Australia, explained.
Rugby League is the national sport of Papua New Guinea (Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
The real benefits of the NRL franchise lie not in the funding but in boosting social development and local industry.
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The PNG Chiefs will be a test of sovereigntyThe PNG Chiefs will be a test of sovereignty
Serena Sasingian is right that design will determine the legacy of the PNG Chiefs, the newest team to join the national rugby league (NRL) franchise. Sasingian is also right in her Interpreter article this week that the $250 million social development envelope within the $600 million deal is where the real nation-building either happens or doesn't. However, what her article does not fully examine is what good design actually requires, and what is already being built in Papua New Guinea that the design needs to reckon with.
The question is not whether rugby league can change PNG. It already has. The question is whether this investment builds something PNG owns for the next 50 years, or delivers another decade of programs that arrive from outside, operate from outside, and are evaluated by the people who funded them.
Those are not the same thing. And the difference matters more than any headline number.
Sasingian notes that early reports of tax concessions for NRL players and luxury accommodation in Port Moresby have already signalled a gap between the franchise's world and the settlements where most Papua New Guineans live. She moves past this quickly. It deserves more weight.
A national team whose players live in conditions most Papua New Guineans cannot imagine does not automatically produce social cohesion.
This week, the gap became structural. The Australian Rugby League Commission confirmed a partnership to build a dedicated player village at the Airways resort in Port Moresby: 67 fully-furnished units, access to Loloata Island Resort, pools, a gymnasium, and a barber. Cost: K200 million (around $66 million). Meanwhile, only 16% of boys and 12% of girls who enter school at elementary level in PNG complete Grade 12. Schools in the surrounding settlements operate without reliable power or water.
A national team whose players live in conditions most Papua New Guineans cannot imagine does not automatically produce social cohesion. It can just as easily produce resentment. The question is not whether elite players deserve support. It is whether the social architecture surrounding the franchise is designed for the communities it is meant to serve, or designed for the franchise's operational convenience.
These are different design priorities. Only one of them produces a genuine fair go.
PNG does not need sport-for-development. PNG needs a sports industry.
There is a difference. Sport-for-development is a program. An industry is an ecosystem of employment, enterprise, media, infrastructure, coaching, officiating, administration, and community governance that generates livelihoods across a full economy. The AFL created that in Australia over decades. The NRL created it in Queensland. Neither of those industries was built by external funders delivering programs. They were built by communities investing in the infrastructure of the game over time.
The $250 million social development envelope is large enough to begin building that infrastructure in PNG, not just fund programs within it. The distinction matters because programs end when funding ends. Industries persist because communities have economic stakes in them.
That requires a different design logic entirely. Not just "what programs should we fund?" but "what institutions, enterprises, and community governance structures need to exist so that PNG sport is PNG-owned in twenty years?" It requires investment in the grassroots organisations that have been doing this work without mandates, without overhead funding, and without being in the room when decisions like this one are made.
Sasingian cites League Bilong Laif as the vehicle for the social development envelope. It has genuine community relationships and a real footprint, having trained over 800 teachers and reached more than 32,000 participants by 2017. It also has a specific structural characteristic that the design of the $250 million program cannot replicate if the goal is local ownership.
League Bilong Laif is delivered by the NRL and funded by the Australian government. The PNG Department of Education is a signatory to the founding memorandum of understanding. It is not the architect. No public documentation establishes PNG ownership of the program governance, curriculum, or data. This is not unusual in sport-for-development. It is the default model. It is also precisely the model that has not produced a PNG-owned sports industry after 12 years of operation.
Locally led does not mean local staff delivering an Australian program.
Locally led does not mean local staff delivering an Australian program. It means PNG organisations holding the design authority, the intellectual property, and the community relationships. It means the program logic was built from PNG knowledge, not adapted from elsewhere. It means community co-investment, not community participation as a performance metric.
These distinctions determine whether the capacity built over ten years of investment stays in PNG or departs with the next funding cycle.
The $250 million social development envelope will fund programs that are measured against outcomes. That is appropriate. The question is whether the evidence standard is applied consistently.
DFAT's own locally led development framework explicitly requires that PNG-led organisations hold primary delivery roles. PNG-led organisations operating today cannot be held to a higher evidence bar than established externally designed programs that have not been independently evaluated in a decade. If evidence is the criterion for funding, it must be the criterion for all delivery partners. That is not a procedural point. It is a sovereignty point.
The good news is that this is fixable in the design phase: require independent outcome verification for all partners; ring-fence the social development envelope in a PNG-governed community foundation; and structurally separate that funding from the franchise's commercial operations. DFAT's own framework already requires locally led delivery. Apply it here without qualification.
Sasingian asks whether the PNG Chiefs can model what a genuine fair go looks like. They can. But not if the institutions surrounding them replicate the architecture of the last 50 years of development assistance.
PNG has organisations that have been building what comes next — community-led, evidence-backed, designed from PNG knowledge, and operating in the settlements between the 80-minute matches. They do not need to be saved by this investment. They need to be resourced by it, and given the design authority that their track record has earned.
The window to get this right is now. Not after the franchise launches. Not after the first season. The social architecture has to be built before the commercial one locks it out.
That is what a genuine fair go looks like.
About the author
Tahina Booth
Tahina Booth is the Founder and Managing Director of the Grass Skirt Project, a Papua New Guinea-founded, women-led organisation using sport to prevent gender-based violence and build youth leadership in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific, established in 2017.
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