IS THIS GUY A PLAYER AGENT OR PRIME MINISTER?

by M.J Passingan

Prime Minister James Marape has a new job title: PNG’s self-appointed “number one salesperson and promoter.” Not for fixing the collapsing kina, not for tackling K66 billion in sovereign debt, and certainly not for the thousands of university graduates now entering an economy with no jobs. No Marape is personally cold-calling NRL stars, offering tax-free contracts and even coaching gigs to lure them to the PNG Chiefs expansion team.

Brisbane Broncos hooker Ben Hunt blew the lid off this week. During last year’s premiership trophy tour, Marape “sweet-talked” Hunt, Adam Reynolds and Ezra Mam with “tax-free cash and whatnot,” even dangling a coaching role for Reynolds. Hunt described it bluntly as “wheeling and dealing.” Marape did not deny a word. Instead, he boasted: “I talk to all players who I meet… If they come off contract and want to consider Chiefs, then this is what we offer.” He doubled down on his self-image as PNG’s top talent scout.

This is a head of government acting like a rogue player agent and the backlash from Australia is savage.

NRL club executives are furious. Multiple CEOs, speaking anonymously, say the tax-free deals have destroyed goodwill and created a grotesque “uneven playing field.” Former NRL strategy chief Shane Richardson went nuclear, labelling the arrangement a “complete rort” and “cheating the salary cap by 48 per cent.” The math is damning: tax-free salaries effectively hand the Chiefs an extra $5 million in spending power per season. One club insider summed it up: “A few clubs will be seriously pissed off.”

Even Phil Gould, Bulldogs supremo, has traded blows with Chiefs general manager Michael Chammas, who dismissed the outrage as “short-sighted.” Australian taxpayers have every right to be livid too. Canberra is pumping $600 million of public money into the PNG NRL project over ten years — your taxes, funding tax-free millionaire contracts for imported stars while PNG’s own citizens ration rice at K70 for 10kg and fuel sits above K4.50 a litre.

Marape’s personal involvement makes it worse. While his government fails to execute budgets, botches the census, greylists the country with FATF and criminalises the informal economy that feeds 85 per cent of Papua New Guineans, the Prime Minister is jetting around sweet-talking footballers. The Chiefs project might one day deliver national pride, but when the head of state becomes the face of player recruitment, it stops being about development and starts being about photo-ops and ego.

The cynicism is breathtaking. Ordinary Papua New Guineans endure power blackouts, crumbling infrastructure and a currency that has lost over 40 per cent of its value. Young graduates this week step into a jobless void. Yet Marape’s priority is carving out special tax treatment for NRL imports so they can pocket every cent while PNG families cannot afford basic meals.

No serious democracy has its prime minister moonlighting as a recruitment officer. This is not leadership; it is an embarrassing abdication of duty dressed up as patriotism. While Australian clubs scream “rort” and taxpayers question why their money subsidises tax-free deals for foreign athletes, Marape struts as PNG’s greatest salesman.

The country does not need a Prime Minister playing fantasy football. It needs a leader who stays home, confronts the crises he helped create, and treats the office with dignity instead of turning it into a talent agency. Until Marape realises that “number one salesperson” is not a badge of honour but a devastating indictment of misplaced priorities, PNG will keep burning and the world will keep laughing at the spectacle of its leader chasing contracts instead of fixing a nation in freefall.