Australia signs a key defense agreement with Papua Nouvelle-Guinée

Australia will have access to the military installations of Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the troops as part of a key agreement which will see the nations going to the help of the other if one or the other is attacked.

The two governments say that the agreement was born from an alliance of a year between the two neighbors of the Pacific, but the experts say that it aims to counter the growing influence of China in the region.

The agreement guarantees that China will not have the same access to PNG infrastructure as in other Pacific islands, said Oliver Nobetau, project director of the Australia-PNG network at the Lowy Institute.

It will allow 10,000 Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée to serve in the Australian soldiers and give them the opportunity to become Australian citizens.

With nearly 12 million people, the PNG is the most important and most populous nation in the South Pacific.

China has already considerably devoted trade with the Nations of the Pacific Island in recent years and is now trying to establish diplomatic and security bridge heads in the region.

Australia and its Western allies, including the United States, tried to counter these efforts.

In 2022, Beijing signed a security agreement with the Salomon Islands which saw Chinese police integrated across the country, with another falsified police agreement in 2023.

In response, Canberra last December concluded an agreement to invest $ 190 million ($ 126 million; 93 million pounds Sterling) in the Salomon Islands police and has created a police training center, with a similar agreement in place with Tuvalu.

In August, Australia also signed a 328 million dollar security and business agreement with Vanuatu, which involved the construction of two data centers, strengthening security and aid to the impact of climate change.

PNG Prime Minister James Marape, who signed this last agreement with his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese on Monday, stressed that the agreement was not born from geopolitics.

The PNG was “transparent” with China, Marape told Canberra.

“We told them that Australia is our security partner of choice and that they understand our alliances here … Other aspects of our relationships have never been compromised,” he said.

Albanese said that the alliance of the two countries “based on generations of mutual trust and demonstrates our commitment to ensure that the Pacific remains peaceful, stable and prosperous”.

“By continuing to establish our security relations in the region, we protect our own security,” he said.

The Pukpuk Treaty, named after the word for “crocodile” in PNG Pidgin, notes that an armed attack on one or the other country would be “dangerous for the peace and security of the other”, so the two should “act to respect the common danger”.

“(The treaty) has the ability to bite and like a crocodile, its bite force talks about interoperability and the preparation of soldiers for war”, according to a copy of the agreement seen by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

The agreement also covered greater collaboration around cyberspace and electromagnetic war, according to documents.

Earlier, the Minister of Defense of the PNG, Billy Joseph, had told the ABC that the agreement would mean that the Australian and PNG forces would be “completely integrated”.

Mr. Nobetau of the Lowy Institute said that the agreement will also help to tackle recent Australian difficulties to recruit for his soldiers.

“PNG has an excess offer of valid citizens who are ready to do this kind of work,” he said, adding that many people would be attracted by the prospects of living in Australia and gaining citizenship.

He also sends a message to the United States, said Nobetau.

“The United States has been debatable lately with its withdrawal from the Pacific and the USAID,” he said, referring to the Trump administration by removing billions of foreign humanitarian aid.

“It is only a demonstration that PNG and Australia are capable as equal partners to manage and bring a return to regional stability in the Pacific.”

The agreement also includes annual joint military exercises which concern “strategic messaging,” said Nobetau, “showing the interoperability of the forces and their ability to deal with an external threat in the region and when they can organize and deploy”.

Anna Powles, an associate professor in security studies at Massey University in New Zealand, said that the agreement would help modernize the PNG army, bringing a significant boost in material and moral terms.

There were questions about how it corresponds to the country’s own policies, she added.

“There are concerns in the PNG that the Treaty undermines the position of foreign policy of the PNG of PNG by aligning the PNG with Australia on all security issues,” she said.

Ms. Powles noted that the agreement was part of the so -called Australian “Hub and Stokes” network in the Pacific – with Australia as a central center and island nations as shelves – but said that the two parties need greater clarity on expectations, obligations and commitments.

The agreement has been faced with certain criticisms within the PNG, the former defendant of the country’s defense forces warning that this could come at “a high cost” for the country.

“It is of public notoriety that Australia considers China as a potential threat, but China is not the enemy of PNG,” the commander Jerry Singirok told ABC last month.