China, explained.
The International Test match between Australia and Fiji at McDonald Jones Stadium on 6 July 2025 in Newcastle, Australia (Izhar Khan/MB Media/Getty Images)
Does Australia really want to fund rival codes against each other in Pacific competition with Beijing?
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League versus union: Australia’s rugby diplomacy needs a game planLeague versus union: Australia’s rugby diplomacy needs a game plan
As sure as night follows day, Australia finds itself drawn into strategic competition with China in the Pacific – this time in a domain entirely of its own design.
News broke last week that the governments of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa are preparing to request $150 million for rugby union. This follows recent moves by these nations to develop closer sports ties with China. Fiji Rugby Union inked a MoU with its Chinese counterpart in June; Tonga is working on a similar document and has already received a $40 million sports complex from China; and Samoa has been offered a new national stadium by Beijing.
This follows the Australian government’s $600 million commitment last December to support rugby league in the Pacific. While the main deliverable is a new NRL franchise based in Port Moresby, $250 million is set aside for developing the game across the Pacific.
Though rugby league is growing in Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, traditionally these countries are rugby union strongholds. Each has played in nine of ten rugby world cups, and the Fijian men’s sevens team – the Flying Fijians – are a global powerhouse having medalled at the last three Olympics.
While the Australian government does fund rugby union in the Pacific – including about $1 million per annum for the Fijian Drua to compete in Super Rugby and a $14.2 million high-performance partnership over four years with Rugby Australia – these sums are now dwarfed by the $250 million for rugby league.
Other Pacific partners know that they need only flirt with Beijing to have Australia fund their sporting ambitions.
Pacific rugby union officials are understandably concerned that their small but rich talent pools and supporter bases will be cannibalised. But they also have the wisdom to recognise and emulate how rugby league administrators and politicians in PNG have leveraged Australia’s security anxieties over Chinese influence to secure a windfall.
Should Fiji, Tonga and Samoa’s $150 million request be granted, it would put Australia in a rather bizarre situation: funding two rival codes to compete against one another in the Pacific, all as a means for Canberra to compete with Beijing for political influence. It’s hard to understand how this is an efficient or logical use of taxpayer money and a finite development budget.
Prime Ministers Anthony Albanese and Sitiveni Rabuka appearing at The Vuvale Bowl between Australia and Fiji (@AlboMP/X)
Unfortunately, this state of affairs speaks to a shallow appreciation for the political economy of rugby league inside the Australian government.
The 13-a-side game has always existed in reference to, and in competition with, its 15-a-side sibling.
League’s original schism from union in the north of England in 1893 was driven by bitter class divides. This demographic split – between working class league and upper middle-class union – was then replicated in Sydney, Brisbane and Auckland in the early 20th century. In Vichy France, collaborationist rugby union figures almost wiped out rugby à treize under the imprimatur of Nazi rule.
Transferable skills and overlapping audiences between league and union mean the codes have been locked in a perpetual competition for talent, resources and eyeballs for over 130 years now.
Sports administrators are shrewd operators for whom the national interest comes a distant second to commercial objectives.
High profile code switches, such as Dally Messenger, Sonny Bill Williams and Israel Folau, are testament to this. As are the NRL’s moves to poach young prospects from the heartland of rugby union in Australia: private schools in Sydney and Brisbane.
Set against this context, the NRL’s willingness to partner with the Australian government to support the game in the Pacific should be understood as just the most recent chapter in Australia’s long-running code wars.
With about 45 per cent of NRL players from Pasifika backgrounds, and the NRL wanting to grow TV audiences in the Pacific, Australian government subsidies are a big advantage for league over union.
It’s hard to avoid the impression, then, that the government – and especially the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade – have been so preoccupied by strategic competition with China that they have allowed themselves to become a pawn in domestic competition between sports codes.
The other concerning dimension to the Australian government’s deal with the NRL is that it has set a conspicuous and problematic precedent.
In isolation, the PNG deal is a diplomatic coup: using sport to firmly secure Port Moresby in Canberra’s strategic orbit. But it has also shown other Pacific partners that they need only flirt with Beijing to have Australia fund their sporting ambitions.
What’s next? Football world cup qualification for Vanuatu? An AFL team in Nauru? (I jest.)
Australia has been here before, most notably with financing infrastructure in the Pacific – and there are no easy answers. With China unscrupulously using any lever to secure elite influence, Australia cannot afford to simply vacate the field (if you’ll excuse the pun) in areas it would rather not touch.
But with the diplomatic and development budgets already tight, a better approach would at least establish clear priority sports in each Pacific nation in collaboration with local authorities, avoid funding competing programs, and understand that sports administrators are shrewd operators for whom the national interest comes a distant second to commercial objectives.
About the author
Hugh Piper
Hugh Piper is a director at Ancrum Advisory.
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