Like when the media-reluctant Marise Payne was rolled out to defend the government's apparently supine efforts to interrupt a growing amity between China and the Solomon Islands.

In the hours after Beijing revealed that a security pact had been signed, the Morrison government, which lays claim to a uniquely hawkish China-preparedness, was in full damage control mode.

The agreement will see PRC naval assets (that's warships to you and me) regularly visiting the South Pacific nation for replenishing and maintenance, thus extending the Chinese naval presence and its reach.

Arguing the Pacific is now less secure as a result of Australian negligence, Penny Wong called it "... the worst failure of Australian foreign policy in the Pacific since the end of World War II".

So Payne's explanation had some work to do. Yet far from conveying diligent top-level diplomacy and enlightened longer-term statecraft, it came across as half-baked. Exculpatory details were tellingly absent.

AM host, Sabra Lane, wanted to know why as Australia's top diplomat, Payne had not travelled to Honiara to emphasise Australia's deep commitment to the region, our willingness to rise to any challenges, our ongoing legitimacy as the dependable regional lodestar.

"I spoke at length and engaged at length with my colleague, Minister Manele," she pleaded.

"Prime Minister (Scott Morrison) has been in contact with Prime Minister Sogavare, including through correspondence, and of course, Minister Seselja, who is our minister for the Pacific, ah, visited as soon as he was able to, ah, having experienced, ah, COVID, ah, just before that."

So far this could cover anything from a diplomatic full-court press right down to a single extended phone call from Payne, a stiff letter from the PM, and a belated visit by a non-Cabinet minister.

Morrison has since said that he had spent "countless hours" discussing the development with Pacific partners. Presumably those talks involved the Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, but again, if they did, why not say so directly?

After all, Sogavare was the person who needed to be talked around - not Manele, and certainly not the Americans.

In any event, by the time Morrison dispatched Zed Seselja, whom Labor's Penny Wong decried as a "junior woodchuck", the security pact was a done deal.

Somewhat lamely, Payne says Seselja had a COVID infection but the real culprit was the government's indolence before the public revelation of March 24, and its curious lack of urgency since.

Given that national security competence is foundational to the Coalition's claims for re-election, this was a massive fail by Morrison and one of infinitely greater moment than any brain freeze over the jobless rate.

The government had neglected to gird against China's possible Solomons incursion and had then pulled out too few stops to head it off once revealed. The implications for Australia are real-world and far-reaching.

That is the conclusion of no less than the government's second-most senior minister who declared the pact as "a very bad day for Australia".

Invoking the deadly Cold War, Barnaby Joyce said "we don't want our own little Cuba off our coast and that is not what is good for this nation, not what is good for this region".

Against these stakes, it seems all the more surprising that Payne restricted her contact to talks with a foreign minister who was either unmoved or who exercised zero clout with his PM.

Reaching for ex post facto justifications, Morrison explained it had been a strategic decision to send the more junior minister.

"The judgement was made not to engage in a more - at a foreign minister level engagement - to ensure that Australia's views were communicated very clearly, and very respectfully," he said.

Note that he said "the judgement" rather than 'my judgement' - an ownership he attaches only to political successes, which this unhappy affair plainly was not.

Plainly, his decision to low-ball Australia's objections, was wrong. It failed.

Wong says the Solomons flagged to the Morrison government way back in August that it was in talks with Beijing.

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By Friday, Nine newspapers cited "several government sources" as saying that at the very least, Australia knew a Sino-Solomons agreement was being discussed "weeks before it mysteriously surfaced on the internet" on March 24.

Seselja rejects that completely but even Morrison said, at one point, the government had been aware of China's regional plans.

"I can't go into all the details as to how Australia is able to know the specific information, as they are security matters," he said.

"But what I do know is we have always been very conscious of that threat of China being able to influence a nation in our region."

Morrison also attacked China's lack of transparency around the deal which seemed a little shameless just months after he ambushed Emmanuel Macron with the ultra-secretive AUKUS pivot - a deal so tightly held its MOUs remain secret and even the Defence Department secretary had enjoyed only restricted access to details.

The final string to Morrison's ukulele is his defence that the Solomon Islands is a sovereign nation, meaning there are limits to what Australia can insist upon.

This sudden sensitivity to Solomon Islands sovereignty seems quaint bearing in mind Sogavare's willingness to turn to an autocratic superpower surveillance-state for his future security.

While details remain scant, the compact is understood to give Beijing a role in domestic police actions in the Solomons at times of unrest. The implications of Chinese security forces on the ground in the Solomons - invited in to enforce a peace as per this agreement - represents a staggering diminution of security in Australia's near region.

Just imagine the fuming contempt from Morrison and Dutton if Labor had presided over such a disaster.