors would gain from working with...

New Zealand's seasonal workers scheme has lessons for Australia, writes Nic Maclellan.

The illegal trade in timber and timber products leads to economic losses in many countries as well as environmental degradation. International policy exists to curtail some of the trade, but there are still clandestine operations by large organisations and criminal networks. This report examines the scale of the illegal timber trade in the Asia-Pacific region...