PNG’s Prime Minister James Marape calls for NRL-led visa overhaul

James Marape says he wants the country’s entry into the NRL to usher in more streamlined visa arrangements for his people to visit Australia and has vowed to make Port Moresby a safer destination for fans.

Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape joins Anthony Albanese in greeting Australia’s women’s team ahead of a PMs’ XIII match at Suncorp Stadium. Picture: Getty Images

Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister says he wants the country’s entry into the NRL to usher in more streamlined visa arrangements for his people to visit Australia and has vowed to make Port Moresby a safer destination for Australian rugby league fans.

In an interview with The Australian, James Marape has also cleared up confusion over the national security element of the $600m Australian taxpayer-funded deal, saying it does not include an Australian veto over his country’s future security relationships but reiterates Australia’s status as the PNG’s closest security partner.

Mr Marape said the awarding of an NRL team to PNG from 2028, to be formally announced on Thursday morning, would kickstart a clean-up of Port Moresby and a crackdown on lawlessness, opening a new tourism gateway to the country’s World War II sites and exotic eco-tourism destinations.

Papua New Guineans can face long waits to get Australian visas and unexpected rejections, in a situation that has frustrated successive PNG leaders, who have jealously eyed the ease of travel between Australia and New Zealand.

Mr Marape said he understood Australia’s border security concerns, and his country would use the NRL announcement to have a fresh look at visa arrangements to ensure PNG rugby league supporters and business travellers had trouble-free access to Australia.

“There’s a need for us to look at the visa arrangements, and the visa conversation has been going on for some time,” he said.

“We are working, as far as our own migration system is concerned, to step up. We want our data and our migration system to be compatible with Australia’s, like what Australia and New Zealand have.

“Once the security and the ICT system is stepped up, then we can be at a place to have visa arrangements that are good to access the games and allow people to move back and forth. “That is definitely something we’ll be working with the Australian government on.”

Mr Albanese and Mr Marape are both passionate NRL fans. Picture: PMO

He acknowledged Port Moresby had an international reputation as a dangerous place, and said it was in PNG’s “utmost interest” to make the country safe for visitors.

“The perception is there that we do have incidents of lawlessness, but we want to use this NRL team based in Port Moresby to make PNG safer,” Mr Marape said.

“This is not just a team flying in and out, it will be a complete lifestyle transformation making Papua New Guinea and Port Moresby more hospitable to regular international contact and sports tourism, by modernising our capital.”

Mr Marape is due to join Anthony Albanese in Sydney for the NRL announcement, just days after the finalisation of an Australia-Nauru treaty that gives Canberra a veto over the Pacific state’s future security arrangements with other countries.

Australian government sources privately insist the PNG deal also includes security undertakings, but Mr Marape said there was “no so much a veto” as an affirmation of the countries’ current security partnership.

“Indirectly, there’s a reference to the fact that Australia and PNG have a security arrangement that … (takes) precedence over any other security relationship,” he said, referring to the terms of a bilateral security agreement signed in December last year.

Mr Marape said after an initial ten years of financial support from the Australian government, he looked forward to PNG having a “commercially viable team that is spectator friendly and contributes to the ambience of life … between Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand”.

Mr Marape with Mr Albanese on the Kokoda Track in April Picture: PMO

Player security would be a priority, Mr Marape said, as PNG sought to attract top Australian and international talent with tax-free salaries.

“We want to offer the life that our players would have enjoyed in either Brisbane, Sydney, or Townsville,” he said.

Mr Marape said improvements to the country’s international security flowing from the NRL deal would unlock tourism opportunities well beyond Port Moresby, encouraging more visitors to walk the Kokoda Track and visit the country’s pristine tropical islands.

“We have many boutique tourism sites. For example Papua New Guinea is home to the greatest number of Australians buried overseas, from World War II,” he said.

“Our country has 6 per cent of the world’s biodiversity. We have ice cap-topped mountains to tropical sandy beaches, and we want to complement the many cruise liners that come to visit our unexplored last frontier.”