The prime minister, PVL and the president: How PNG made it to the NRL

Peter V’landys was sitting in a board meeting of the Australian Rugby League Commission two years ago when his phone rang.

“Sorry,” the ARL Commission chairman told his fellow directors as he lifted himself out of his chair. “I better take this call … It’s the prime minister.”

V’landys was well acquainted with Anthony Albanese, a South Sydney Rabbitohs tragic who had recently been elected to the top office in the country after a long political career.

But Albanese was not calling about the famous cardinal-and-myrtle club, of which he is the No.1 ticket-holder.

Australian Rugby League commission chairman Peter V’landys at the NRL AGM.Credit: NRL Photos

Rather, he wanted to discuss the sporting code’s vision to develop the game in the Pacific, a region that is the centre of a geopolitical tug-of-war between the West and China.

According to V’landys, the prime minister liked the idea of a soft diplomacy deal with the Pacific but went one step further, asking: “Peter, is there any way we could do it so there’s a Papua New Guinea team in the competition?”

“I said to him ‘we’ll look at it but we can’t give you any guarantees’,” V’landys recalled of the conversation. “He said to me ‘you’d be helping soft diplomacy in Australia’.”

Albanese’s proposal came to fruition at a historic announcement in Sydney on Thursday when it was confirmed that an expansion team from Australia’s nearest neighbour will be admitted to the National Rugby League in 2028.

The Australian government will commit $600 million over 10 years to the landmark deal as part of a broader bid prevent to enhance ties in the Pacific and stand in the way of China establishing a security foothold and potential military presence in the region.

Anthony Albanese is a huge fan of the South Sydney Rabbitohs.Credit: Getty

Albanese and Labor had come to power in 2022 as an assertive Beijing was attempting to strike security agreements with Pacific nations, which it did that year with Solomon Islands.

While that set off alarm bells in the national security landscape, Albanese and PNG leader James Marape had spoken about the looming 50th anniversary of PNG independence, which will be celebrated in 2025.

“Don’t get me a gift,” Marape is said to have told Albanese. “Just give me an NRL team.”

At the time, the NRL had already held conversations with the Australian government about a soft-diplomacy deal that would give rugby league a significant footprint throughout the Pacific.

Former Labor opposition leader Bill Shorten had approached then ARL Commission chairman and ex-Labor premier of Queensland Peter Beattie about establishing pathway programs in the region, but that fell over when he suffered a shock election defeat to Scott Morrison in 2019.

After replacing Beattie as ARLC chairman, V’landys tried to revive the concept with the Coalition government led by Morrison, then the Cronulla Sharks’ No.1 ticket-holder.

Scott Morrison attends a Cronulla Sharks match.Credit: David Hossack/NRL Photos

But it was only after Labor returned to government in 2022, and as concern rose about China’s efforts to assert influence, that the Pacific rugby league plan was revived and the idea of a PNG team in the NRL got off the ground.

Albanese was looking for an anniversary present that would double as a national security strategy to allay the outreach of Beijing in PNG and therefore the geopolitical threat the superpower could pose.

“The more I heard from the prime minister, the more I thought it was an excellent initiative. He was very convincing. He gave me all the reasons why we can do it,” V’landys said.

An invitation to be Albanese’s guest at a state dinner the following year in October 2023 at the White House, where he rubbed shoulders with US president Joe Biden, left V’landys in no doubt about the significance of the role he was being asked to play.

V’landys recalled how Albanese had introduced him to the US leader by saying: “This is the guy that is going to deliver us the Pacific deal.”

Peter V’landys at a White House dinner in October last year.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Tripartite discussions between the Australian and PNG governments and the NRL about making the new team a reality were by then well under way, having begun in late 2022.

Albanese then raised the possibility of the country having its own team during a speech early last year in Port Moresby, where he became the first foreign leader to address PNG’s parliament.

But his resolve to get the deal over the line was hardened by chatting about it with Marape as the pair walked on the Kokoda Track together on Anzac Day this year.

The annual Prime Minister’s XIII match between Australian and PNG line-ups in Port Moresby that was launched in 2005 had underscored for Albanese the fanatical support for the game there.

Four months before setting out on the Kokoda Track, Albanese and Marape had signed a bilateral security agreement deepening links between the countries in areas such as defence, policing, border and maritime security and cybersecurity.

China was offering its own policing deal with PNG but was knocked back.

“China went to most countries in the Pacific Islands on the security and policing agreement … some took it up, like, of course, Solomon Islands, but nearly all of them rejected it. For us, we totally rejected it,” said PNG Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko.

Respective Australian and Papua New Guinean prime ministers Anthony Albanese and James Marape.

Tkatchenko said last week that the Australian government had discussed its concerns about Beijing’s influence in the Pacific and declared PNG would stick with its traditional security partners Australia, New Zealand and the United States. But pressed on whether the PNG government had made any explicit undertakings about security in exchange for getting an NRL team, he said the deal had “nothing to do with China”.

That’s not quite how the agreement is viewed in Canberra. Australian government sources insist its backing of a PNG team is contingent on the maintenance of shared strategic trust, and it can withdraw funding at any time. In such a circumstance, the NRL would be compelled to terminate the PNG team’s licence under the terms of the deal.

Government sources believe it puts Australia in a strong position given how unpopular it would be for a future PNG government to risk being stripped of the team should it entertain advances by China.

The security aspect aside, the PNG NRL deal hasn’t been without hurdles. In May this year, the NRL was ready to walk away from negotiations after a perceived shifting of the goalposts from the government.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea James Marape Day on the Kokoda Track this year.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Among points of contention was a government suggestion that the cost of building a secure complex to house players, coaches and club officials and staff would have to come out of its $600 million, decade-long package.

“What the PM and I and [Minister for International Development and the Pacific] Pat Conroy agreed to wasn’t the final thing that came back to us,” V’landys said. “We had to sort it out once and for all because we were willing to walk away.”

V’landys went public with his warning, declaring it “D-Day” for the Australian government during a press conference outside the NRL-owned Gambaro Hotel in Brisbane on the eve of Magic Round, in which every match of the round is played in the Queensland capital.

The next day, at the same time the fans began piling into Suncorp Stadium for the first day of games, NRL and government officials locked themselves in a private room inside the iconic Brisbane venue for an at-times heated, hour-long negotiation. The NRL would get its way.

Rugby league is the national sport in Papua New Guinea.Credit: Getty Images

“One thing is, when you do a deal, you honour it,” V’landys said. “To be fair, Pat Conroy and the prime minister were always going to honour it. Some people in government might have wanted to negotiate a better deal for themselves but we said you can’t. The deal is the deal. This could be the prime minister’s greatest ever legacy for the safety of Australia”.

Under the 10-year deal, the Australian government will direct $290 million to funding the PNG NRL team itself while $250 million will go towards rugby league development in the Pacific. The remaining $60 million of government money will be paid directly to the NRL as a licence fee and split among the existing 17 clubs.

The funds to build what V’landys has dubbed “NRL Village” have been sourced from the PNG government. It has committed 100 million kina ($38 million) a year for the next four years to construct the built-for-rent facility that will be designed to provide its residents with everything they need within the compound.

Papua New Guinea will enter the NRL in 2028.Credit: NRL Photos

For up to the first 10 years, the NRL will share control of the board with the PNG government, who will both appoint representatives.

The new team will likely be owned by a conglomerate of PNG superannuation funds. Players and staff won’t be taxed by the PNG government, which has introduced changes to its income tax laws as an incentive for players to join the team, nor by the Australian government.

To appreciate how much Albanese has invested, both financially and emotionally, into a project he pressed for personally, you only have to ask Queensland Rugby League chairman Bruce Hatcher.

Hatcher received a call from the prime minister, which at first he thought was a prank, in late 2022.

At the time, the Mackay Cutters had decided to forfeit their match against the PNG Hunters in Port Moresby in the second-tier Queensland Cup over health and safety fears. It was meant to be the Hunters’ first game back on home soil in more than two years after they were asked to base themselves out of Australia during the pandemic.

Albanese was forthright in his views on what the Mackay Cutters should do.Credit: AAPIMAGE

It was a significant moment for the rugby league-obsessed nation, whose leaders were less than impressed with the Cutters’ unwillingness to travel there.

According to a source familiar with the contents of the conversation between Albanese and Hatcher, the prime minister urged the state league chief to ensure the Mackay players boarded the flight to PNG, offering any services they needed to feel secure. The next day they were on a plane to Port Moresby.

Ensuring player safety in PNG is among myriad challenges facing the ambitious venture, as is the task of attracting talent, even with tax exemptions.

As it stands, games can’t be played in Port Moresby at night because the city’s public transport doesn’t operate at the hours required to transport people to and from the 15,000-capacity national stadium.

Tkatchenko, PNG’s Australian-born top diplomat, said the significance of the nation having an NRL team would be remarkable.

“Especially when [Papua New Guineans] will be able to see a home team, a Papua New Guinean team, play NRL teams, not only in Australia, but also here in Papua New Guinea,” he said.

“It will give a huge injection and boost to NRL. We have a population of around 12 million people and they’re all, as you know, NRL-mad.

“It will also boost up our junior rugby league. There are so many thousands of young men and women out there who would be dying to be an NRL star, or knowing that there is a pathway going forward to being in the NRL.”

Rugby league fans in Port Moresby.Credit: Getty

The more than $750 million being invested by the respective governments will, however, go a long way towards mitigating concerns about an increasingly unstable broadcast market as the NRL prepares to kick off talks for a new television deal early next year.

“In 10 years, the game could triple its revenue,” V’landys said. “No one else has the opportunity to go to a market with ready-made fans. You don’t have to convert them – you have more than 10 million ready-made fans.

“This is the greatest thing that will ever happen to the NRL. In all my years as a sports administrator, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a greater opportunity for a sport than this.”

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