Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s difficult week at the Pacific Islands Forum is only the first of many such diplomatic challenges Australia will face until it gets a comprehensive policy on climate change. Mr Morrison went to the meeting of the 18 island states hoping to counterbalance the growing influence of China in a region that is Australia’s backyard, but instead he spent much of his time fighting over climate change with countries he says are part of Australia’s “family”.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison in the Tuvalu capital, Funafuti, this week. Credit:AAP

Pacific island leaders were not impressed by Mr Morrison’s intransigence in fighting against the inclusion of calls for tougher action on climate change in the final communique. Enele Sapoaga, Prime Minister of Tuvalu, the host country whose low-lying atolls are already being washed away by the effects of climate change, said Mr Morrison was trying to save his economy but he was trying to save his people.

There was a spat after New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Mr Morrison had to “answer to the Pacific”. The hardest kind of diplomacy is when you have to tell foreign governments one thing and say another for the domestic constituency back home. This is Mr Morrison’s problem. He wants to show sympathy for the Pacific islands but at the same time has to manage competing positions on coal within the federal Coalition.

Mr Morrison went dangling a $500 million package of repurposed money supposed to help the Pacific nations deal with climate change. But he gave no details and he failed to convince leaders he had taken their concerns to heart. On Friday, he repeated the coal lobby’s line that “Australia alone cannot cool the planet”. It is a classic excuse to do nothing.