Confronting the inequality between PNG and Australia

TIM COSTELLO | The Australian

JULIA GILLARD HAS JUST RETURNED from a meeting with Pacific Island leaders where she announced a major aid initiative to tackle gender inequality.

We know that promoting gender equity can increase economic prosperity and transform community well-being so the prime minister’s announcement is a great step forward.

But having just visited the Pacific region, I am also struck by the immense challenge that lies ahead for our island neighbours, and the responsibility that Australia must face up to.

On the flight over to Papua New Guinea last month, I realised that the patch of water below me carried with it a moral significance. At one shoreline, state-of-the-art healthcare for all; at the other end, complications at birth carry with them a death sentence.

Papua New Guinea is our nearest neighbour, just a stone's throw from our own coast, and yet the two nations sit 151 places apart on the Human Development Index. There is a profound challenge here.

While other countries are fast making ground to achieve the Millennium Development Goals - the world's blueprint for tackling poverty - PNG is losing ground. About 50% of children don't attend primary school and there are only 0.6 health workers per 1,000 people.

Goal Five aims to reduce maternal mortality by three quarters by 2015, but the rate of women dying in childbirth in PNG has been rising. This is a shocking state of affairs given the promises made by world leaders in 2000 when the MDG framework was agreed upon.

At one remote health clinic in Madang province, I met Sister Grace; a woman with a beautiful, shy demeanour. Not wanting to push her own needs, it took some time to draw out her story.

Finally, she explained that she worked in that tiny outpost far away from her own family, without a doctor, desperately trying to serve the needs of a vast catchment area. She worked without electricity, delivering babies by torch light.

The sacrifices she made to serve her community overwhelmed me. Not once did she complain, but in her eyes I sensed a determination. The sort of determination that says, "This isn't good enough".

And yet amid the sadness, there is also hope. A long-running national election finally came to a peaceful end in early August, giving Prime Minister Peter O'Neill a window of hope to lead and govern. PNG is on a path to rapid economic growth, but the government must ensure that growth is spread evenly.

O'Neill's government will be measured by whether the poorest of the poor can be included in his nation's future. Australia must seize this moment, put wind in PNG's sails, so that the country can tackle its poverty problems in a focused and united way.

There is also hope where you might least expect it. In Madang, I saw water and sanitation projects which meant women no longer had to walk hours to fill buckets. And I am particularly proud of the fact that World Vision, in partnership with the PNG government, is now working in 20 provinces with a tuberculosis eradication program.

PNG has the highest rate of TB in the world so tackling this disease is extraordinarily important to the future of the country.

Earlier this year, we began an AusAID-funded program to control drug-resistant tuberculosis in PNG's Western Province and already were seeing a significant rise in the number of patients starting treatment.

It is still early days, but the key to the program's success is really getting out into the community, helping people recognise the symptoms and access the care they need, and encouraging sufferers to continue with the arduous task of a six-month treatment plan.

World Vision also works closely with the PNG government to help strengthen its capacity to respond to the needs of the community. Ultimately, it is in our national interest, as well as PNG's, that we find a solution to this problem.

The people of Papua New Guinea are our neighbours. We share a common history and for many Australians, a common culture. It is confronting to face the inequality that divides us, but we must. A country's future depends on it.

Tim Costello is chief executive of World Vision Australia

Comments

[Mrs Barbara Short]

I've nearly finished putting together a story on the history of my mother's side of the family.

My great, great grand-mother came out to Australia as a convict in 1830. When she was about 19 years old she stole a piece of laplap, enough for one dress, in London, and was sentenced to 7 years in Australia.

She married and had two daughters and probably never saw her family again. In August 1852, 160 years ago, after a long and painful illness of pulmonary consumption (TB), she died in her 42nd year, in Maitland NSW.

Let us hope that all the people working together in PNG to stop this new drug-resistant TB will have great success.

[Edzii Kuvem]

This is very true about PNG that gender inequality becomes one of the factors affecting PNG's economic developments.