Australian Foreign Minister Senator Penny Wong, in an official press conference, announced the return of the Visa Processing Centre for Papua New Guinea from Fiji to Port Moresby and aims to approve 75% of incoming visa applications within two weeks, in what is described as another major milestone in Australia-PNG relations.
In addition to this achievement, both the Papua New Guinea and Australian Governments have stamped their commitment in finalizing the Bilateral Security Treaty by April 2023. Senator Penny Wong emphasized the close relationship between both countries and the need to work more collaboratively with each other to strengthen regional cooperation and stability.
“We’re neighbours, we’re friends, we’re partners, in our relationship we’re equals.”
“Firstly in relation to the security treaty, when the two Prime Ministers met, they charged Minister Tkatchenko and I with finalizing that bilateral security treaty and we’re pleased that we’ve exchanged draft texts, we’re in the process of working through that and we will be doing a lot more work in the coming weeks and we are pleased to see this progress, to see this is as a natural progression of our security
partnership.”
“The second thing I want to indicate is that last night and today we had a very frank and open discussion on visa related issues and ministers recognized that the quality of timely visas were an important underpinning of our bilateral ties so we have agreed to open in country visa processing to Papua New Guinea, I know this
is something that the prime ministers discussed, and in particular, it’s something that Deputy Prime Minister Rosso is keen to progress with his counterpart Richard Marles.”
“We are also establishing a joint high-level ministerial working group (between Australia and PNG) to oversee these changes and continue work with visa related issues,” Senator Wong said.
Minister Tkatchenko said, “The return of the visa processing centre will allow our Papua New Guineans to have direct access to apply for visas going to Australia and we greatly appreciate the approval of that today and with that we will work together with foreign affairs and immigration in ensuring that Australians coming
into Papua New Guinea can come in a shorter period of time.”
“This ministerial forum has been very very productive, we’ve also had our colleague ministers have their bilateral meetings (with their Australian counterparts) to sort out other long outstanding issues as well.”
“The bilateral security treaty is a work in progress, remember this not just about policing and defence, it’s also about many other security issues like climate change, bio security, gender equality and many others, we will work together to achieve the deadline for the benefit of Australia and the benefit of Papua New Guinea,” Minister Tkatchenko said.