VANUATU, a nation of just 257,000, expelled the 12-member police contingent from neighbouring Australia on May 10th. The action was in retaliation for an incident at Sydney airport involving Vanuatu's prime minister, Sato Kilman. While in transit to Israel, Mr Kilman and his entourage were made to pass through immigration, rather than being ushered into a VIP lounge. Once on Australian soil, Mr Kilman's private secretary, Clarence Marae, was promptly arrested by federal police on charges of tax fraud. The Vanuatu government has been careful to justify the expulsion of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) not by complaining about Mr Marae's arrest but by protesting at the discourtesy shown to the prime minister. Australia's foreign minister, Bob Carr, responded by threatening to cut aid to Vanuatu.

This is not the first time Pacific Island leaders have taken umbrage at their treatment in Australian airports. In 2005 security officers in Brisbane airport required Papua New Guinea's then prime minister, Sir Michael Somare, to remove his shoes, sparking angry protests. Nor is it the first time Vanuatu has clashed with the AFP. In 2004 its government closed down the AFP offices in the capital, Port Vila, and expelled officers, after allegations that they were spying and interfering with domestic politics. The AFP's main concerns in Vanuatu have been over the country marketing itself vigorously as an international tax haven, and over the risk posed by the volatile Vanuatu Mobile Force, the paramilitary wing of the local police force. Protecting Australia's national interests under the guise of so-called capacity-building can quickly lead to tensions.

The AFP's activities in Vanuatu have been part of a broader expansion over the past decade of Australian policing across the Pacific. Peacekeeping missions to Timor-Leste since 1999 and to the Solomon Islands, beginning in 2003, boosted police numbers. In the past decade, the AFP has trebled in size and increased its budget fivefold. The AFP commissioner now has an influential role on the Australian cabinet's national-security committee. In Australia most domestic policing is carried out by state police forces, leaving the federal force largely free, outside aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, to focus on international deployments.

Their efforts have often led to accusations of heavy-handedness. In 2005 a mission to Papua New Guinea was abandoned after that country's Supreme Court ruled that legal immunities granted to AFP officers were unconstitutional. In 2006 the Solomon Islands' police chief, Shane Castles, an Australian, was sacked and declared an “undesirable immigrant” after a raid by his police officers on the office of the prime minister. That raid was connected with the AFP's long-standing pursuit of the Solomon Islands' then attorney-general, Julian Moti, on charges of sex with an underage girl. Mr Moti was deported to Australia in 2007, arrested and brought before the courts. In December 2011 the High Court threw the case out, finding that Australian officials had colluded in Mr Moti's illegal deportation.