New Zealand Minister for Trade Phil Goff has announced that talks will begin in August to begin the process of imposing a Free Trade Agreement to bind the economies of the sixteen nations of the Pacific Islands Forum together. Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, Papua New Guinea and a range of other small island nations together comprise the Pacific Islands Forum.

The Free Trade Area of the Pacific has been in the pipeline at the Pacific Islands Forum for years now as New Zealand and Australian capital seek to carve out throughout the Pacific new markets, cheap natural resources and a flexible and disposable labour force.

The recent year in the Pacific has only heightened the increasing tension between the interests of Australian, New Zealand and American capital and those of Pacific peoples subject to increased repression, surveillance, control and impoverishment. In Timor Leste, Tonga and the Solomon Islands Australia and New Zealand have intervened directly into the political affairs to enforce their control over these nations and curb, criminalise and destroy popular social movements.