PNG – implementing a new beginning
The Australian newspaper’s foreign editor Greg Sheridan, who you might not always agree with except to agree that he’s an informed and perceptive observer, writes in his column today, and I select extracts:
Kevin Rudd wants a new beginning with the South Pacific, especially with Melanesia.
The four big nations of Melanesia - PNG, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji - are each in a version of their own long-running crisis.
Rudd and his team believe they have a chance just now to make a difference in Melanesia. This is partly simply because they are a new Government. A harsh hostility had arisen between PNG Prime Minister Michael Somare and John Howard.
This was not a result of any particular mismanagement by Howard but because Somare was opposed to the Enhanced Co-operation Program through which Australia inserted personnel into PNG to try to improve the delivery of basic services and to bring some control to the endemic corruption in PNG.
As was evident in his effusive welcome, Somare doesn't have the same hostility towards Rudd. But whether the new goodwill amounts to anything, with Canberra's efforts to make aid to PNG accountable and to limit corruption, remains to be seen.
Rudd's speeches and press conferences in PNG and the Solomons were important and under-reported. They followed his policy in Opposition and begin the process of giving greater flesh to the Pacific Partnerships for Development that his Government will construct with the South Pacific nations.
Rudd deserves praise for recognising the urgency of the problem and giving it priority when no other part of Australian civil society is really doing likewise. However, there is scant prospect of Australian success in Melanesia.
This is not because of any particular weakness in the Rudd Government but because of the sheer, bloody intractability of the problems.
You can read the full article here.
Source: Melanesia on our radar by Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor, The Australian, 15 March 2008
More interesting stories about people and PNG. I came across this blog of a 86 year old man who was in PNG during the war, and later as well. He tells an interesting story. I'm not sure that I believe it all, but it was fun to read. http://butterflybark.bigblog.com.au/index.do?ppg=1
Posted by: Diane Bohlen | 15 March 2008 at 07:09 PM