Two failed signings in a week expose flaws in Australia’s Pacific diplomacy

The much-anticipated Australia-Papua New Guinea Defence Treaty – now confirmed as the Pukpuk Treaty – was not signed today. Instead, prime ministers Anthony Albanese and James Marape have issued a joint communique promising the final text would follow once PNG completes its domestic processes.

For some, this delay is frustrating. For others, it’s a demonstration that PNG is taking its time to follow its own decision-making processes rather than pushing through an agreement that signifies a divergence from its non-aligned foreign policy.

Both governments have opted to drip-feed the treaty’s key elements to the public. With the release of the communique, we now know the treaty has provisions for mutual defence, a pathway for PNG citizens to be recruited into the Australian Defence Force, some degree of force integration, obligations guarding against “third-party” agreements, and explicit respect for each country’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity.

While the content is not surprising, the speed at which we’ve come to this point is. The Pukpuk Treaty has been finalised within seven months of its first announcement, which is extraordinarily fast for a bilateral security agreement. The Defence Co-operation Agreement that PNG inked with the United States in 2023 took three years of back-and-forth negotiations.

The ball is now in Port Moresby’s court, where the document must go through domestic approval processes and obtain a critical cabinet endorsement. In the PNG context, this endorsement is not just a formality, but an embodiment of core Melanesian principles of consensus for major decisions affecting the nation.

Compliance with this process also minimises any potential backlash, like the protests that happened in PNG after the signing of the DCA with the United States, parliamentary disputes, or a legal challenge that deemed a past security agreement with Australia as unconstitutional.

The stakes are high for PNG as well. A prolonged delay paints a bad picture of Port Moresby to other foreign partners and investors.

In PNG, “sovereignty” has become almost a colloquialism; deployed recklessly by critics whenever major foreign agreements are announced. It is often less about the legal meaning but reflects a general unease or lack of understanding about what the agreement entails. Nevertheless, the optics for this are important – only yesterday PNG marked its 50th anniversary of independence, and the notion of sovereignty is front of mind for many.

Over the three-day public holiday, the atmosphere around the country is pregnant with a sense of immense pride and enthusiasm for what may lie ahead. Papua New Guineans are not ignorant of the challenges that plague the country, but the 50th independence anniversary invoked a renewed sense of commitment to be better than what they are, and to unleash is underlying potential. But delaying the signing of a historic bilateral agreement, after giving numerous reassurances that it would be signed, indicates this is off to a bad start.

The reputational stakes are high for PNG as well. A prolonged delay paints a bad picture of Port Moresby to other foreign partners and investors who often criticise the mixed signals of policy reform and slow implementation. PNG citizens themselves are used to waiting years for government commitments and services to materialise. Seeing a delay on this agreement could reinforce those frustrations.

The Albanese government is already facing criticism after the anticipated signing of the Nakamal Agreement with Vanuatu had stalled just a week ago. While there was speculation of Chinese intervention to derail the signing, these same external pressures are unlikely to be affiliated with the PNG situation. Two stalled signings within a week should also signal to Canberra that it might need to go back to the drawing board to reassess its diplomatic approach, if the current one fails to have traction with Melanesian partners.

As Albanese prepares to leave Port Moresby today, any visible disappointments must be carefully managed. Otherwise, it risks overshadowing his participation in PNG’s independence celebration and giving the impression that the treaty, not the milestone, was his main priority, leaving both sides in a worse position than if they had not sought a signing at all.

Both countries are confident the Pukpuk treaty will be signed in the coming weeks, and rightly so: there is too much on the line to have this fall through the cracks.