PNG Prime Minister James Marape and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese greet PNG locals Photo: Anthony Albanese
More details have emerged this week about an Australian government plan to help fund the establishment of an NRL rugby league club in Papua New Guinea.
Canberra is offering AU$600 million over 10 years for the prospective club, on condition that the PNG government does not sign a security deal with China.
The Australian government views the offer as an expression of "soft power", exploiting the huge love for rugby league that exists in PNG.
But whether their scheme works is another matter.
RNZ Pacific sought the view of Gordon Peake, someone who has spent a lot time in PNG, and these days is with the US Institute of Peace in Washington DC.
(The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.)
PNG Kumuls star Justin Olam is now a regular starter for the Melbourne Storm. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Gordon Peake: I was flabbergasted Don, whenever the journalist contacted me, seeking quotes for the story. Initially, as you say, Papua New Guineans love rugby league. It's inscribed and metabolized in many Papua New Guineans hearts as a love for it. And Australia has been offering to support Papua New Guinea's efforts to join the National Rugby League (NRL) for at least a couple of years now.
It was often styled as being a soft power initiative, leveraging something that Australia had - a love of rugby league itself - as a way of emboldening itself, or strengthening the relationship it had with with Papua New Guineans. It always struck me as being a tremendously generous offer on Australia's part, a very expensive offer on Australia's part as well.
But then last week, we learned that there was more to it than that, which is that the support is reportedly contingent upon Papua New Guinea agreeing to not do something and the not do something has nothing to do with sport, per se. It has a lot to do with the game of statecraft and power politics that is going on in the Pacific at the minute, and that's to commit to not signing up to a policing defence agreement arrangement with China.
Don Wiseman: Yes. So rather than soft power, it's as hard as hard power can be.
GP: That's right, yeah. I mean, you put it really well.
DW: Can it work?
GP: It's kind of hard to see, at face value, how it can work. You've got almost two completely different things going on at the same time. You've got support for this rugby league entry into the NRL, and then you've got a policing arrangement or a non policing arrangement going on at the same time. And when put your mind to it, you think, how do these two things go together? I mean, let's say, for example, Australia's support for Papua New Guinea's rugby league bid continues, and all indications are that it will, and then at some point in the future, a Papua New Guinean government minister, or the Papua New Guinean government makes intimations or signs up to a policing pact with China. What's going to happen there? Is the team going to take its footie and go home? Are the team going to not play in the NRL anymore? There seemed like such different sorts of planes of action that it's hard to see how it would work in practice.
DW: There's also a major issue if it was to fall over at this point, given that it's enthused these people, these fans of rugby league in PNG, there's the possibility of it having a very negative effect.
GP: That's right, though it's interesting. In my own reporting on this, I did a podcast series with the University of Adelaide called statecraftiness, and we had an episode dedicated to this, and we hired a young journalist who went around the streets of Port Moresby asking Papua New Guineans what they thought about rugby league. And two things came out clearly; one, yes, we love rugby league very much, secondly, a kind of ambivalence about the amount of money that was being spent on supporting the bid.
There was a sense of, well, couldn't this money be spent more urgently on priorities like health and education? The people that we interviewed for the podcast were in many ways, a few months ahead of analysts like myself and many journalists in that they twigged in that there was something going on as well, and they really questioned as to why Australia was investing so much time and effort in this.
But you're right. I mean losing face is an important feature in all forms of politics and diplomacy, and Australia will not want to lose face by the bid falling over, and Papua New Guinea's leaders will not want to lose face by the bid falling over either. They've been pretty enthusiastic backers of the bid, and there's a huge amount of sports related diplomacy that Australia certainly engages with.
Every time there's a State of Origin going on, or when the NRL Grand Final is going on, Papua New Guinean politicians and leaders are flown to Australia in order to meet up with Australian political leaders. So, all the indications are this will continue, and it's it's hard to see that there could be tremendous egg on everyone's face if it falls over at this point.
DW: Have there been similar sorts of exercises in terms of this so called soft power in the Pacific.
GP: Not on the scale that we're talking about with the support to rugby league. I think soft power, the ability to try to influence people without them actively thinking that they're being influenced, is a increasingly an important component of diplomacy and of statecraft in the region.
I can't think off the top of my head of anything of the scale of this. When something is so prominent, it makes it harder to kind of walk away from as well. If you're one of the politicians, whether on the Papua New Guinean side, or on the Australian side, that's been so enthusiastically spruiking the idea.
DW: How do you think China would view this rugby league offer by Australia?
GP: Well, of course, when we talk about soft power, we've talked about rugby league and sports diplomacy as a part of soft power, but another really important part of soft power is scholarships and people getting to go and spend a lot of time in other countries, so people from the Pacific spending time in Australia and New Zealand and in China. China is one of the major givers of scholarships in the region. So to answer your question directly, I'm sure China is thinking, well, there's probably cheaper ways of doing soft power than setting up a rugby league team, probably less administratively or managerially difficult ways of doing soft power than setting up a rugby league team. And we should probably continue to do that sort of activities that we are doing, which is, the support that it has to scholarships, like many Pacific Islanders are going to China to study, this a hell of a lot cheaper than setting up a national rugby league team anywhere in the Pacific.
