Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, current chairman of the region's trade and diplomatic bloc Pacific Islands Forum, was responding to Fijian leader Commodore Frank Bainimarama's decision to expel Australia's and New Zealand's top diplomats for allegedly meddling in Fiji's affairs.

"The Fijian regime led by Commodore Bainimarama has conducted a military coup, he has violated the constitution, he has refused to hold elections and he's suspended the judiciary," Rudd told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

"Therefore we have taken a deliberately hardline approach to this regime because we do not want this coup culture to spread elsewhere in the Pacific," he said.

Despite instability and economic turmoil wrought by four coups since 1987, Fiji's is one of the wealthiest and most influential countries among the largely impoverished and aid-dependent South Pacific region.

Rebels who ousted the Solomon Islands government in 2000 cited a coup that year in Fiji as inspiration, prompting Canberra to recast its regional military strategy to deal with what it called an "arc of instability" stretching from East Timor into the South Pacific.

Bainimarama has been at loggerheads with Australia and New Zealand since the two regional powers led condemnation of the military leader's 2006 overthrow of the elected government. The two nations have slapped travel bans on senior Fiji officials, and pushed successfully for Fiji to be suspended from key international groups.

The latest spat is over a group of expatriate judges from Sri Lanka that Fiji wants to hire to replace some of those fired by Bainimarama's administration in a power grab earlier this year.

Australia and New Zealand told the judges this week that if they take up the posts in Fiji they would be subject to travel bans the two countries have placed on all senior officials in Bainimarama's government because of the coup.

Bainimarama on Tuesday accused Australia and New Zealand of adopting dishonest strategies to undermine Fiji, and gave the countries' top diplomats 24 hours to leave Fiji or face deportation.

Australia denies it tried to block the Sri Lankans from taking up posts in Fiji but concedes they had been contacted and advised that the Australia and New Zealand travel bans would apply.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully said in a statement Tuesday that the government was considering what steps to take in response to the expulsion.