In Part 1 of this series, the author set out the census evidence that I-Kiribati are under-represented in Pacific migration pathways compared to Tuvaluans and citizens of states with Compacts of Free Association with the US. Part 2 moves from the numbers to what he has seen in Australia, and to the Falepili Union.
When I first arrived in Australia in 2009 to study at the University of Queensland, I remember walking into a bottle shop in Ipswich and being served by a Tuvaluan worker. That moment stayed with me. It may sound like a small encounter, but for me it was powerful.
In absolute terms, I later learned, there were actually slightly more I-Kiribati than Tuvaluans in Australia even then. But size alone does not characterise a diaspora. What struck me in Queensland was how much more settled, visible and organised the Tuvaluan community already was. The I-Kiribati I knew were scattered, mostly recent arrivals through marriage, study or unusual personal circumstances, without the churches, congregations and neighbourhood clusters that Tuvaluans had already built.
Because Tuvaluans already had a community, and they already had a church. In Logan, Queensland, there is an established Ekalesia Kelisiano Tuvalu church — a proper congregation, with a Tuvaluan pastor, where the hymns and the preaching were all in Tuvaluan. I attended that church several times, and sitting there, listening to the hymns and the preaching in Tuvaluan, I felt something that was both beautiful and painful: beautiful, because I was happy to see another small island people who had built a spiritual and social home for themselves in Australia; painful, because I could not help thinking, where is our equivalent? Where is the I-Kiribati community with that level of stability, visibility and continuity?
That church in Logan was not an accident. It was the result of decades of movement, family networks, church networks and early migration pathways. One person moves first, then a sibling follows, then cousins, then whole families, until eventually a church forms and children grow up between two worlds. That is how a diaspora becomes real, and how a small island people build roots in a larger country.
The Australian Census figures bear this out. According to Australian Census data, there were 995 Tuvaluans and 1,263 I-Kiribati in Australia in 2021 — roughly the same order of magnitude, and if anything slightly more I-Kiribati. But almost 30% of the Tuvaluans living in Australia were born in New Zealand, while those who identify as I-Kiribati are nearly all born in either Kiribati or Australia, with only 6% born in New Zealand. In other words, much of the Tuvaluan community in Australia has arrived via a well-established New Zealand diaspora built up over decades, whereas the I-Kiribati community is overwhelmingly first-generation and still finding its feet. And when you remember how much bigger Kiribati is than Tuvalu in population terms, the same under-representation of I-Kiribati that we see in New Zealand, Fiji, Nauru and RMI shows up in Australia too, just less obviously in the raw headcount.
For I-Kiribati people, we are only beginning to build that kind of presence. As noted in the previous article, the 4,659 I-Kiribati recorded in the 2023 New Zealand Census represent our largest diaspora anywhere (outside settled populations in Solomon Islands and Fiji due to colonial era migration), and it has quadrupled since 2006 — but even there our numbers remain very small relative to our population and to other island states. We are still decades behind, which is why census microdata matters so much: it shows who has already built a diaspora and who has been left behind.
This brings me to the Falepili Union between Australia and Tuvalu. The treaty is extraordinary: it gives Tuvaluans a special pathway to live, work and study in Australia, with up to 280 Tuvaluans able to move each year. I am genuinely happy for Tuvalu, because that is what leadership and long-term preparation can achieve for a small island people — playing the geopolitical game strategically.
Strategic because many do not believe this treaty was only about climate change. Climate vulnerability may figure prominently in the public language, and it is real, but the timing and the geopolitical context say a lot.
Kiribati switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 2019, while Tuvalu remained with Taiwan. Then, in November 2023, at a time when geopolitical competition in the Pacific had become impossible to ignore, Australia signed the Falepili Union with Tuvalu. The treaty was not just about mobility; it also included security arrangements. To me, it is difficult to separate that from the broader competition over China’s influence in the Pacific.
Again, I am not blaming Tuvalu. Tuvalu did what any small nation should do: it secured the best deal it could for its people, and I respect that. But from Australia’s perspective, this was clearly not simply a neutral climate-migration policy. If climate vulnerability were the only principle, then Kiribati would be an obvious candidate for the same kind of treaty: we live on the same kind of atolls, face the same rising seas and have a much larger population, with South Tarawa overcrowded and our people holding far fewer migration pathways and a less established diaspora in New Zealand and Australia.
Importantly, Kiribati has been one of the earliest and loudest voices in the global conversation on climate change. Anote Tong’s 2004 address to the UN General Assembly framed climate change and sea-level rise as existential threats to small island states, and Kiribati also advanced the idea of “migration with dignity“, framing labour migration as part of a long-term response to climate displacement.
So when Australia gives Tuvalu a treaty but gives Kiribati nothing comparable, the question must be asked: is this really climate justice, or is it climate language wrapped around geopolitical strategy?
The ocean does not discriminate between Funafuti and South Tarawa, and sea-level rise does not ask whether a country recognises Taiwan or China. If Australia wants to claim that its Pacific migration policy is based on climate vulnerability, dignity and fairness, then the policy should be consistent, and it should not appear to reward one diplomatic position while leaving another atoll nation behind.
This is the uncomfortable truth that many people may not want to say out loud, but I believe it needs to be said respectfully and clearly. Australia is not only making migration policy; it is making geopolitical choices, and those choices have human consequences for ordinary Pacific families.
Australia has a choice. It can allow fear-based politics to define migration, where immigrants are spoken of as threats and numbers are discussed without history. Or it can build a smarter, more humane, more Pacific-aware migration system: a system that recognises that not all countries, and not all migration needs, are the same.
If Australia wants to reduce pressure from very large migration sources, then it should not simply shrink the whole migration program in ways that hurt the smallest and most vulnerable countries. It should rebalance, making more room for the Pacific, and within the Pacific it should pay attention to per capita census data — to who already has pathways and who does not.
For me, the historical census data and my personal experience point in the same direction. I saw in Ipswich and Logan what Tuvaluans had already built, and how far ahead they were in establishing a community in Australia. But I also saw what was missing for I-Kiribati people, and I felt the absence of my own people in those spaces and how far behind we were.
That is why I believe Australia should give greater consideration to Kiribati in its migration policy — not as charity or pity, but as fairness. A fair Pacific migration system should be historically aware and should recognise population size, existing migration pathways, underrepresented countries and climate vulnerability consistently. And, as a result of all this, it should give I-Kiribati citizens much greater access to Australia.
In the third and final part of this series to be published later this week, the author turns to his own government, arguing that Kiribati must pursue permanent migration pathways as a national development strategy.
Read part 1.
