In September, Kokoda constituency in Bougainville declared itself “independence ready.” At the ceremony, Ishmael Toroama, president of the Autonomous Bougainville Government, pledged funding for a hospital and a police station. 

Similar ceremonies are being held across Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea (PNG). Each carries the same message: the long road from civil war to self-determination is nearing its end.

97.7 percent of Bougainvilleans voted in favor of independence in 2019, but that referendum was not binding. PNG’s parliament has the final say, and seven years later, the wait for a parliamentary decision continues. 

This year, Prime Minister James Marape had proposed holding a vote on August 30. Parliament formally received the result on August 27, then adjourned without voting. 

Now Peter Tsiamalili Jr, Bougainville’s regional MP and the leader of government business, has announced a two-day debate for October 20-21. That is progress. But it remains unclear whether the sitting will end in a vote, or what will follow if parliament adjourns without one.

Australia has been careful on the issue of Bougainville, with good reason. In 2022, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said Canberra’s job was to “support Papua New Guinea.” Bougainville’s leadership took that as a retreat from neutrality, and Canberra had to clarify that it would support whatever the two sides agreed. 

Australia is right to keep its distance on what parliament decides, but it can – and should – help nudge PNG to make a decision. 

The 2001 Bougainville peace agreement required a referendum within 10 to 15 years after the election of Bougainville’s first autonomous government. The agreement also gave PNG’s parliament authority to make the final decision on independence – but did not set a deadline for parliamentary action. 

The 2022 Era Kone Covenant set 2027 as the outer limit for implementing independence or another settlement, but again it failed to fix a date for parliament to vote. The covenant’s one interim deadline – tabling the result in parliament by the end of 2023 – was missed by almost three years.

The lack of a deadline lets Port Moresby postpone a politically difficult decision; meanwhile Bougainville’s leaders must keep persuading supporters to accept the wait. Many who sustained the peace are former combatants who staked their credibility on the promise that politics would produce an answer. Toroama himself was once a rebel commander. He now warns that trust is under strain even as he urges Bougainvilleans to stay patient. Each postponement makes that appeal harder to sustain. 

The approaching PNG election compounds the problem. Under the provisional timetable, voting will be held from June 26 to July 9 of next year. If PNG’s parliament does not vote before the election, the decision will pass to a new parliament, which may first need to decide how much of its predecessor’s groundwork it accepts. Bougainville’s leaders have set September 1, 2027, as the “firm timetable” for a further stage of self-government. At that point, the new PNG parliament would be barely a month old. 

Without an agreed timetable, Bougainville and PNG are heading back toward potential conflict. “Trust is the foundation of every agreement. Where agreed processes have been departed from, concerns have naturally arisen,” Toroama said while announcing his timetable in June. He added that “recent events violating these existing understandings cannot be ignored or downplayed,” even as he urged the people of Bougainville to “remain patient.”

Australia has a stake in avoiding a new rift between PNG’s central government and Bougainville. Canberra witnessed the 2001 agreement and led the Peace Monitoring Group that helped hold the ceasefire. Under the Pukpuk Treaty that entered into force in July, Australia and the PNG are formal allies, with an obligation to consult on threats to either country’s sovereignty, peace, or stability. 

If Bougainville moves on its own timetable in 2027 and Port Moresby treats that as a challenge to its sovereignty, Canberra might be asked to consult as an ally on the dispute. It’s better for Australia to press for a credible timetable now than be forced to take sides later.

Port Moresby may resent even that level of Australian involvement. Marape’s government frames the referendum as a matter for PNG’s constitutional process, and an ally’s question about parliamentary scheduling can easily be heard as pressure on parliament. 

But in asking for a concrete deadline, Canberra would merely be aligning itself with voices from within the PNG. When the result was tabled in August, opposition leader James Nomane told parliament the government should “not kick the can down the road” and pressed it to say when MPs would vote. The PNG and Bougainville have already agreed that Marape and Toroama will jointly determine the date. Canberra would simply be holding them to their word.

A hurried vote under contested procedures could deepen mistrust. In June, parliament set the bar for ratification at a three-quarters majority: 89 of 118 members. Bougainville’s leaders dispute the threshold and how the rule was adopted. However, leaving the vote date open-ended risks pushing the issue past the election – and conflicting with Toroama’s timetable. 

That is where Canberra can help. Its role is not to shape the outcome, but to help ensure the process does not drag on indefinitely. Through existing ministerial talks, it should seek a date for the vote and a timetable for addressing the disputed voting rules. A deadline alone is not enough; the covenant had one. What matters is what happens if the next deadline is missed. Both governments should then say publicly why it slipped, who must act next, and when parliament will return to the issue. 

If a pre-election vote proves impossible, a joint record of what has been agreed, what remains contested, and when talks resume would at least protect the handover to the next parliament. Australia, already a backer of the transfer of powers, could help maintain that record with both sides’ consent.

Kokoda says it is ready for independence. If Bougainvilleans are asked to keep waiting for parliament to act, their governments owe them a clear account of what comes next.