Australia’s A$600 Million Waqa Moana Initiative: An Opportunity to Build PNG’s NSA and NIO

By Bernard Yegiora

Australia’s announcement of a A$600 million package to combat transnational organised crime and illicit drug trafficking in the Pacific should attract serious attention in PNG.

On 2 September 2026, Pacific leaders endorsed Waqa Moana, a Pacific-led maritime security initiative intended to strengthen regional responses to illicit drug trafficking. Australia subsequently announced A$600 million in support for its implementation. Importantly, Waqa Moana will focus on getting actionable intelligence into the hands of Pacific police forces and operational responders.

Identified cocaine trafficking routes affecting the Pacific, 2022–2024. The map highlights PNG’s position within wider trans-Pacific trafficking networks connecting the Americas, Pacific Island states, Australia, New Zealand, and East and Southeast Asia. Source: UNODC, World Drug Report 2025.

UNODC map: Identified trafficking routes of cocaine impacting the Pacific, 2022–2024

For PNG, this should not be viewed simply as another regional policing initiative.

It represents a potentially significant opportunity to strengthen two institutions at the centre of PNG’s evolving national security architecture: the National Security Agency (NSA) and the National Intelligence Organisation (NIO).

But PNG should not wait for Australia to determine what capabilities it needs. The NSA and NIO should identify their capability gaps now and develop proposals demonstrating how Australian assistance can help establish sustainable, sovereign PNG intelligence capability.

Fiji Is a Warning for the Pacific

The growing relationship between transnational drug trafficking and domestic social problems elsewhere in the Pacific should concern PNG.

Pacific countries can no longer assume that they are merely transit points through which narcotics move towards larger markets such as Australia and New Zealand. Once trafficking networks establish routes, facilitators, financial networks and local markets, what begins as a border security problem can develop into a much wider national security challenge.

For PNG, the lesson is straightforward: prevention is considerably cheaper than attempting to dismantle entrenched organized criminal networks later.

PNG's geography creates particular vulnerabilities. Its extensive maritime domain, remote islands, international land border, numerous airstrips and limited state presence in some locations create an operating environment that sophisticated transnational criminal networks can potentially exploit.

These vulnerabilities are not new.

In 2024, I raised similar concerns in Strengthening PNG's Maritime Security: Modernizing the NIO Act for a Resilient Future. The Budi Budi drug incident demonstrated weaknesses in PNG's maritime domain awareness: the illicit activity was discovered after a vessel became stranded rather than through a planned intelligence-led interdiction.

The availability of substantial new Australian investment through Waqa Moana therefore presents an opportunity to address some of the capability gaps PNG has been discussing for years.

The NSA Should Position Itself as the Strategic Coordinator

The NSA should not attempt to become another operational law enforcement agency.

Its comparative advantage should be strategic assessment, national security coordination and intelligence fusion.

This is consistent with the argument I made earlier this year in From the NSP to the NSA: PNG’s Security Vision Is Finally Emerging. The emergence of the NSA and Joint Intelligence Group represents an important shift towards intelligence-led and whole-of-government security governance. Recent operations involving the NSA, NIO, PNG Customs Service, PNG Biosecurity Authority and the Royal PNG Constabulary's Transnational Crime Unit have already demonstrated what stronger intelligence sharing and interagency coordination can achieve.

Waqa Moana provides an opportunity to take this development further.

One proposal worth considering would be Australian assistance to develop a National Security Intelligence Fusion and Assessment capability coordinated by the NSA.

Such a capability could bring together relevant intelligence from the NIO, RPNGC, PNG Customs Service, Immigration, PNG Defence Force and other agencies.

Instead of each agency seeing only one part of the problem, the NSA should be capable of developing a national strategic picture.

1. Where are drugs entering PNG?
2. Which maritime and aviation routes are vulnerable?
3. Who are the domestic facilitators?
4. How are criminal networks connected internationally?
5. Where is criminal money moving?
6. Are organised criminal networks penetrating legitimate businesses or government institutions?
7. What emerging threats require Cabinet-level attention?

These are strategic national security questions requiring intelligence integration across government.

Australia's investment could potentially support secure information-sharing systems, analytical infrastructure, geospatial capability, strategic intelligence training, secure communications and professional exchanges.

NIO Should Develop Specialist Transnational Crime Intelligence Capability

The opportunity for NIO is different.

NIO should position itself as a major producer of strategic intelligence on transnational organized crime.

PNG's intelligence legislation was created in a very different security environment. As I argued in Redefining National Security: Why PNG’s NIO Act Needs an Update, contemporary national security threats extend considerably beyond traditional concerns such as espionage, sabotage and terrorism. They now include cyber threats, economic vulnerabilities and transnational crimes such as human and drug trafficking.

Waqa Moana therefore creates an opportunity for NIO to develop a specialised Transnational Organised Crime Intelligence Assessment Unit.

Its purpose should not be to duplicate police investigations.

There should be a clear division of responsibility.

• RPNGC asks: Who committed the offence, what evidence exists, and how can offenders be arrested and prosecuted?
• NIO asks: Who are the networks, who are they connected to internationally, what are their capabilities and intentions, and what threat do they present to PNG?
• NSA asks: What does this intelligence collectively mean for PNG's national security, and how should the government respond?

That creates an intelligence-to-policy-to-operations architecture.

Follow the Money

Drugs are only one component of the problem.

Organized crime requires money, facilitators, communications, transportation and mechanisms for converting illicit proceeds into apparently legitimate assets.

PNG's approach must therefore move beyond measuring success by the quantity of drugs seized.

Intelligence agencies should increasingly ask where criminal proceeds go, which businesses or individuals facilitate transactions, whether money laundering is occurring, and whether criminal networks are developing relationships with legitimate political, commercial or administrative actors.

This requires cooperation between NIO, police, Customs, financial-intelligence authorities and other agencies.

If Waqa Moana is intended to produce actionable intelligence, PNG should argue that financial and network analysis must become part of its intelligence capability.

Take Intelligence Capability Beyond Waigani

There is another dimension that should not be overlooked.

Transnational organized crime does not operate only in Port Moresby.

Border provinces, maritime provinces, major ports, airports and remote communities may observe suspicious activities long before that information reaches national agencies.

I previously raised this problem in Beyond Waigani: Where Do Provincial Intelligence Committees Fit?, arguing that PNG eventually needs to consider how national intelligence coordination connects with provincial-level structures.

Waqa Moana could provide an opportunity to begin strengthening this vertical intelligence architecture.

The objective should not be to create expensive new bureaucracies throughout the country. It should be to establish reliable mechanisms through which relevant information can move from provincial and operational levels into NIO and the NSA—and analysed intelligence can move back to agencies that need it.

A sophisticated trafficking network will exploit the weakest part of PNG's security system. Strengthening capability in Waigani while leaving major geographic vulnerabilities disconnected from the intelligence architecture would therefore be insufficient.

Do Not Spend Everything on Equipment

Perhaps the most important investment is people.

Surveillance equipment, databases, computers, communications systems and analytical software can be purchased relatively quickly.

Developing experienced intelligence analysts takes years.

This is why PNG should use the Waqa Moana opportunity to negotiate sustained professional development for a carefully selected cadre of NSA and NIO analysts.

As argued in Beyond Institutions: Building PNG’s Next Generation of Security Thinkers, institutions alone will not create national security capability. PNG needs home-grown strategic thinkers, intelligence analysts, cybersecurity specialists, defence planners and security professionals capable of sustaining these institutions.

Training should therefore move beyond short workshops.

Selected PNG officers could undertake longer professional programs in intelligence analysis, structured analytical techniques, strategic warning, criminal-network analysis, financial intelligence, maritime intelligence, geospatial analysis, open-source intelligence and strategic assessment.

Secondments could also be valuable.

A PNG analyst who spends six or twelve months working alongside experienced counterparts and then returns to NIO or NSA potentially provides greater long-term institutional value than dozens of officials attending several-day workshops.

The objective must ultimately be knowledge transfer and sovereign capability.

PNG Should Put a Proposal on the Table

Australia has announced A$600 million to support Waqa Moana, including A$49 million in new Australian Federal Police counter-transnational and organised-crime programs. The initiative specifically emphasises actionable intelligence and operational responses.

PNG should therefore move quickly.

Rather than waiting for Canberra to offer individual projects, NSA and NIO should undertake a joint capability-gap assessment with relevant operational agencies.

From that assessment, PNG could develop a proposal such as a:

PNG–Australia Transnational Organized Crime Intelligence Capability Initiative

Its objective could be:

To establish sovereign PNG capability to collect, integrate, analyse and disseminate intelligence on transnational organized crime and illicit trafficking while strengthening PNG's contribution to the Pacific regional security architecture.

The proposal could contain several integrated components:

First, national intelligence fusion. Strengthen the NSA's capacity to integrate security information across government.

Second, transnational organised crime intelligence. Establish specialist analytical capability within NIO.

Third, secure intelligence infrastructure. Develop appropriate systems for storing, analysing and sharing classified and sensitive information.

Fourth, maritime and border intelligence. Improve intelligence support to agencies responsible for PNG's extensive maritime and border environment.

Fifth, analyst development. Establish sustained professional training, mentoring, exchanges and secondments for PNG intelligence professionals.

Sixth, regional intelligence integration. Strengthen PNG's ability to contribute intelligence to—and obtain operational value from—the emerging Waqa Moana regional architecture.

From Aid Recipient to Regional Security Contributor

PNG should also think beyond the question of how much of Australia's A$600 million it can obtain.

The larger strategic question is what role PNG wants to play in the emerging Pacific security architecture.

PNG is the largest Pacific Island country by population and occupies a strategically important geographic position between Southeast Asia and the wider Pacific. Its maritime and land borders make its security inseparable from regional security.

PNG should therefore aspire to become a significant western Pacific intelligence and security hub, rather than simply another recipient of regional security assistance.

That requires capable institutions.

1. It requires an NSA capable of coordinating national security information and providing strategic assessments to government.
2. It requires an NIO capable of producing sophisticated intelligence on emerging threats.
3. It requires police, Customs, Defence, Immigration and other operational agencies capable of acting on that intelligence.
4. And it requires mechanisms that allow those institutions to trust each other and share information securely.

The institutional foundations are beginning to emerge. As I argued in From the NSP to the NSA, PNG is finally beginning to operationalise security concepts that have existed in national policy for more than a decade.

Waqa Moana could help accelerate that process.

Build Capability, Not Dependency

There is, however, an important principle PNG should maintain.

Australian assistance should strengthen PNG's ability to protect itself. It should not create permanent dependence on Australian personnel, technology or intelligence.

Every externally funded project should therefore be assessed against a straightforward question:

What PNG capability will remain when the external funding ends?

If A$600 million produces more regional meetings, short courses, consultants and temporary projects but leaves Pacific institutions largely dependent on external expertise, an important opportunity will have been lost.

For PNG, success should mean something different.

1. Five or ten years from now, NSA should have experienced Papua New Guinean strategic analysts.
2. NIO should have specialist transnational organised-crime intelligence capability.
3. PNG should have stronger maritime and border intelligence.
4. Its agencies should be capable of securely exchanging intelligence.
5. And decision-makers should receive timely, evidence-based national security assessments before threats become crises.

Australia is putting substantial resources behind Waqa Moana.

PNG now needs to put forward its own strategic vision for how those resources can help build the institutions that will protect the country long after the A$600 million has been spent.

The opportunity is not simply to obtain Australian funding. It is to convert regional security assistance into enduring Papua New Guinean national capability.