Keith Jackson & Friends: PNG ATTITUDE

Manus 'Alcatraz' part of PNG assault on crime

ROWAN CALLICK | The Australian

PAPUA New Guinea has embarked on a war against crime that will involve the creation of an Alcatraz-type prison island in Manus, the introduction of the death penalty for murder, aggravated rape or theft of more than $5 million and the secondment of up to 150 Queensland officers to PNG police stations.

The hauskrai movement has dramatised the impact of violence, especially against women and children, in PNG.

Every major centre in the country has established a hauskrai - traditionally, a place for mourners - which have been attended by thousands of supporters, including prime minister Peter O'Neill.

The level of crime in PNG - where law and order has become one of the four priorities of Mr O'Neill's government, along with health, education and infrastructure - has been dramatically illustrated by three recent series of events.

An invasion of shopkeepers: Are they here to stay?

JOHN FOWKE

IN THE EARLY DAYS OF THE COFFEE INDUSTRY, the first roadside buyers were white men.

Although there were at least two white women driving vehicles in the Wahgi and buying at the roadside - a novelty as temporary participants in the fast-growing industry.

But as the volume of coffee grew and new areas away from the main highway came into being, so the embryo factories began putting local men on the road as coffee buyers.

In one case I am closely familiar with, the first were ex-PIR non-commissioned officers and soldiers. One of them, the late Jack Amos of Busu Coffee Ltd, was anointed as PNG Businessman of the Year back in the eighties.

Is it a scam? Fiji officials quiet on PNG recruitment

MIKA LOGA | Fiji Broadcasting Corporation

THE FIJIAN LABOUR MINISTRY has still not issued a statement on an agreement between a recruitment agency and individuals in Papua New Guinea to hire 800 Fijians to work in that country.

The Fiji High Commission in PNG conducted investigations and has raised some questions about the agreement.

Fiji’s High Commissioner to PNG, Romanu Tikotikoca, who is in Suva, has met with the Ministry of Labour to discuss the issue.

Labour Minister Jone Usumate said he’s not in a position to release a statement about the matter just yet.

Tei Abal knew that independence came too soon

DAVID WALL

THE ACCOMPANYING CLIPPING from the Post-Courier of 1 December 1973 was based on a Tok Pisin interview with Tei Abal, then Leader of the Opposition in Papua New Guinea.

Tei Abal was a man with very little formal education, but who knew his own people well.

Looking back, names come to mind like Andrew Peacock, Bill Morrison and, last but certainly not least, Gough Whitlam: Australian politicians who were pushing PNG towards independence. This is without mentioning PNG leaders like Michael Somare and John Guise.

Could the Tasmanian tiger be hiding in New Guinea?

JEREMY HANCE | Mongabay.com

MANY PEOPLE STILL BELIEVE the Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus) survives in the wilds of Tasmania, even though the species was declared extinct over 80 years ago.

Sightings and reports of the elusive carnivorous marsupial, which was the top predator on the island, pop-up almost as frequently as those of Bigfoot in North America, but to date no definitive evidence has emerged of its survival.

Yet, a noted crypto-zoologist (one who searches for hidden animals), Dr Karl Shuker, wrote recently that tiger hunters should perhaps turn their attention to a different island: New Guinea.

Cage

ANDREW AHABH

I’m stuck in this cage
That’s why I’m writing on this page
I know it’s good for me, keeps me stable
But my heart is wild and untamable
Lord how I want to break this barrier
To satisfy this hungry pit bull terrier
I’m in a dilemma. My heart’s saying go
While my mind’s saying no

Karl Hoerler, 63, planter, dies in the Western Highlands

EMIL J HOERLER

KARL HOERLER DIED UNEXPECTEDLY at Korgua Plantation, Western Highlands Province, on 12 April. He was aged 63.

Karl Rudolph Hoerler was born at Seraigi Plantation with his identical twin brother, Emil, in the Bainings of East New Britain.

After finishing school at Oakhill College in Castle Hill, NSW, he returned to work in Ppapua New Guinea starting as shipping clerk with Burns Philp, Rabaul, then on the family plantation until he left for the Highlands in 1972 where he became part of Dan Leahy's clan.

Critics note: Bougainville government is right on track

LEONARD FONG ROKA

I SOMETIMES WONDER, were I president of Bougainville, what sort of a person I would be; what amount of condemnation would I be subjected to from the Bougainville people; how would I cope with the kind of unpredictable political climate. Real shudder there!

Anyway, people so often jump to premature conclusions at a leader’s political behaviour. But I, as a Panguna man, should not deny I play pranks with Bougainville politics in the social media; bad child I am.

But that is Panguna culture. We are good at it. Whether our politicking is profitable or not, we play it for the whole of Bougainville to dance to.

But as a Panguna student with a burning desire to enter Bougainville politics sooner or later, I hate one general criticism decanted on my Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG). And that is, I hate to read or hear critics saying that ‘the ABG is weak’.

PNG says Pacific nations must go it alone on trade

RADIO NEW ZEALAND INTERNATIONAL

PAPUA NEW GUINEA’S TRADE MINISTER, Richard Maru, says he wants to see a common market established in the Melanesian Spearhead Group of nations.

Richard Maru has also said he is against PNG being part of the PACER Plus scheme, which is strongly favoured by New Zealand and Australia, because the trade imbalance means there is no benefit for PNG.

The MSG group includes PNG, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the FLNKS of New Caledonia and Mr Maru says he wants to see trade among these states bedded down.

We are reform

LAPIEH LANDU

Let not what you see convince you
Of our brutality
Of our aggressiveness
We are more than meets the eye

We are cultured; we are the reform of
What we were

Let not what you see convince you
Of our wear
Or our unworldliness
We are more than a babble of lies
We are cultured; we are the reform of what we were

Indonesia-PNG joint exploration in border areas

AMAHL S AZWAR | The Jakarta Post

INDONESIA HAS AGREED TO TEAM UP with neighbouring Papua New Guinea to explore potential oil and gas reserves in border areas as the former shifts its oil and gas exploration focus to the eastern part of the archipelago.

Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Jero Wacik said after a meeting with PNG Public Enterprises and State Investment Minister Ben Micah this week that the two countries would work together by establishing joint operations to explore oil and gas reserves.

Indonesia’s Papua province shares a 760-kilometre land border with PNG. The two nations currently have a few territorial disputes along the border, in areas with poor infrastructure.

“The border possesses a huge amount of unexplored oil and gas reserves, according to data obtained by The Jakarta Post. Economically, it would be easier to jointly explore these untapped resources,” Mr Jero said in Jakarta.

Death penalty law is in parliament this week

RADIO NEW ZEALAND INTERNATIONAL

PAPUA NEW GUINEA’S MINISTER FOR JUSTICE and attorney-general, Kerenga Kua, says amendments to the law on the death penalty will be tabled in Parliament this week.

He says work on the draft document is being completed.

Mr Kua says the law and order situation in the country is serious and the government wants to seek ways to address the problem through better policies.

Keith’s intimate travel diary 18 – Sex in old Pompeii

KEITH JACKSON

WEDNESDAY 22 MAY – NAPLES, ITALY.  Weather-beaten old hack that I am, I know there’s nothing like a tabloid headline and an erotic pic to pull in the punters.

But believe me, this is all in the interests of broadening your education. So let's talk history.

Pompeii was a typical Roman city before it was knocked off its perch when Mount Vesuvius volcano exploded in 79 AD, pouring down waves of gas upon 20,000 hapless citizens and covering the place with pumice and ash.

But nearly two milennia later, Pompeii, on the eastern fringe of modern Naples, is not typical any more. In fact it’s remarkable - because the debris in which it was buried is being cleared, leaving pretty much intact a near perfect real-life example of this 2,000 year old Roman metropolis.

Jack Amesbury, educator and sportsman, dies at 89

MURRAY BLADWELL

JACK AMESBURY, who served in the Royal Australian Navy in World War II and had a long career in Papua New Guinea, died last Saturday in his 90th year with his family by his side.

Jack was well-known in education and rugby league circles in PNG in the pre-independence years between the 1950s and 1970s.

A celebration of Jack's life will be held on Friday 24 May at the Northwood Garden of Remembrance, Deception Bay, Queensland, commencing at 10 am.

How PNG squibbed opportunity for better governance

KARI MANSA

This is an edited extract from a report examining the process of decentralisation and improvements to service delivery in Papua New Guinea. Kari Mansa is a pen-name....

SEVERAL YEARS BACK, Dr James Macpherson developed a cabinet submission and bill for amendment of the PNG constitution so as to provide for ability to remove the Speaker (see previous PNG Attitude article here).

The government did not pursue this belated possibility to fill the gap in the constitution. The public is not aware of the submission and bill getting even as far as the cabinet, which may mean it did not have support from the prime minister.

Fine-tuning the constitution is generally not a priority for policy-makers and, as proved by the actions of the previous parliament, blatant abuse of constitutional provisions is reverted to when politically convenient, even in the face of supreme court determinations to the contrary.

Why, woman?

MARY KOISEN

THIS POEM IS ABOUT A WOMAN’S TURMOIL upon finding pictures of another woman taken by her husband.

She chooses to remain in the relationship despite her overwhelming resentment. As a result she starts to display unattractive traits.

She hates the person she’s become. She wants to save herself but she does not know how. She feels stuck as it were.

Here she has a conversation with herself, going back and forth, asking the questions that ought to be asked and answering them herself.

Pacific paying price of major environmental abuse

CLAUDINE WERY | Le Monde

THE CONSTELLATION OF ISLANDS AND ATOLLS scattered across a vast swath of the Pacific Ocean micro-states are among those most exposed to the consequences of global warming: ocean acidification, multiplication of natural disasters, coral reef degradation, rising sea-levels.

These little islands, which account for a total of about 10 million inhabitants, are paying for the environmental irresponsibility of the world’s great powers.

"Pacific islands are the victims of industrial countries unable to control their carbon dioxide emissions. The truth of the matter is that we have no option but to accept this and adapt," says Dr Jimmie Rodgers, head of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), a regional development organisation.

Not race, reality: PNGn business prospects deprived

TONY FLYNN

“[Ishmael Palipal’s] article will influence less informed readers or bloggers to develop anti-Chinese sentiments and biased opinions. Such emotions will cloud our judgement and is a barrier in finding a way forward for the people of PNG” – Bernard Singu Yegiora, in a comment to PNG Attitude

I HOPE THAT YOU DO NOT MIND my commenting on Bernard's pro-China position.

The view from the dusty market place is a little different to the clear views obtained from the ivory towers of academia.

The new Chinese at my level are intent on filling every small-time niche in the Papua New Guinea economy. Most of the entry-level businesses are filled with Asians.

As a new citizen of PNG in 1976, I operated a kaukau farm and a fast food outlet in Goroka. I learned business in this way and now I am a substantial employer in good standing with Nasfund and other institutions.

The white’s man materialism

MARTINEZ WASUAK | A new Papua New Guinean poet

Here, take my speed boat
Give me your wooden canoe
Here, take my steel axe
Give me your stone axe

Here, take my cash
Give me your tapu
Here, take my steel pot
Give me your clay pot

PNG firm to recruit 800 Fijian workers for Lae-Madang

MIKA LOGA | Fiji Broadcasting Corporation

BETWEEN 500 AND 800 FIJIANS will be recruited to work on Papua New Guinea’s new economic corridor to be constructed between Lae and Madang.

Aleena Limited, a wholly-owned indigenous PNG company, has expressed interest in recruiting Fijians for the project which is estimated to cost K2 - 4 billion.

“The workers required have their skills in infrastructure development, building construction, roads and civil and mechanical engineering, plant operators and so forth," said Fiji’s High Commissioner to PNG, Romanu Tikotikoca.

Tikotikoca says Aleena Ltd will also look at issuing contracts to Fijian companies.

Keith’s intimate travel diary 17 – I’m missing my butler

KEITH JACKSON

SUNDAY 19 MAY – SORRENTO, ITALY. Look, there’s no easy way to break this news to you, but I’m really missing my butler.

Yes, a few mocking readers will take this the wrong way and think travel has gone to my head and that I've developed a hopeless fantasy that I was stolen as a baby from a royal crib.

But, that strong possibility aside, I have of late been indulging in a glorious butler experience and, having kept the truth from you since Dubai, it’s about time I confessed.

Pacific trade talks 'waste of time' says PNG minister

SAMISONI PARETI | ABC

OFFICIALS FROM PAPUA NEW GUINEA say they are considering withdrawing from free trade negotiations between Pacific Island countries and Australia and New Zealand.

PNG's Trade Minister, Richard Maru, today told a meeting of trade ministers from the Melanesian Spearhead Group that his country was considering withdrawing from Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER) negotiations.

"My country is not interested in PACER Plus, our focus is the MSG Trade Agreement," Minister Maru told a press conference convened at the end of the meeting at the Sofitel Fiji Resort and Spa in Nadi.

Are Papua New Guinea’s provinces really necessary?

PHIL FITZPATRICK

THERE ARE SOME INTERESTING PARALLELS between the way the systems of government operate in Australia and Papua New Guinea.  Not least is the fact that both have their problems.

In both countries there are three tiers of government.  In Australia it is federal, state and local; in Papua New Guinea it is national, provincial and local.

Australia effectively gained its independence from Britain in 1901 when the states and territories became a federation.  Prior to 1901 the states were largely autonomous entities.

If you were droving cattle from southwest Queensland to the market in Adelaide you had to go through customs at the South Australian border.

PNG’s death penalty plans a ‘major setback’: UN

UN HIGH COMMISSIONER ON HUMAN RIGHTS

THE UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS OFFICE has expressed serious concern over Papua New Guinea’s announcement that it will resume the death penalty more than half a century since it last carried out an execution, stressing this would represent “a major setback” for the country.

“The High Commissioner has written to the prime minister stating her concerns about the planned resumption of the death penalty, and is calling on the Government to maintain its moratorium,” said Rupert Colville (pictured), spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, during a press briefing in Geneva

Colville said there is growing number of UN member states that have abolished the practice, including 11 in the Pacific.

1967: The Administrator gets boycotted at Angoram

DAVID WALL

“IT’S JUST AMAZING what turns up from time to time,” said my old Angoram friend.

“Here’s another one for your history lessons! It’s the invitation for cocktails with the Administrator, which we all declined, and to which Bob Mackie sent his Africa Star.

“I can’t even remember what the incident was all about, but I do remember all on the booze, and uptight at the Club.”

The invitation (pictured) and foregoing comments refer to PNG Administrator David Hay’s official visit to Angoram in 1967. It referred to a reception that was most definitely not to be held at the Angoram Club.

Keith’s intimate travel diary 16 – Glimpses from my mind

KEITH JACKSON

SATURDAY 18 MAY – MESSINA, ITALY.  Nautica was scheduled to anchor off the spectacular cliff-top town of Taormina (which Ingrid, pictured here at Santorini, and I had visited twice before) in Sicily.

But the swell is too great for tenders and, there being no harbour, the ship relocates north to the sickle-shaped port of Messina just across the strait from the boot of Italy.

Messina is an ancient city without ancient buildings because of periodic destruction by war, pestilence and natural disaster.

The most recent earthquake and tsunami of December 1908 killed 120,000 people and destroyed most of the precious antiquities collected in the city’s museums and galleries; some surviving works and useful remnants being dug up from beneath eight metres of rubble.

Campbell beware: There are tricks & traps for Qld cops

JOHN FOWKE

CAMPBELL NEWMAN, PREMIER OF QUEENSLAND, is an ex-Army officer known far and wide in his state as “Can-Do” Campbell.

The agreements to exchange police and to provide a large number of cattle to Papua New Guinea are very much in keeping with Can-Do’s way of working: decisive, battlefield-like commands to attack physical problems or threats.

These offers are positive in intent and I would not argue otherwise. But as always there’s more to setting up an interaction between Australia and PNG than even a battlefield commander is likely to foresee,

Whilst it has been long obvious that PNG’s police need urgent help, I don’t believe that sending Australians, whose experience and training is entirely Australian, to be mentors to PNG policemen is a valuable exercise. Indeed it is not even valid.

Papua New Guinea’s constitution: the fatal flaw

CHRISTINE STEWART | Outrigger Blog | Excerpt

WHEN PAPUA NEW GUINEA’s new government was first installed in 2011, it had gained widespread support.

The PNG public was largely fed up with the entrenchment of the Somare-led government for nearly two terms of parliament, secure in the protection of OLIPPAC which had prevented any MP from voting against his party on any matter whatsoever, including a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister.

But events early in 2012 saw this support start to dissipate. There seemed to be no remaining constitutional checks on Parliament.

Twice, the Supreme Court constitutional rulings had been ignored with impunity. How could this parliament be controlled or eliminated? The new government had only a few months left to hold office before fresh elections were scheduled. But some in government were even starting to threaten to defer these elections.

Half of PNG child sex abuse victims are kids

RADIO NEW ZEALAND INTERNATIONAL

THE FAMILY SUPPORT CENTRE at the Angau Memorial General Hospital in Papua New Guinea reports that more than half the victims of sexual violence and abuse that they see are children.

The officer in-charge of the facility, Anastasia Wakon, says in the first four months of this year, they have attended to more than 100 cases of violence and sexual abuse where the victims are children.

She told a gathering in Lae protesting against violence towards women and children that the national government must take responsibility and pass stricter laws to deter people from committing these crimes.

The Lae event was one of several Hauskrai (grieving ceremonies) held throughout PNG last week.

Keith’s intimate travel diary 15 – On communication

KEITH JACKSON

FRIDAY 17 MAY – AT SEA BETWEEN GREECE & ITALY. Like you, I’ve been a communicator for a long time. Yes, like you, dear reader.

But unlike most of you, I guess, I also communicate for money. That being my profession.

(Not that PNG Attitude, my loss leader extraordinaire, is in any way a part of this grand get-rich scheme more's the pity.)

Yes, we are all communicators from birth. Fresh from the womb we screamed that first unintelligible cry. A communication of being alive if ever there was one.

Australia and PNG: maintaining the momentum

JENNY HAYWARD-JONES | The Interpreter | Lowy Institute

PAPUA NEW GUINEA has been the beneficiary of an awful lot of love from Australia of late.

Our nearest neighbour has been treated to visits from the Governor-General, new Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs Matt Thistlethwaite, Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr, Prime Minister Julia Gillard and this week Queensland premier Campbell Newman.

This much attention lavished on one country in such a short space of time suggests a crisis in the relationship, but these visits were more about a belated recognition of PNG's growing economic importance to Australia.

Julia Gillard's first visit to PNG as Prime Minister put some substance around her promised new chapter in the bilateral relationship between Australia and PNG. It may not have been particularly startling, but was vital nonetheless.

Carr cancels 457 visa of PNG’s ‘most wanted’ man

NICK McKENZIE & RICHARD BAKER | The Age

AUSTRALIA'S FOREIGN MINISTER BOB CARR has used his special powers to cancel the 457 visa issued by the Gillard government to an alleged crime boss wanted in Papua New Guinea over the theft of $30 million.

Senator Carr's decision to revoke the visa of Eremas Wartoto comes a week after Fairfax revealed that the powerful PNG businessman - accused of being one of PNG's most corrupt figures by anti-graft authorities - was using his 457 visa to avoid arrest and prosecution.

Sources in PNG confirmed that Mr Wartoto and his immediate family members in Queensland were contacted by immigration authorities late this week and told that the federal government was cancelling their visas.

Australian woman dies from drug resistant TB

NATHAN PAULL | AAP

A TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER WOMAN has died from an apparent drug resistant strain of tuberculosis, becoming the first Australian in several years to succumb to the disease.

Queensland's chief health officer Jeanette Young yesterday confirmed the 20-year-old's death on 25 April.

Dr Young says it is yet to be determined how the woman contracted the illness but she frequently visited Papua New Guinea which has one of the world's highest incident rates.

She says it is likely her particular infection became resistant to medication because she probably had a lapse in treatment rather than contracting a super-strain from somebody else.

Fiji declares its solidarity with PNG women

NASIK SWAMI | Fiji Times

FIJI SAYS IT HAS HAS JOINED THE FIGHT to stop sorcery-related murder and torture of women and girls in Papua New Guinea.

The Fiji Women's Crisis Centre has presented a petition to the PNG High Commission in Suva calling for the PNG government to take drastic measures.

Centre director Shamima Ali said the petition was in solidarity with the women and girls of PNG and aligned the centre with protests in PNG against sorcery-related murders.

Oops, we did Westminster. Sorry PNG, too late now

JOHN FOWKE

BEING A KIND-HEARTED old pundit, I won’t belabour you too much with the reality that the Papua New Guinea situation we witness daily was inevitable and foreseen by many people.

PNG’s path to becoming a really fair and well-managed modern society was always going to be a long and tortuous one. PNG was not a well-driven, fully-functional carriage drawn by a team of the best Shire horses.

This despite perceptions to the contrary expressed by some of those old colonials who are “disappointed,” “disgusted,” and “saddened” by what has gone on in PNG.

Two major historical factors are responsible for the present dilemmas. One was an inexplicable, apparently blind, decision made by Australia to let go the reins in 1975.

The other was the function of the mismatch between PNG’s readiness for independence and world sentiment about colonialism in the 1960s and 1970s, which impelled Australia to grant independence as and when it did.

Jesus: Beyond hauskrai & capital punishment

DAVID GONOL

WE CAN INTRODUCE STRONG LAWS to deal with criminals; we can conduct hauskrai over brutal rape and murder of our innocent women and children; we can impose death penalty on the worst criminals; we can complain bitterly against corruption - but these are all in vain.

They won't solve the problems we are facing in our country. The real problem lies in the human heart.

The human heart is depraved. When the heart is morally corrupt, the results that it produces are also corrupt.

The results of a depraved heart are repulsive and obnoxious to society. There is absolutely nothing we can do about it. There is no drug under the sun that can be prescribed for the cleansing of the heart.

Bougainville warrior’s song

LEONARD FONG ROKA

Bougainville
My pot of myths
My voice of legends and folklore
My tale of creation and gods
You my civilization

Oh Bougainville, you so beautiful

Bougainville
My land and honey
My breath and love
My wisdom and inspiration
My day and future
You are my song

Keith’s intimate travel diary 14 – Island of peace

KEITH JACKSON

THURSDAY 16 MAY – SANTORINI, GREECE. It was in April 2007 that we were last in Santorini, all whites and blues and one of the lovelier of the beautiful and peaceful Greek islands.

On that occasion, Ingrid and I walked up the 680 steps from the boat harbour at the bottom of the volcanic caldera to the town of Fira [population about 2,000] on the ridge above.

The track is, in fact, a donkey trail. Which means where go donkeys, there trails donkey shit.

So it wasn’t one of the most scintillating walks I ever committed to. Though it was, you could say, scentillating.

Chinese businesses pose problems for PNG

ISHMAEL PALIPAL

CHINESE BUSINESSES ARE FLOURISHING in all parts of Papua New Guinea and are gradually encroaching upon Bougainville.

The Chinese population and their businesses are increasing. Many Chinese are illegal immigrants and, every year, they come and go as though Papua New Guinea is their home.

The government gives them a visa for a six-pack of beer and citizenship for living here only three years. In my view, these Chinese businesses should be removed from the country for they sell low quality goods, pay low wages to locals, operate filthy shops and send money out of the country.

Let me expand upon each of these points in turn.

PNG protests highlight violence against women

RADIO NEW ZEALAND INTERNATIONAL

A SERIES OF SIT-INS AND PROTESTS were held across Papua New Guinea through Tuesday night to highlight the issue of increasing violence against women.

The Haus Krai (mourning or grieving ceremony) was a response to a series of recent murders of women, including some accused of sorcery.

RNZI correspondent, Todagia Kelola, said the sit-ins at and around Sir John Guise stadium in Port Moresby featured cultural performances and prayer through the night.

They continued until late morning when a petition is handed to prime minister Peter O’Neill, who was said to have spoken eloquently.

The Queensland - PNG police exchange

PAUL OATES

“Queensland plans to send police officers to serve in Papua New Guinea and host officers from the neighbouring country. Premier Campbell Newman, who is in PNG, says up to 150 police officers will be exchanged to improve policing operations and protocols in PNG.” (AAP, 15 May)

GOOD NEWS? BUT WAIT! While this is great in theory, the devil will certainly lurk in the details.

Let me, through the Socratic method, expose some of those skulking details.

1. What arrangements have been made for familiarisation training for those going and those coming?

2. What accommodation will be offered to the PNG police and where?

Keith’s intimate travel diary 13 – Existential threat

KEITH JACKSON

TUESDAY 14 MAY – HAIFA, ISRAEL. Wael Bader is 25 and has nearly completed a master’s degree in business and economics which he dropped out of medical school to pursue.

“A much more flexible qualification,” he says, as he spins his small car through a Haifa roundabout.

Wael is from Israel’s Druze minority – a religion based on Greek philosophy which emerged from Egypt 1,100 years ago. (I’m surprised when he tells us there are 150,000 Druze in Australia.)

He’s guiding us on a tour of Haifa and the nearby age-old town of Akko, during the last millennium a much fought over hub of trade between east and west as well as an important staging post on the crusaders’ road to Jerusalem.

Novel for its lack of novelty: Gillard in PNG

JONATHAN SCHULTZ

PRIME MINISTER JULIA GILLARD returned from her first official visit to Australia’s nearest neighbour and former colony Papua New Guinea on Saturday with little to show for it.

Reports of the visit – the first by an Australian prime minister since Kevin Rudd’s visit months after his election in 2007 – focused on PNG prime minister Peter O’Neill’s complaint about the difficulty of obtaining Australian visas and the $16 billion Australian investment in PNG.

This was set against a background of horrific stories of the treatment of women accused of sorcery.

Short story: I am going back to my roots

LEONARD FONG ROKA

BALI BRIS, KIMBE. It is here, by the soothing sounds and smell of the sleepy Bismarck Sea, I am beseeching my soul to tell me ‘where is my Bougainville?’ Where am I heading to after all the years in the Solomon Sea?

But here I am, I have taken a step with a stinging pain in my heart to carry on across this unpredictable sea in the cover of the falling night.

I am going to Bali, West New Britain, the birthplace of my father. I am going to see my broken hearted grandmother whom has being wishing and weeping to see me before she follows her dear son to the tomb. But I am going empty handed and not with the remains of my father whom I have killed on Bougainville.

I am going, after years of weeping silently to see and set my feet on that mystery in the Bismarck Sea. I am going with a broken heart.

Keith’s intimate travel diary 12 – Thoughts of home

KEITH JACKSON

MONDAY 13 MAY – NEARING HAIFA AT DAWN. It’s still dark at about half past five as I write these notes on Nautica’s top deck in a lounge above the bow sitting at a small round table.

The sun is just rising over a gunmetal sea and promises a fine day. Straight ahead, approaching quickly now, is Israel – a land I have previously not touched.

The port of Haifa, in which we will spend two days, I can see through this grey light as a number of high rise buildings and container derricks silhouetted just left of the imposing bulwark of Mount Carmel which guards the harbour.

The land of the misdirected: a necessary history

JOHN FOWKE

IN APPARENT CONTRADICTION of the sense of what I said yesterday, I want to respond to Barbara Short’s comment on my Melanesian Way piece.

Answers from Papua New Guinea voices may be more interesting but may I step in to address what Barbara said, that "something has made them powerless; I need a PNG person to explain.”

The thing which has disempowered the ordinary people of PNG is the first of Australia’s two great mistakes in its guardianship of the nation-to-be, TP&NG.

I have drawn attention many times to the fact that political education in TP&NG was confined almost entirely to the example presented wherever a Local Government Council (now an LLG) was established.

Mysterious disease with the strange-sounding name

PAUL OATES

WITH A NAME LIKE CHIKUNGUNYA, surely most people would know it when they come across it? Yet that’s the problem. Not many people have ever heard about it or know what it is.

The name comes from an African language from Tanzania called ‘Makonde’. It means ‘that which bends up’ and describes what happens physically when people contract this particular disease, sometimes referred to as ‘Chicken Malaria’ or 'Tiger Malaria’.

The limbs of the sufferers of this disease are so affected with severe arthritic joint pains that their limbs actually contort at odd angles.

In addition to severe arthritic pain, the other reported symptoms that indicate someone has contracted Chikungunya are high fever, rashes that break out over areas of the body, swelling of the legs, headaches and possible sensitivity to light.

PNG Attitude reader poll on the death penalty

Click here to take survey

Do you believe the death penalty should be introduced in Papua New Guinea?

Yes          33 (40%)
No           48 (60%)

Do you think Australia should advise PNG on what to do about introducing the death penalty?

Yes          15 (19%)
No           64 (80%)

81 respondents

Julia spends a pretty banal 3 days in Moresby. Why?

KEITH JACKSON

I’M ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD but, by reading the lines and between the lines, I’m going to analyse Australian prime minister Julia Gillard’s just completed three-day visit, nominally but not substantively to Papua New Guinea.

Strangely, Ms Gillard's first visit to PNG was spent entirely in Port Moresby.

I wonder who was the last national leader to visit Australia to spend all three days in Canberra.

Ms Gillard had her visit preceded by a succession of underlings - the increasingly impressive parliamentary secretary Matt Thistlethwaite and the consistently unimpressive foreign minister Bob Carr. Clearly some issues were on the table and some ‘announceables’ ready to release.

But none turned out to be truly earth-shattering.

Let's kill the sacred cow of the Melanesian Way

JOHN FOWKE

I CAN TELL YOU THE REASON for the story of declining services, declining prosperity and declining well-being in Papua New Guinea (Service delivery? It’s all mauswara, Post Courier, 7 May).

It’s very simple. As coined by a group of Papua New Guinean intellectuals in the 1980s, the problem is “The Melanesian Way”.

There. It’s been said. The big, silent, grey elephant which has loomed in the background, nameless but recognised by many, is out in the open.

Tackle this elephant, or at least recognise it, everyone. Recognise it for the handicap that it has become in the struggle for modernity and fair distribution of the nation’s wealth.