Wong flies out to answer PNG jobs call

Foreign Minister Penny Wong is headed to Papua New Guineawhere she will face calls by the new Marape government to increase the number of PNG citizens allowed to work in Australia.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong is headed to Papua New Guinea and East Timor. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gary Ramage

Foreign Minister Penny Wong is headed to Papua New Guinea on Monday where she will face calls by the new Marape government to increase the number of PNG citizens allowed to work in Australia.

The trip is the first by an Australian government minister to PNG since Prime Minister James Marape’s re-election, and will focus on cementing Australia’s most important Pacific relationship amid growing Chinese influence there.

She will also fly to East Timor this week to urge its President Jose Ramos-Horta and his key ministers to come to an agreement with Australian energy giant Woodside on the development of the Greater Sunrise gas field in the Timor Sea.

The country has demanded Woodside agree to process the gas in East Timor, but the company says the plan is uneconomical and wants the gas piped to Darwin for processing.

In meetings with Mr Marape and new PNG Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko, Senator Wong will be asked to expand opportunities for Papua New Guineans under the new Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme.

A senior PNG government source said the country wanted to supply more workers to meet the demand of Australian employers, and for them to be allowed to work in cities and regional towns, as well as rural areas.

“Apart from the fruit and crop picking and working in slaughterhouses, there is interest from the manufacturing and horticulture sectors,” the source said.

PNG, a nation of more than eight million people, currently supplies just a tiny fraction of Australia’s Pacific workers, trailing smaller countries like Vanuatu, Tonga, Samoa and Solomon Islands.

Senator Wong will also meet the country’s two female MPs – Central Province Governor Rufina Peter and Rai Coast Open MP Kessy Sawang – who were elected at last month’s national poll. She will fly on to East Timor on Wednesday.

“As always, my approach will be to listen, and I look forward to discussing how Australia can continue to support Timor-Leste’s economic development,” Senator Wong said. “Australia is committed to working together with both Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste in the interests of a stable, resilient and prosperous Indo-Pacific.”

Mr Ramos-Horta recently raised the possibility that China could be allowed to develop the gas project, but Australia could resist such a move because the gas field is in waters jointly controlled by both nations.

Defence Minister Richard Marles also departs overseas on Monday, heading to Germany, the UK and France, to meet his ministerial counterparts and discuss defence industry co-operation. In the UK, he will visit key shipyards where Britain’s navy frigates and nuclear submarines are manufactured.

The talks in Germany will focus on defence industry co-operation, with the government eyeing the EU giant as a market for Australian defence exports.

Co-operation in the Pacific will be at the top of the agenda in Mr Marles’ meeting with French Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu, following the re-establishment of defence ties between the countries after the fallout over AUKUS and Australia’s cancellation of the French Attack-class submarines.