How do the Pacific Islands fit into Australia’s region of strategic interest, the Indo-Pacific? Perhaps a good starting point for this question is to reflect a little on the emergence of the Indo-Pacific as
an idea in Australian defence and strategic policy. It is an idea still in formation and the reality of the Pacific Islands draws attention to the need for it to evolve further. The Indo-Pacific is as much a policy construct as it is a geographical reality, so how it evolves further will in part depend on how policy and academic communities build and use the idea.