NRL18.1: Why the PNG NRL team is a bad idea
NRL18.1: Why the PNG NRL team is a bad idea
Why are the existing NRL clubs getting a public money payday from the federal government?
Previously
Trying to lay out the case why the PNG NRL team is a bad idea is hard because the mooted club lives in a quantum realm where it is both almost certainly going ahead because the Australian and PNG governments want it and can fund it, and almost certainly not going ahead because of logistics and rugby league’s native politics.
The back and forth coverage is giving me a headache, as is the insistence that any objections can be overcome or ignored or talked over into submission, while there’s simultaneously still lots of work to do to get the clubs on side. It doesn't help that every headline that reads “NRL is considering second team in Melbourne” then turns into Peter V'Landys saying, “Yes, we would consider that if someone seriously proposed it but so far that's not the case and PNG is the front runner,” and no one actually reads that bit.
I don’t know how many aspirin V’Landys takes to control the cognitive dissonance but he probably needs to keep an eye on his liver.
Let’s go back a couple of steps. The PNG NRL team has the full backing of the PNG government. The concept seems to have been stripped of the Pasifika pablum inserted by borderline racist alcoholics at newspapers that don’t understand the differences between Polynesia, Melanesia and probably Indonesia, and the diversity of Papua New Guinea in particular. Go read an autosomal gene pool analysis and learn about ethnolinguistics, you hacks. I’m buying a Tok Pisin dictionary.
The noise around the Bears seems to have died down. It’s not clear if that’s because they’re hedging their bets on a Perth deal - Peter Cumins popped his head up again to tell the Bears to piss off and the WA government has said it will support any private bid - that seems more likely to get across the line than the PNG Bears, or if someone tapped North Sydney on the shoulder and told them its been more than 20 years and it’s time to move on, or if the PNG bid team won’t let them have any games at NSO.
The team will not be based in Cairns and will be based in Port Moresby. V’Landys has made that clear enough because it would (fairly obviously, in my opinion) put the Cowboys offside, and Reibel and co hold a vote that V’Landys needs. Some FNQers are still holding on to hope for some reason or are politicians using the opportunity to talk their book:
Just a 90-minute flight to Port Moresby, Member for Barron River Craig Crawford said the tropical destination was perfectly placed to help launch the team should it enter the competition in 2028.
“If Peter was standing here right now I’d say, ‘You’ve made the wrong call’,” Mr Crawford said.
“Cairns is a significant link to all countries throughout the Pacific.
“It’s also very well suited to be the Australian base for the PNG team.
“I don’t think Port Moresby lends itself at this stage to be able to do that. There are home-and-away games and other things to consider within that.”
…
“I don’t think that having the PNG team in Cairns will affect the Cowboys’ following,” he said.
“We’re big enough for both of them. I think they need to go back and relook at it.”
As much as I love Cairnsites and adjacent FNQers throwing the Cowboys under the bus for not being sufficiently North Queensland, I’m not sure the ARLC will be all that convinced by this line of argument.
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Despite the Hunters winning the 2017 Queensland Cup but then missing finals every season since, the pipeline of talent out of PNG for players, let alone coaches and administrators, is not what we would generally consider as ‘high performance’ or ‘elite’. Given that pipeline wouldn’t be NRL-class for another decade at least, Australians and New Zealanders will need to work for the new team if it is to be in any way remotely competitive.
Most ex-pats working in PNG live in gated community-style compounds and if you’re there in connection with government work, that accommodation will be run by DFAT. Hope you like blockwork construction, very basic amenities, barbed wire fencing and armed guards at the gates. The power supply can be intermittent, so you’ll want to make sure there isn’t a diesel shortage for the generator you’ll be relying on and definitely don’t watch anything like how riots and fuel shortages escalated PNG's economic crisis or read about ongoing flight disruptions due to jet fuel rationing or look at Smart Traveller.
Given the limited opportunities outside of the compound for an ordinary Australian suburban lifestyle, especially for the families of players, staff and admin, it will probably feel a lot like living in covid lockdown, a thing I’m sure everyone is nostalgic to experience again. Outside the walls of the compound and high end hotels are much higher rates of violence, especially against women, crime and instability, so joining a PNG franchise would be a hard sell to all but a few. The NRL is meant to be a path out of poverty, not to bring you back to it.
That, in particular, seems like a strike against a contingent of PNG heritage players making the move “home” to form the core of the initial roster, irrespective of how many tax breaks that Peter V’Landys offers without any actual authorisation from the Papua New Guinea government, who is probably looking forward to bringing in 42% of the football department and salary caps spending to their own coffers.
At a higher level, Oxford doesn’t usually get much of a run in a rugby league context, except maybe as a type of shirt at the Dally Ms, but coincidentally Oxford Economics released their Global Cities Index for 2024 last week. I suggest no one show the players this chart:
While the methodology doesn’t particularly accord with things I would personally care about my quality of life (you can’t tell me living in Edmonton and on the Gold Coast are in any way comparable, or that Perth is better than Brisbane), these rankings tend to have a certain similarity to them. Australia and New Zealand cities usually do well, led by Melbourne in the top ten somewhere, but this one is rarer because the ranking goes through 1,000 cities and so includes places like Suva, Port Moresby and 1,000th placed Sultanpur, in direct comparison to cities we are more familiar with.
Port Moresby ranked 778th, sandwiched between Belgaum and Mangalore, two small Indian cities I would swear were hallucinated by a LLM but do in fact appear on Google Maps. By comparison, Melbourne was ninth, Sydney 16th, Brisbane 27th, Auckland 59th and Gold Coast 81st. Port Moresby ranked 32nd in the world for environment, as measured by air particulates, emissions intensity and frequency of weather anomalies and natural disasters - basically, there’s no industry and the volcanoes are on the other side of the Highlands - but much closer to the bottom on economics, human capital, quality of life and governance. While those aspects of life don’t really impact one’s day-to-day, they would certainly impact the operation of a government-funded NRL franchise that is highly visible by design and will need to be fed a lot of other people’s money to operate.
The Federal Government is set to inject $600 million into a new NRL team in PNG.
Sources told this masthead that the deal could be finalised before September 16 – the 49th anniversary of PNG independence.
It is also understood there is growing confidence that the PNG team announcement could arrive before then if things fall into place, with mid-July a realistic target.
It is understood the Albanese government has not yet signed a written agreement with the NRL and is unlikely to take the proposal to cabinet in coming weeks.
The NRL and the federal have already agreed on a funding package with almost half of the $600 million to go towards pathways and programs in the Pacific region.
$600 million is nothing in the grand scheme of governt things and this figure is almost certainly and wildly overinflated by the Badel types applying WAR CHEST logic. On one hand, the “Federal Government is set to inject $600 million into a new NRL team in PNG” and on the other “almost half of the $600 million to go towards pathways and programs in the Pacific region”. Which is it?
Even at this point it is not clear now much federal government money is going towards operations of a new NRL team and how much is going to related pathways and feel good programs, possibly under the umbrella of the NRL team. That seems like an important distinction you’d want answered if you were, for example, the chairman of the ARLC, who will almost certainly have to fund any shortfalls if (and probably when) PNG corporates don’t fill in the gaps and when (not if) government funding eventually runs out.
The opportunity cost of not going to Perth or adding a second New Zealand team, even if it was entirely NRL funded, to apply some actual commercial pressure to rugby union in either of those places becomes even more apparent.
But here is what I think is the kicker:
A chunk of the money - upwards of $50 million - would be distributed among the existing clubs to help win their support for a new side while the remainder would be used to prop up a PNG side when they enter the competition, most likely in 2028 to coincide with a new broadcasting deal and the end of Wayne Bennett’s contract at South Sydney.
This is actual federal government money, around a tenth of all funding for this circus, that is proposed to be handed over to the Murdoch-owned Broncos, the James Hardie-sponsored Eels and all the pokie-funded, craven and cretinous NRL clubs that have to be won over for this to work.
This has gone unremarked upon by any of the alleged journalists and no one seems to care. That $50 million - or is it $60 million? does it even matter at this point? - is supposedly a one-off payment which is, to be perfectly clear, tax payer money going to NRL clubs to buy votes to wave through a PNG expansion franchise because America is wary of our biggest trading partner, China, and there’s political capital at home and favour with the US allegedly to be gained by showing the Reds a firm hand.
Irrespective of how you feel about the PNG NRL team, this is tens of millions of dollars that won’t even be seen by PNG’s central bank, let alone the people of Papua New Guinea. For some context, the GDP per capita of Papua New Guinea is about $4,600 and in Australia, just across the Torres Strait, that figure rises to about $97,000. What are we even doing?
Even that disgraceful misuse of public funds is not enough to keep the mediocrity furnaces running:
That news prompted a flurry of text messages between the game’s existing club bosses as they sought to unify their stance on the 18th team and what they would expect in as a sweetener to back the bid.
It is understood the NRL and federal government have discussed paying the clubs as much as $60 million to be shared among them – each club would receive around $3.5 million in the form of a one-off payment.
It is believed the clubs preference is for an additional $2 million a season over and above player payments for at least five seasons from 2028, when the PNG is expected to enter the season.
In total, that would mean an extra $170 million in payments to the clubs in return for their support for a PNG franchise. The clubs raised the issue with NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo at a meeting prior to Magic Round and the matter is expected to heat up over the next month or so as an announcement on expansion edges closer.
Let the negotiations commence.
The way the reporting on this works is if the story is planted by the clubs based on concerns held by important people at NRL clubs who would prefer to remain anonymous, a more conciliatory quote is included from PVL:
ARL Commission chair Peter V’landys insisted no agreement had been struck with the federal government over PNG.
“There is no agreement at this stage,” V’landys said.
“It is certainly premature. It hasn’t gone to cabinet to start with and our board hasn’t signed off on it, so there’s no agreement.
“There were discussions held during Magic Round, but each party was due to come back, again, so there’s nothing concrete at this stage.
“I was surprised as to how this speculation started, because it certainly didn’t come from the NRL, put it that way. [No, you’re right. I’m sure everyone just made up the exact details with on the record quotes. Somehow.]
“I won’t comment on confidential negotiations, because naturally I have to go to the members first with the details, which is the clubs.”
But he also has to talk out both sides of his mouth:
V’landys and Abdo have led the charge on PNG as the federal government looks to soft diplomacy to keep China at bay in the Pacific.
“I’ve spoken to the Prime Minister about the 18th team,” V’landys said.
“That’s the level we’re at now, we’re at the highest levels.
“The government is extremely keen because of national security there is no doubt about that.
“They have the right strategy in how to strengthen the relationship with Papua New Guinea. If you are part of the sporting competition and your sport will be throughout PNG, that will strengthen the relationship significantly.
“It’s a very smart plan by the government, no two ways about it. When you consider the government spends billions on submarines, this is peanuts by comparison.
“Soft diplomacy sometimes works better than anything else.”
In the true idiom of the federal halls of power, there has been a lot of hot air released in an effort to grab a headline in Australia’s increasingly irrelevant legacy media publications but the hard work of actually making something happen is still an action item for others to resolve.
V’Landys has left himself enough of an escape hatch that if one of the stakeholders - government, broadcasters, clubs or god forbid, someone consults the fans - gets shitty enough with the idea, then he can toss it in the bin and save face on the basis that it was never formally agreed and actually he was always a huge supporter of the WA Bears. What that’s about a rusted-on AFL state?
This is important for V’Landys because we have heard some tepid murmuring from clubs worried that the new PNG franchise will somehow be handed so many advantages that they will be the new Panthers, when its clear that this is a multi-decade project at best, and resistant to the idea of going to Papua New Guinea at all. No one has yet had the guts to be that strongly opposed to it on record. The irony of surrounding one’s self with yes men.
We have not heard much from Nine or Fox. They’ve expressed a preference for the Bears in a new home but it is easy to glean that they have very little interest in the additional 12 games of inventory, with PNG unlikely to be a ratings winner in Australia, and will do their best to avoid taking on any of the production costs of broadcasting from Port Moresby. If the broadcasters see this more as a burden than an opportunity, the best case is they do production in-kind, as with the NRLW, or pick up a local feed, like Qplus does for Hunters home games, and do not offer any actual cash. That seems like a waste of a presumably perpetual licence.
Even if it does fall apart, V’Landys will almost certainly be untouched and in the extremely unlikely event of it costing him his job, he will be eulogised as having dreamed too big, as too great a visionary for our tinpot backwards-looking suburban sport. I will then have a complete mental breakdown because they stole my line and used it wrong.
With the “done deal” of the NRL manning the trenches to enforce a foreign policy that reads like a blend of White Australia and the Brisbane Line, none of this makes any real sense. It’s not clear how much money there is or what or who the money is for or how long it will last or what rugby league is expected to achieve or where the players and administrators are going to come from or if the fans, either in Australia or PNG, want this or how any of this is actually going to come together or if there isn’t something else we’d all rather be doing.
I almost feel sorry for the people who are going to be badgered into making in work but not really. They can always quit. We certainly won’t hear the groaning of the nuts and bolts, straining to manage loads they were never designed to accommodate.
Of the Australian government’s most questionable choices over the time that I’ve been an adult, this is somewhere in the middle. There was that time Australia invaded Iraq and Afghanistan because of US foreign policy aims that were not, and in many ways are still not, clear, triggering the deaths of millions, destabilising nations and economies. This is not in the same ballpark but it is the same sport.
Australia still sends people seeking asylum to overseas jail - for a while, it was to PNG - as a matter of course for the crime of attempting to land in Australia, and doesn’t really give a shit about our carbon emissions, and the coal we supply to the world, causing our Pacific neighbours to drown. A footy team seems like the least we can do.
Would hospitals, roads, improved education, a functioning sense of democracy and a modern sense of human rights, an economic plan that synthesises traditional ways with infrastructure to access global markets - you know, aid - be better? Probably (and that might even be what China would offer) but that’s apparently not what James Marape wants, and we’ve forgotten (or never knew) how to do all of that soft intellectual stuff, so that’s not what they’re getting.
They’re getting a NRL team and should be thankful the People’s Liberation Army isn’t marching through Port Moresby, Lae and Rabaul in an effort to maintain law and order on behalf of a failing government. You can leave that kind of work to nice, honest Australians. Look at what we did for Timor-Leste.
Remember Kokoda? We’ve already lost Guadalcanal to an expansionary Asian power for the second time since 1941, we can’t lose the fuzzy wuzzy angels too. This is practically World War II all over again and not about end of history Gen Xers cosplaying the Cold War.
Do not bother looking up which side China fought on or if that's this China or a different one. That will only confuse you. Certainly do not research (or recall) the West’s fears of Japan’s economic dominance through the 1980s and early 1990s, the subsequent collapse of the Japanese economy circa 1994 and draw any parallels to the West’s fears of China’s economic dominance through the 2010s and early 2020s. That is not going to help.
All of this is firmly within the remit of the Australian Rugby League Commission and the National Rugby League. Wait until they get a load of the golden era Footy Show. We’ll be laughing about all this over a few SP Lagers in no time.
After all, rugby league is the national sport, donchaknow?