Papua New Guinea's politics: a parliament where every government is a coalition

How the Westminster model was adapted at independence

A Constitutional Planning Committee of Papua New Guineans drafted the constitution before independence, consulting at home and looking at the post-colonial states of Africa, and chose a Westminster system in which the legislature was meant to check the executive. Britannica records that the constitution was adopted in 1975 and has been amended frequently since. Papua New Guinea is a constitutional monarchy and a member of the Commonwealth: the monarch is head of state, represented by a governor-general, and the prime minister is head of government.

Two features set the arrangement apart. The governor-general is elected by the members of the National Parliament and then formally appointed by the monarch; Wikipedia's article on the country's politics notes that Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands are the only realms that do it this way. And there is no royal assent: a bill becomes law when the Speaker certifies that Parliament has passed it. The prime minister is elected by Parliament and appointed by the governor-general, who appoints the other ministers on the prime minister's advice to form the National Executive Council, the cabinet.

The country's own law sits on top of an inherited one. The underlying law is English common law and equity as they stood on 16 September 1975, together with the decisions of Papua New Guinea's courts since, and the constitution tells the courts to take account of custom. In March 2025 the constitution was amended to make Christianity the official religion of the state, in a country where 95.6% of people described themselves as Christian at the 2011 census.

Who sits in the National Parliament

The single chamber has 118 seats. Ninety-six members are elected from single-member open electorates, which follow district boundaries, and 22 from provincial electorates, one for each of the 20 provinces, the National Capital District and the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. Members serve five-year terms. The member for each provincial electorate is also the governor of that province, a rule dating from reforms of 1995. Seven new districts approved on 23 March 2022, the first change since independence, brought the total to 96 before that year's election.

Until the 2002 election members were chosen by first past the post, and so many candidates stood that, in the Australian foreign ministry's account, winners frequently took less than 15% of the vote. Wikipedia's politics article counts an average of six candidates for each seat in 1972 and 26 by 2002. The Morauta government's reforms of 2001 introduced the limited preferential vote, in which each voter ranks three candidates; the 2007 general election was the first held under it. Voting can take weeks, because of the time needed to reach rural polling places.

Very few women have been elected. Wikipedia's politics article counts seven women elected to Parliament in all up to 2019, when none sat in it, and the 2022 election returned two.

Why no party has ever governed alone

The Australian foreign ministry states plainly that all governments to date have been coalitions. Britannica describes dozens of parties without clear policy differences or roots in ideology or class, most of them factions built around prominent leaders, and members who owe their seats to local connections more than to any party. Wikipedia's politics article quotes the local saying that parties endorse the candidates who are going to win. Some coalitions have held up to ten parties.

Voting follows kinship. In the Highlands especially, clans vote as blocs, and elections can become a proxy for older conflicts between them; intimidation and violence at elections are common, in Wikipedia's account, and Britannica records electoral fraud in some regions. The 2002 election in the Southern Highlands had to be partly rerun in June 2003. Turnover is high: about 75% of sitting members lost their seats in 2002, according to the Australian foreign ministry, against 38% in 2022.

The Organic Law on the Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates, passed in 2001, tried to tie members to the party they were elected for and barred independents from voting for the prime minister. It held for most of the decade and helped Michael Somare keep office, until the Supreme Court declared key parts of it unconstitutional in July 2010.

How no-confidence votes have changed governments

Prime ministers have more often fallen on the floor of Parliament than at the polls. The first successful no-confidence vote came in 1980, the second in 1985 and the third in 1988. Such votes must name a replacement, so a successful one changes the government without an election, except in the final 12 months of a parliament, when it triggers one. In 1991 the period after an election in which a government is protected was lengthened from six to 18 months; a later extension to 30 months, passed in 2012 and 2013, was struck down by the Supreme Court in September 2015.

Governments have learnt to defend themselves with procedure. Wikipedia's politics article describes adjournments of Parliament lasting months to avoid a vote, large cabinet reshuffles to split opposition parties, and a government in October 2016 moving a motion of no confidence in itself while much of the opposition was absent, which failed by 78 votes to 2. Britannica records the opposite tactic in 2019, when the two rival camps lodged in separate hotels in Port Moresby while they counted numbers. Only two prime ministers have served a full term from one election to the next.

The cost shows in the ministries. Wikipedia's politics article reports that from 1972 to 2016 a minister stayed at one portfolio for 16 months on average. The same article points to the considerable power of the Speaker, which can allow the executive considerable control over Parliament, and quotes the description of that power as a "fatal flaw" of the constitution. An increasing reliance on the courts to fight the government has, in its view, raised the risk of the judiciary being seen as political.

What members do with constituency funds

Each member controls development funds for his or her electorate, and Wikipedia's politics article describes the sums under each member's discretion as very large by any comparison. Britannica dates the habit of "money politics" to 1980, when Iambakey Okuk won support by promising more money for members to spend in their electorates. The 1995 reforms that replaced elected provincial assemblies with bodies made up of national members handed those members control of provincial funding too. Britannica's assessment is that government services declined after 1995, especially in the 14 mainland provinces.

Voters judge members on what they bring home, and Wikipedia's politics article links the funds to absenteeism in Parliament, to electoral violence and to corruption, and records that electors have re-elected members jailed for corruption. The Electoral Boundaries Commission proposed redrawing electorates in 1981, 1986, 1991 and 2006, and Parliament rejected each proposal. An Independent Commission Against Corruption was created by law in 2020.

How the provinces and Bougainville are governed

Papua New Guinea is a unitary state but a decentralised one. Below the 22 province-level divisions sit districts and over 300 local-level government areas, and provinces may levy some taxes and have a say in education, health and development. Customary land, held by communities, makes up 97% of the country. Two provinces, Hela and Jiwaka, were created in 2009 and became separate provinces on 17 May 2012, in the area of the gas project.

Bougainville is the exception to everything above. Under the peace agreement of 2001 it has its own government and parliament, elected first in 2005, and in 2015 its Bougainville Mining Act moved control of mining from the national government to the region and declared minerals the property of customary landowners. In the 2019 referendum, run by a commission set up by both governments, 176,928 voters chose independence and 3,043 greater autonomy. The national government's position, as Wikipedia records it, is that the result has to be ratified by the National Parliament, where the national side has wanted a two-thirds majority and Bougainville a simple one. Bougainville's leaders recommended independence on 1 September 2027 in March 2025 and moved the date to 1 September 2030 in July 2026. On 6 August 2026 the Joint Supervisory Body of the two governments signed its final consultation documents, and Parliament announced a debate on the referendum for 27 August.

Where the courts and the Ombudsman fit in

The courts have refereed the system's worst disputes. The Supreme Court, an appellate bench of the National Court, is the final court of appeal and rules on whether laws are constitutional, either in a dispute or on a reference. It struck down the party integrity law in 2010, ruled in December 2011 that Somare's removal as prime minister had been illegal, voided the longer no-confidence moratorium in 2015 and in 2016 ruled the detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island unconstitutional. Below it, district courts are run by magistrates, and Britannica counts more than 1,000 village courts applying customary law, almost all their magistrates men.

The Ombudsman Commission polices the Leadership Code, the constitution's rules of conduct for state officers, which came into force on 3 March 1978. A leadership tribunal under it suspended Somare from office for two weeks in 2011 over financial returns he had failed to file over 20 years.

Who Papua New Guinea stands with abroad

Australia is the closest partner. The Australian foreign ministry lists the Joint Declaration of Principles of 1987, the Comprehensive Strategic and Economic Partnership of 2020, the Bilateral Security Agreement of 2023 and the Mutual Defence Treaty signed in October 2025, known as the Pukpuk Treaty. The relationship has had its frictions: in 2003 Papua New Guinea accepted Australian police under the Enhanced Cooperation Program, and in May 2005 the courts ruled their deployment unconstitutional; from 2013 it held asylum seekers bound for Australia on Manus Island until the centre closed in November 2017.

The Papua New Guinea Defence Force has internal security as its main role, and patrols the border and the exclusive economic zone. After the Sandline affair it was cut from 3,700 people to 2,000, and in 2003 it took part in the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands.

The western border with Indonesia is the other fixed point. Britannica records clashes between West Papuan nationalists and the Indonesian army that have pushed refugees and troops across a largely unmarked line, and estimates that some 10,000 West Papuan refugees remained in Papua New Guinea in the early 21st century; Wikipedia's politics article says the government has supported Indonesia's control of the neighbouring region. Papua New Guinea has been an observer at ASEAN since 1976 and has applied for full membership. It is a founding member of the Melanesian Spearhead Group of 1986, with Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, and belongs to the [[group/un|United Nations]], the Commonwealth, the Pacific Islands Forum, APEC, which it joined in 1993 and whose leaders it hosted in 2018, and the World Trade Organization, which it joined in 1996.