A 2.7-tonne cocaine seizure estimated to be worth nearly $1 billion that reached Australia via the Solomon Islands has highlighted a growing fear the Pacific is a soft target for drug trafficking.

Two Samoan men, Andrew Whata Fepulaei, 21, and Kristian Faiumu, 25, were charged on Saturday for orchestrating the haul after allegedly trying to flee on foot when police investigators raided a semi-rural property on Sydney's outskirts on Friday.

The cocaine shipment was said to be Australia's - and the entire Pacific region's - largest-ever recorded seizure of the drug.

The cargo ship that has transported the cocaine haul from Belize in Central America to its Australian destination has since been detained in Solomon Islands on the orders of Australia Federal Police.

The AFP Investigations command believed the seizure suggested a "significant organised crime syndicate" was behind the importation.

The latest case lands at a dangerous moment for Pacific policing.

Small Pacific Island states have become increasingly vulnerable to transnational drug trafficking as the region emerged as a transit corridor for narcotics moving into Australia as well as Aotearoa / New Zealand.

Pacific law and order officials say seven "narco-submarines" have been found across the region within the past two years, four of them in the Solomon Islands alone.

Days before the two men were arrested in relation to the cocaine haul, Commissioner of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force Ian Vaevaso was suspended less than two months into the job over unrelated drug allegations.

Solomon Islands Governor-General David Tiva Kapu, acting on the advice of newly-appointed Prime Minister Matthew Wale, suspended Commissioner Vaevaso just last Wednesday.

Mr Wale had campaigned in opposition weeks earlier for Commissioner Vaevaso's removal and is moving to reopen a further case that authorities appeared unwilling or unable to resolve before the commissioner took office.

The moves come months after the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an international non-profit investigative journalism organisation that reports on corruption, organised crime, financial misconduct and abuses of power, had said an internal investigation found Commissioner Vaevaso destroyed drug evidence, intimidated police officers who challenged his authority, and lied to investigators.

Commissioner Vaevaso had been appointed the head of the 3000-strong Solomons' police force despite allegations he ordered subordinates to hand over confiscated methamphetamine before he was accused of personally taking responsibility for dumping the drugs into the sea.

The suspension also highlights a wider institutional failure in the Solomon Islands.

Prosecutors had recommended Commissioner Vaevaso be suspended, but the case was bogged down in a bureaucratic clash involving multiple police departments and agencies and by the time the case file went into limbo, he had not been interviewed, suspended or charged.

The Solomon Islands government says the matter will be moved to a new independent tribunal.

The Governor-General's office said before the latest seizure from the Solomon Islands that the suspension "serves to facilitate a thorough and impartial inquiry into the improper management of methamphetamine narcotics" alongside greater concerns regarding Commissioner Vaevaso's initial selection for the role of police commissioner.

Commissioner Vaevaso, who denies all wrongdoing, said in a statement last week that he "fully respected and will fully support this process of the constitution" and added that "I'm ready to face these made-up allegations raised against me".

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime had previously announced prior to the appointment of Commissioner Vaevaso during a national symposium in Honiara that stronger action was required to combat transnational organised crime in Solomon Islands.

The symposium marked the launch of a new UNODC report on the landscape of transnational organised crime across the Solomons, which highlighted that the archipelago is at a "strategic inflection point" for being able to effectively prevent systemic embedding of organised crime.

Organised crime in the Solomon Islands had been characterised in the report by an emerging synthetic drug market and its vulnerabilities for criminal exploitation in the logging, mining and fishing industries.

But the report had also highlighted that organised criminal groups were "not yet embedded or consolidated" in the Solomon Islands while the nation finds itself with a "narrowing window for anticipatory reform".