Papua New Guineans Set to Join Australia’s Defence Force

It looks likely that Australia will seek to directly recruit Papua New Guineans to serve in the ADF, but not all observers think it’s a good idea.

Australian Army soldiers from 2nd Combat Engineer Regiment observe an obstacle course demonstration alongside soldiers from His Majesty's Armed Forces of Tonga and the Papua New Guinea Defence Force during Exercise Croix du Sud 2025 at Plum, New Caledonia, on April 22, 2025. Janet Pan/Department of Defence

As talks resume on Australia’s new defence treaty with Papua New Guinea (PNG), Papua New Guineans may soon become eligible to sign up for the Australian Defence Force (ADF).

In 2024, Defence Minister Richard Marles said that from July 2025, looser eligibility criteria would allow “permanent residents who have been living in Australia for 12 months” to serve, and that citizens from Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States would be favoured. However, recruiting foreign citizens living offshore takes the idea a step further.

It’s one way defence leaders are looking at making up the longstanding shortfall in military personnel numbers.

In early 2024, the ADF was around 4,300 below its authorised strength of 62,700 permanent members, making the 2040 target of 80,000 look extremely difficult to achieve. But also last year, 64,000 people applied to join, and the average time to complete the recruitment process was 300 days.

Todd Newett, a former army reservist working as an economist in the public service, says that taking almost a year to reach a decision is “unacceptable when geopolitical tensions are increasing and we need expand the ADF quickly.”

The best recruits are likely to have other opportunities on offer, and when they don’t have an answer from Defence, they will likely withdraw their application and go elsewhere, he outlined in a paper for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Of the rest, some would have been recruited and others rejected.

“But could none of those applicants have been able to safely and competently do any of the 4,300 positions that remain unfilled in the ADF? Almost certainly not,” Newett said.

Be Less Choosy

The ADF needs to become “less choosy,” Newett recommends, pointing out that many who fought and died in WWI and WWII would have been rejected by the ADF today.

“At the height of World War II, around one in eight Australians was deemed suitable to serve,” he said.

“Despite perceptions, there is a large pool of applicants who want to join the ADF. With appropriate changes to recruiting systems and standards, that pool should be able to fill the ADF’s expanding requirements.”

Another who thinks that looking overseas should not be a substitute for recruiting Australians is the Executive Director of the Australia Defence Association (ADA), Neil James, who thinks it won’t succeed if there’s no pathway to citizenship for Papua New Guineans who sign up.

“You can’t expect other people to defend your country if you’re not willing to do it, and until this scheme actually addresses this in any detail, we’re not going to know whether it’s an idiot idea or it’s something that might be workable in the long run,” he said, adding that it may also damage PNG’s military.

James said that in the early 2000s, many New Zealanders serving alongside Australians in Timor-Leste joined the Australian Army, which offered higher pay.

“You’ve got to be real careful that you don’t ruin the Papua New Guinea Defence Force by making it too easy for Papua New Guineans to serve in the Australian Defence Force,” James said.

The Australian Defence Association, the nation’s public-interest watchdog for strategic security, was far more scathing of a 2005 proposal to allow Pacific Islanders to serve in the Australian military, calling it “a good example of a brainstorming bullet point seeing the light of day before the rest of the brain, including the conscience, became engaged.”

However, the idea isn’t new, and in fact has operated in the past. Two Pacific battalions served in the Australian armed forces up until 1975, when PNG gained independence from Australia.