Six months after Papua New Guinea and Australia formally sealed a landmark defence pact, details of how the agreement will be put into practice are emerging — and so are deep public divisions over its social and security consequences. The agreement, informally dubbed the Pukpuk Treaty, not only tightens defence coordination between Port Moresby and Canberra but also contains a controversial citizenship-for-service offer that would open up spots for 10,000 Papua New Guineans to join the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and become eligible for Australian citizenship.
Supporters say the scheme answers an acute economic need. Papua New Guinea’s population is young — about 58 percent are under 25 — while World Bank data cited by proponents puts youth unemployment at roughly 3.8 percent. “I agree with the Pukpuk Pact. It is an employment opportunity for our ever-increasing youths who can’t be employed after leaving school,” former Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF) colonel John Kau told Radio Free Asia. Kau said Australian salaries would allow recruits to support their extended families and welcomed the pathway to citizenship, provided any deployment would be for “a just cause.”
Yet skeptics on Port Moresby’s streets warn the pact risks pulling Papua New Guineans into great-power confrontation. Chris Pole, a young man questioned by RFA, said the prospect of 10,000 Papua New Guineans entering the ADF was difficult to reconcile with the size of the PNGDF itself, which numbers about 4,000 personnel. “The Pukpuk recruitment alone will outnumber the PNGDF size, so if there is a war, definitely Australia will use Papua New Guineans as pawns,” he said, adding concerns that PNG nationals might be placed on front lines should Canberra be drawn into conflict alongside the United States against China.
The new development now moving forward is how recruitment will be handled. Officials have indicated enlistment will be carried out in regional centres across PNG and in Port Moresby, a logistics plan that supporters say will widen access to the scheme. The arrangement echoes comments from former Defence Minister Billy Joseph shortly after the pact was announced in August 2025, when he told Australian media there was “a very big pool” of potential recruits and suggested recruitment could be widespread across the country.
Critics also warn of longer-term strategic implications. The treaty aligns Port Moresby more closely with Australia at a time of heightened attention to China’s expanding influence in the Pacific. Canberra is already a partner in security arrangements in the region — including longstanding ties through ANZUS with the United States and New Zealand — and the United States signed a defence cooperation agreement with PNG in 2023. For opponents, the risk is that PNG’s traditional stance of “friends to all, enemies to none” could be eroded as its citizens become integrated into Australian defence structures.
Government and defence officials in both capitals have framed the pact as mutually beneficial: enhancing crisis cooperation while offering socioeconomic opportunities for PNG youth. But as recruitment plans take shape, the debate in PNG is shifting from abstract geopolitics to immediate, personal calculations about jobs, identity and the prospect of military service under a foreign flag. The coming months, as enlistment opens in regional centres, are likely to determine whether the Pukpuk Treaty is seen primarily as a job-creation scheme or as a strategic realignment with far-reaching costs.
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