Key figure standing down in PNG’s league team bid is a welcome move

The chairman of the successful bid for Papua New Guinea’s new rugby league franchise faces corruption concerns because of evidence linking his company to suspect dealings, and this is a sign of the broader problems likely to confront Australia’s diplomatic and sporting attempts to keep China at bay in the Pacific.

Wapu Sonk heads the state-owned national oil company Kumul Petroleum.Credit: Nathan Perri

An investigation by the Herald’s Nick McKenzie and Chris Barrett has unearthed evidence which raises serious questions about whether Wapu Sonk, the head of PNG’s biggest company, the state-owned national oil company Kumul Petroleum Holdings Limited, sought to benefit personally from dealings with a massive Chinese government company and a plot to funnel contracts to a company Sonk owns in Australia.

The evidence relates to his business dealings, not the NRL bid. And although Sonk is refusing to answer questions about his transactions, some appear to run counter to Australia’s strategy to stymie China’s security and economic influence in PNG. Through his lawyers, Sonk has denied allegations of improper or unlawful conduct.

Last December, we welcomed the joint announcement by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and PNG Prime Minister James Marape of a $600 million mega-deal for a Port Moresby-based team to enter the NRL competition and development of the sport around the Pacific as recognition of our shared past, present and future and a powerful reminder of how sports diplomacy can connect two countries.

Previous Coalition governments had taken their eyes off the Pacific, allowing China to slip under our guard and sign a defence deal with the Solomon Islands. The Albanese government has since scrambled to counter China’s growing influence in the Pacific with sports diplomacy.

But the questions over Sonk highlight that such diplomacy is a difficult balancing act: Canberra’s bankrolling of the NRL in the Pacific has alarmed rugby union chiefs in Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. The rugby leaders have formed new links with China amid concerns their national game could be cannibalised by a foreign taxpayer-backed rival code, and they are now appealing to the Albanese government for a piece of the action, courtesy of a $150 million injection into their national game.

Generally speaking, diplomacy and corruption are also built into Melanesian cultural and traditional practices of reciprocity, with both the wantok and big man systems absorbed into the administrative system that helped establish PNG independence in 1975. The result has been that MPs and business leaders reshape power to extend an accumulation of wealth to help relatives, and one big man’s corruption is another’s family support.

Australian governments have historically turned a blind eye to this Pacific cultural norm. Indeed, the focus of attention on the PNG/NRL deal has been mainly geopolitical, with no acknowledgement of the problems associated with supporting such an innovative and well-intentioned policy.

The establishment of the Port Moresby team involves massive amounts of money, and our investigation certainly alerts the government and NRL administrators to the need for a greater focus on the urgent need to manage corruption and ensure the endeavour is free from any hint of abuse.

To this end, irrespective of whether he has acted unlawfully, Sonk’s agreement to stand down from the board at the request of Prime Minister Marape is common sense and welcome.

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