Sir Julius Chan, circa 1995 (AFP via Getty Images)

Sir Julius Chan, circa 1995, was Papua New Guinea’s second prime minister and its longest serving politician (AFP via Getty Images)

Sir Julius Chan: PNG’s “last man standing”

Reflecting on a political life championing local development and courting international controversy.

Ian Kemish

5 February 20255 min read

In recent years Sir Julius Chan was often referred to by his fellow Papua New Guineans as the “last man standing”. It was an expression he liked.

It was also quite appropriate. “Sir J”, as many also called him, was the country’s longest serving politician, having first been elected to PNG’s pre-independence House of Assembly in 1968, when John Gorton was Prime Minister of Australia. Sir Julius would go on to become PNG’s second Prime Minister. When he died last week at the age of 85, he was still a member of the national parliament and governor of his beloved New Ireland province.

Almost all the other great figures of the independence era are gone now. Sir Michael Somare, his fellow Grand Chief and the country’s first prime minister, died four years ago. These two men had a complex but enduring relationship. Chan served as Somare’s deputy prime minister and finance minister in the early years, helping build a modern economy for the new nation. But then he toppled Somare in a vote of no-confidence in 1980, taking the top job for himself. They would be both political allies and adversaries many times again.

Sir Julius’s way of playing the game famously ushered some serious tensions into the Australia-PNG relationship.

I remember running into Sir Julius in Sir Michael’s hometown of Wewak, during the 2012 national election campaign. As Australian High Commissioner I was checking the delivery of logistical assistance we were providing for the polls. We’d arranged to see Sir Michael at the main hotel in town, as a courtesy – he’d been removed from the prime ministership by parliament, in complicated circumstances, the previous year, but was running again.

Somare started with astonishment when Sir Julius suddenly came around a corner halfway through our chat. We were a very long way from both Chan’s home province and the capital, Port Moresby, and Chan could only be in town to support his local People’s Progress Party candidate, who was running against Somare. The exchange that followed was remarkable.

“What on Earth are you doing here?” asked Sir Michael in incredulous tones.

For a moment Sir Julius almost looked embarrassed. But the moment passed.

“I’m here to steal your votes, of course!” he replied.

“Well, that’s obvious,” Sir Michael said. “But we’ve known each other for more than 40 years, so you could at least let me know you were in town!”

And we all went off for a drink together. They spent most of the evening competing to tell stories about Australian prime ministers they had known.

Sir Julius Chan and Sir Michael Somare (NIPG Media Unit)

Sir Julius had a longstanding and warm relationship with Australia. When he was an infant during the Second World War, he and his family were interned in a labour camp by the Japanese occupying force, like other families with Chinese heritage. The first Australian he met was a soldier called Robinson who took them by barge to Rabaul after the Japanese had been expelled. He also described his schooldays in Brisbane as among the happiest days of his life. A serious accident involving a bicycle wheel and tram lines brought his studies at the University of Queensland to an early end, but he took a great deal of satisfaction from the fact that it was UQP that published his memoir, Playing the Game, in 2016.

Sir Julius’s way of playing the game famously ushered some serious tensions into the Australia-PNG relationship in 1997, during his second, longer stint as prime minister. His government’s decisions in the so-called “Sandline Affair” both alarmed Canberra and provoked a wave of national protest.

Chan had become head of government again three years previously, at the height of the separatist civil war in Bougainville, and by 1997 his government was desperate to find a way to resolve the deadly conflict quickly. Sandline International, a private military company headquartered in London, convinced them that they could help achieve this outcome, and entered a multi-million contract with the state for mercenary support. But Chan and his ministers underestimated the resentment that the PNG Defence force would feel at having this arrangement foisted on them, and the extent to which the PNG public would share the PNGDF’s outrage – not to mention the strength of the Australian government’s concerns.

His own people will remember Sir Julius more as an independence champion and a determined leader of his own province.

Two Australian journalistic greats, Mary-Louise O’Callaghan and Sean Dorney, have both written riveting accounts of that affair – how, in an operation ordered by the PNGDF Commander, Jerry Singirok, the mercenary leaders were abducted by the military, and senior officers joined the public in days of protests outside parliament. Sir Julius was ultimately forced to stand down as prime minister and lost his seat in the next election. It was to be ten years before he would return to political office, as regional member and governor of New Ireland.

And yet even Singirok has joined the thousands of well-wishers in bidding Sir Julius farewell in recent days.

I only remember hearing Sir Julius speak about those events once. It was that same evening in Wewak, with Sir Michael. He talked about how he had had to “endure hours of lecturing from John Howard over lunch at Kirribilli years ago”. It was obvious, but I asked if this had been in 1997. “Yes, it was about that Sandline thing,” he confirmed.

His own people will remember Sir Julius more as an independence champion and a determined leader of his own province. This is where he put his energies in his long, second political life from 2007. He fought hard to win as much development benefit as possible for New Ireland from the significant revenues that the major gold mining operations in the province directed to Port Moresby. He championed better leadership and a degree of economic self-determination for New Ireland until the end. And he continued to play an influential role at the national level, advocating reform of PNG’s resource laws and occasionally serving as intermediary and power broker during tense political times.

He could do all this because his fellow Papua New Guineans respected him, and were grateful for his lifelong contribution to the nation.

Tenikyu Tumas, Sir J.