The ex-Socceroo has expressed concerns about the league's approach to expansion, and says continually going to market to sell new licences has not proved an effective solution to growing the game.

Canberra's A-League bid team is still waiting to hear back from the FFA, after making a fully funded, multi-million dollar offer to acquire a licence more than two months ago.

That followed on from the capital's second bid for an A-League team being rejected during the FFA's last round of expansion in late 2018, when the governing body opted for Western United in Melbourne, and Macarthur FC in south-western Sydney.

Foster was heavily involved in another failed A-League bid along with former NSW Premier Morris Iemma, that of Southern Expansion which would've encompassed the St George and Cronulla-Sutherland regions of Sydney, and Wollongong.

"One of the things that I'm challenged by in our game at the moment is the lack, or certainly in relation to the professional game, has been the lack of strategy and this market led approach," Foster told The Canberra Times.

"I was involved with a proposed licence up in southern Sydney and the reason for that is because the research and very clearly said that that had to be the next area on a number of benchmarks.

"I would love to see a long-term strategy now that includes the national capital. So what I'd be urging for the game and the new professional competition is, put a strategy in place long term and every few years let's stop just going to market and see who has money and who doesn't have money.

"Let's get a strategy. I do believe that Canberra and the national capital has to play a part in that strategy. But until I see the research I couldn't say whether that is the next iteration or the one afterwards.

"That's where Australian football needs to head so that everyone's really clear what the future looks like, what the number of clubs are, what the geographic spread of clubs are so that gives people and state governments and investors some certainty about where it is that we're heading."

Canberra's latest bid for an A-League licence has gathered some powerful allies since Michael Caggiano and Bede Gahan made their offer to the FFA.

Former Socceroos captain Craig Moore has signed on to join the football department should the bid come to fruition and heads a host of past and present players, including World Cup hero John Aloisi, who believe a team would thrive in Canberra.

Foster joined forces with sporting legend Sonny Bill Williams in Canberra on Wednesday morning to ask Prime Minister Scott Morrison to sign off on New Zealand's offer to resettle refugees trapped in Papua New Guinea and Naura.

A petition of more than 65,000 will be handed to the Morrison government which is still yet to take up New Zealand's offer to help refugees. The offer was first tabled in 2013.

After the role he played in freeing Australian football refugee Hakeem al-Araibi from a Thai prison early last year, Foster traveled to Port Moresby and met with refugees who had been detained there since fleeing their home countries six years earlier.

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"I saw people who were broken, I saw people with deep psychological trauma, I saw people who were so medicated they could barely hold a sentence, I saw doctors who had lost the will to live, I saw young men with scars on their arms where they'd attempted suicide," Foster said.

"Meeting them was life changing really. They've been largely out of sight and out of mind. I believe that the vast majority of Australians are very good people, and if they knew the stories and were able to see the people and feel the pain, this would've been solved a long time ago.

"My job is trying to articulate to Australia what we've actually done to these people. And to try and put politics aside, which is not easy because it's been so deeply politicised this area and these people so horribly demonised.

"One measure of any country has to be the way that we treat the most vulnerable people and these are by definition the most voiceless and the most vulnerable.

"We have psychologically tortured them if not physically and it's just not right, it can't sit right with any fair-minded Australian."

Williams, whose rugby league future hinges on the Toronto Wolfpack being re-admitted into the English Super League, also spoke passionately on the issue.

"A refugee is someone who has had to flee their homes due to persecution, war or natural disaster," Williams said.

"Imagine that was you, having to get up, leave everything you've known, grab your kids, your family, everything you've worked for in your life and flee. It's not an easy proposition. You'd do anything necessary to provide for your family and get to a safer place.

"We're up in arms about going into quarantine for two weeks. I've done that with four kids and it was pretty tough, but there was light at the end of the tunnel and I knew that after two weeks I'd be able to go and see my family and friends.

"Imagine doing it for seven years. And imagine being in that knowing that there's no light at the end of the tunnel.

"That's a scary proposition to be in and a scary thought to have. We've got to understand that yes it's doom and gloom, but there's a solution.

"Brother Scotty [Morrison] just needs to sign that paper, and whoever it is we just need to get it done. Just give them a fair go."