Australia–PNG Defence Treaty: An Unresearched Gamble?

For months, debate over a prospective defence treaty between PNG and Australia has gathered momentum. Negotiations were formally announced in February 2025, with leaders on both sides signalling September 16—PNG’s Independence Day—as a potential signing date. The treaty, if concluded, will represent the most binding military pact in PNG’s post-independence history. Yet amid the symbolism and political rhetoric, one fact remains stark: there has been no comprehensive academic research from within PNG critically assessing the risks and potential outcomes of such an agreement.

It is important to be clear: this Defence Treaty is not the same as the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) signed in December 2023 and ratified in December 2024. The BSA was a broad framework covering security cooperation across policing, cyber, law and justice, and resilience building. While significant in scope, it was essentially a whole-of-government umbrella agreement. The Defence Treaty, by contrast, will be narrower but far weightier in legal terms: it will create direct military-to-military obligations, potentially involving basing rights, joint operations, and the movement of PNG citizens into the Australian Defence Force.

Despite these differences, one thing links the BSA and the Defence Treaty: both have lacked robust PNG-led academic scrutiny. When the BSA was tabled, public debate was driven by parliamentary exchanges and external think-tanks, not PNG universities or journals. A handful of NRI Spotlights touched on aspects of security cooperation, but no peer-reviewed PNG research mapped the risks, safeguards, or long-term implications. That same void now looms even larger as the Defence Treaty moves toward signature.

The absence of PNG scholarship is troubling because defence treaties are not ceremonial instruments. They restructure sovereignty arrangements, alter fiscal obligations, and open pathways for long-term security dependence. Australia has already conducted its own assessments through the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Treaties. External commentary from East Asia Forum and the Lowy Institute has raised sovereignty questions. Yet PNG’s own academic voice—through journals such as Contemporary PNG Studies or NRI’s Spotlight series—has been missing.

Australia’s Parliament produced Report 220 — a full review of the PNG–Australia Security Agreement. Yet PNG’s own Foreign Affairs & Defence Committee has not published any equivalent report for its citizens. Why is scrutiny one-sided?

Critical questions remain unanswered. How would joint operations affect PNG’s command over its military? Would treaty provisions create a permanent Australian footprint in PNG? What fiscal commitments would PNG shoulder in terms of training, interoperability, or infrastructure upgrades? Would the treaty constrain PNG’s ability to balance relations with other powers such as China, Indonesia, or the United States? These are not speculative concerns; they are the bread-and-butter of defence treaty analysis that universities elsewhere would have already undertaken.

The social implications are equally neglected. Reports suggest the treaty could allow PNG citizens to enlist in the Australian Defence Force. On one hand, this offers employment and training opportunities. On the other, it raises questions about PNG’s own defence readiness, reintegration of returning personnel, and the risk of bifurcating its soldier base between those serving under national command and those under Australian. Again, no PNG academic work has assessed these possibilities.

Without such research, PNG risks negotiating from a position of weakness. Governments backed by independent academic assessments can approach treaty negotiations with a risk register and safeguards clearly articulated by their own experts. Lacking this, PNG negotiators are left leaning on bureaucratic advice or external commentary. This diminishes leverage and heightens the risk of overlooking critical details that only surface after signing. History shows that small states often enter defence arrangements without fully understanding downstream costs.

Ultimately, the absence of PNG-led research on the Defence Treaty is itself a warning sign. Even the lighter BSA was never critically analyzed by local academics, and now a far heavier and more consequential treaty is on the table with the same vacuum in evidence-based debate. If universities, research institutes, and civil society do not urgently step in to produce serious scholarship, PNG risks walking into a binding military pact guided more by political theater and foreign analysis than by its own informed national debate.