The Australian government is expected to announce, today, that it will drop $600 million to help create a rugby league team for Papua New Guinea.
Has Prime Minister Anthony Albanese let his love of rugby league go to his head? Announcing this sort of spend during a cost of living crisis? Or is this an uncanny political move?
Today, foreign affairs and national security correspondent Matthew Knott, on the soft diplomacy that will land with the hard thud of a crash tackle. And how effective it might be at combatting the influence of China in the Pacific.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Salinger Morris. It's Thursday, December 12th. The Australian government is expected to announce today that it will drop $600 million to help create a rugby league team for Papua New Guinea. Has Prime Minister Anthony Albanese let his love of rugby league go to his head, announcing this sort of spend during a cost of living crisis, or is this an uncanny political move? Today, Foreign affairs and national security correspondent Matthew not on the soft diplomacy that will land with the hard thud of a crash tackle and how effective it might be at combating the influence of China in the Pacific. So, Matt, I have to start by asking what I imagine many listeners might be thinking right now, which is what is going on, because a lot of us might know that our Prime Minister likes rugby league, but does he like it to the tune of $600 million? Like what's happening?
Well, yes. This is the realization, really, of a long held dream for a lot of people in Papua New Guinea and in Australia for a PNG team to be admitted into the NRL. I think this idea has been on the agenda. Some people say for over a decade, but seen as something that would be very difficult to make a reality. What we've seen, I think, is a confluence of factors that have come together to make this happen. We have a prime minister, as you say, who's from a rugby league obsessed family.
Like I've just just been there on the hill as a young kid, being taken along by my mum with a South Sydney jumper on and getting heaps from the Tigers fans, but always in a good spirit.
And you have a prime minister in Papua New Guinea who also loves the sport like many of his constituents.
To unite our country together, there is no sport that has the greatest potential to unite our country. And this sport has the ability to unite our country week in, week out.
So those two leaders have developed a very close bond and a friendship to make it happen. Anthony Albanese is very close to the head of the National Rugby League, Peter V'landys. The chairman and then in the background, but not so much in the background, you have the issue of China's growing influence in the Pacific, the belief amongst Australian policymakers that Australia has to be doing a lot more proactively to remain the security partner of choice in the region, and they've latched onto rugby league as an initiative of soft power, as a way of entrenching Australia's ties to its closest neighbour, PNG. Panji.
Okay. And you wrote that senior government figures are actually hailing this deal as the nation's most important ever soft diplomacy initiative. I mean, that's a big call. I would have thought. Is that too far of a stretch?
It's a big claim, but I think when you look at the money involved, when you look at the time and effort, when you look at what this means for one of Australia's biggest sporting codes to make this big investment, it is a big deal. And Pacific Minister Pat Conroy. He is a rugby league devotee as well and he's been very active in driving this deal forward.
Rugby league is one element of our soft diplomacy. It's one element of the Albanese Labor government using every tool of statecraft to bring the people of the Pacific and Australia together.
The idea of soft power is that it relies on our goodwill. It relies on friendliness. It's about creating the idea where you don't have to ask for things you know, you don't necessarily even have to ask for favors or make deals, because the two nations get along so well and are so integrated. So that's what's trying to be achieved here, is to really, uh, integrate PNG and Australia more closely and also to provide an economic benefit and a social benefit to PNG. PNG is very much a developing country, and Marape has been keen to try and improve the lives of his people. So it's part of a much bigger project here.
And can you give me some insight into how you got government insiders to tell you about this deal? Because you made it really clear in your article that, you know, the reason why the Australian government has been determined to get this deal done is to curtail China's energetic efforts to expand its clout in our region. But they're not saying so publicly. So tell me how you get that information.
Well, like many things involving China, things are communicated differently from the government publicly and privately. We see this across many realms, but but also here. There is no way around it that the influence of China in the region and Beijing's very energetic attempts to gain more of a presence in the region, not just economically, but with security deals, with policing deals. We saw the deal in 2022 between China and the Solomon Islands that really alarmed policy makers in Canberra, and they've been putting in an all out effort to stop that from happening again. So that's very much the context in which Australian politicians are thinking about this deal. When the government is talking about justifying the cost of this to Australian taxpayers, they in conversations with me, they quite explicitly say, well, compare the cost of funding a rugby league team to the cost of a potential Chinese military base on PNG, right on Australia's doorstep. Imagine how much that would cost if we had to respond to that. They talk about Australia and I guess the US, as well as our ally being in a day to day knife fight for influence with China in the Pacific. So it really is that serious and that contested. And there's no escaping the fact that for Australia, the rugby league team is very much a part of that geopolitical contest.
We'll be right back. So, Matt, I want to turn to the history of how sport and geopolitics have collided. Can you just tell me a little bit about how politicians have used games, really, as a part of their statecraft, to engineer better relations with nations with whom perhaps they haven't always had such a good relationship?
Yeah. There has been a long running idea of what's called sports diplomacy. The Australian government, in fact, has an official sports diplomacy initiative project that's been running for quite a while, acknowledging that Australia is a pretty sport obsessed nation and this is a strength for us in the region. It's an advantage that we have over some other countries is the fact that we have great sporting facilities that can be used, that we have similar sports that we play with a nation like PNG. This is something government insiders will say privately, is that China has a lot of advantages in terms of its huge economy and what they can offer to a country like PNG, but they'll never be able to offer something like a rugby league partnership. That's not something that's on the agenda for them. So this is a strength that we have that we're trying to play to our advantage. The example that I think is relevant here is a well-known idea called ping pong diplomacy. Now, this came up in the early 1970s at a time when there was a lot of tension between the US and China. In fact, there weren't diplomatic relations between the two nations, and ping pong or table tennis became a way of showing a friendlier, more human side to the countries of showing that they have something in common. So in the early 70s, there started to be visits back and forth between the top players in China and the US to play tournaments in those countries. That was highly unusual at the time, and that has been widely credited for paving the way for Richard Nixon's historic visit to Beijing and the normalization of relations there. What's interesting now is the climate we're in is that we're now at a time of heightened tension again between the US and China. That's really what is underlining this deal.
Tell me a bit more about China's influence in the Pacific. You know what's been happening recently.
So yes, as we said, you can look at something like the 2022 pact with the Solomon Islands.
It seems the Solomons government is much more grateful for the far less aid it receives from China.
For decades, the Chinese government had virtually no presence here in the Solomon Islands because of the country's diplomatic ties to Taiwan. But that all changed in 2019, when Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare switched his allegiance to Beijing, opening the door.
That was a wide ranging security pact that has brought China a lot closer to that nation, which traditionally has been very close to Australia. Australia gives a lot of support to the Solomon Islands. We've had our police there to help deal with riots and disturbances. The whole issue, the whole thing that has really been worrying policymakers in Canberra is the idea of whether any of these deals that China is trying to strike on policing and security would eventually lead to a military base or a permanent military presence in the Pacific, very close to Australia, that's their nightmare scenario that they're trying to avoid. Wherever you go in the Pacific, you pretty quickly see a Chinese funded infrastructure. They're very active there. It doesn't always come with all the strings that come with Australian aid spending. So for example, with a country like PNG, just before that walk in April, the trek that Prime Minister Albanese and Marape did, that I was there with them. It turned out just a few days before the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, was there for a visit. They made some announcements about economic issues and whatnot. It turned out I found out later, speaking to officials, that China was pushing really hard to strike a policing deal with PNG that would have enhanced the cooperation, and probably would have seen Chinese police officers going to PNG to help with their local security issues. Now, this is everything that Australia did not want to happen. Australia has a clear policy that security and policing should be maintained within the Pacific family. They say. In Australia is a Pacific nation. China is not what the Australian government essentially said is. Let us know what you need. Let us know how we can help. You don't need to go to China looking for help in this space. So Australian officials are, by all accounts I've heard, pulled out all the stops, did what they could, and this policing deal was scuppered.
And this is really part of a widespread initiative by the Albanese government. It's sort of like trying to make up ground, isn't it, to sort of have a presence in the Pacific, whereas, you know, previous governments perhaps had taken their eye off the ball there. Is that safe to say?
Yes. There is criticism that the previous government did overlook the Pacific a bit. They can point to initiatives and measures that they took in this space. Most Pacific countries are very worried about the impact of climate change on them, and the previous government wasn't seen as doing enough in that space. That was a big advantage when labor came into office and said, we're taking climate change more seriously. We've got a better targets. That's helped open the door to discussions around these other issues, and we've even seen more announcements this week in the Pacific space from the government.
But surely this announcement, I'm thinking, must come with some political risk for Albanese. I mean, you wrote that, yes, the announcement had long been foreshadowed, but that it will still arrive with a thud of a crash tackle. And I definitely read the announcement thinking like, this is $600 million of taxpayer money, right? Announced during a cost of living crisis, pretty close to a federal election. So how risky is this, do you think?
Yes. And the government is aware of that. The media coverage in the lead up has been pretty positive, even from the more tabloid talkback radio sections of the media, where you'd expect some pushback at this. Something government insiders have told me is that they've looked at the comment sections of websites like the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, for example. And there might be an article that's pretty positive about this initiative, but then you'll inevitably find comments from ordinary voters questioning this and saying, why are we providing money to another country when people here are struggling to pay their bills, they want to handle this announcement carefully. For example, the announcement is going to be made with Albanese and Marape are standing up at a formal press conference together to announce it. I might have thought they might have gone to a league stadium and kicked around a ball and a football, and that would be great images for the TV news. But they're not doing that quite deliberately to project that. This isn't about sport and fun and games, that this is a serious geopolitical initiative here that is about enhancing Australia's national interest, about enhancing Australia's national security. So that's how they're going to communicate it, to try and deal with some of those concerns. And also to point out the cost is over ten years. Look at it in the context of Australia's aid budget. Look at it in the context of Australia's defence budget. They want to sell this as a smart funding decision.
Well, I know that you and I will be watching this closely, so thank you so much, Matt, for your time.
No worries at all.
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Kai Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Our head of audio is Tom McKendrick. The Morning Edition is a production of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. If you enjoy the show and want more of our journalism, subscribe to our newspapers today. It's the best way to support what we do. Search The Age or Smh.com.au for subscribe and sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter to receive a comprehensive summary of the day's most important news, analysis and insights in your inbox every day. Links are in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. This is the morning edition. Thanks for listening.