Australia and Papua New Guinea will sign a new defense pact this week that integrates the two nations' armed forces and establishes mutual defense obligations, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Monday.
Albanese said he and Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape would sign the treaty on Wednesday, a day after marking the South Pacific nation’s 50th anniversary of independence from Australia. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau is expected to attend the Port Moresby celebrations.
"It is a very significant upgrade in our defense relationship," Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in Perth before flying to Papua New Guinea. He said the pact "provides for mutual defense, which means that we will provide support for each other, provide for an integration of our interoperability of our assets and our respective defense forces."
The agreement will allow citizens of both countries to serve in either nation's military. Albanese said Australia would offer Australian citizenship as an incentive for Papua New Guineans to enlist in the Australian Defence Force; Australia currently accepts military recruits only from its Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partners, which include the United States, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. Papua New Guinea has an estimated population of nearly 12 million; Australia has about 27 million.
Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said the bilateral treaty will replace an agreement struck in 1977 when Papua New Guinea became independent. "This is a transformational agreement between ourselves and PNG," Marles said, adding that Canberra will continue to discuss advancing bilateral defense cooperation with Fiji and Tonga.
The pact builds on a 2023 security agreement that broadened defense cooperation between the two nations and reinforced Australia’s position as a primary security partner in the region. That signing was delayed six months after protests in May 2023 followed a separate security deal between the United States and Marape’s government amid concerns that it undermined Papua New Guinea’s sovereignty.
The move comes as Canberra and its allies push to counter growing Chinese influence in the Pacific. Since 2019, three Pacific island nations have switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to Beijing, and U.S. officials and partners have expressed concern about China’s expanding security footprint, including police training programs in Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.
Oliver Nobetau, project director of the Australia–Papua New Guinea Network at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, said the precise wording of any exclusivity in the new pact will be significant because many Pacific nations seek to protect their sovereignty and avoid being forced to take sides in the strategic competition.
Albanese had hoped to sign a security and economic treaty with Vanuatu last week, but negotiations have stalled amid concerns in Port Vila that the agreement could affect Vanuatu’s ability to secure infrastructure funding from China.
The pact with Papua New Guinea underscores Canberra’s effort to strengthen formal security ties with its nearest neighbor as part of a broader strategy to maintain influence in the South Pacific amid intensifying geostrategic competition.