KEITH JACKSON'S PNG ATTITUDE

PNG’s future: Em ol lain gut ia – yu mas trastim ol

BY JOHN FOWKE

IN AN EARLIER contribution, I suggested that the social, developmental and fiscal malaise which holds PNG in an unbroken grip, proceeds from something deeper and more elemental than the existence of public service, fiscal, and political corruption.

The implication I intended was that the situation is due to an inherent weakness in Papua New Guinean society.

Whilst this view was contested both in posted commentary and by Reginald Renagi in one of his opinion-pieces, I’m afraid it holds true, no matter how humiliating or irritating the suggestion may be.

As a foreigner who has spent by far the major part of his life in rural PNG, I well know the sensitivities and have always tried to avoid the habits of the ‘Ugly Expatriate’, to borrow from Graham Greene.

In that nice old Motuan phrase, I have always endeavoured to be tauna mai manada. In other words, a gentleman.

But having been urged by our revered Blogmeister to contribute a succinct prediction of “things that’ll happen” in PNG in the coming year, I am going to spoil any good impression I may have left behind and be provocative.

The coming year needs to be the year in which the educated PNG middle class stands up, stops hiding behind pen names, overcomes residual cultural fears of offending clan and family or attracting ‘payback’, and speaks with one voice, bound together by a strong but hitherto unrecognised common interest.

The educated middle class must - loudly and forcefully - state what it wants for itself, its families and its descendants. It is long past time for this to happen.

Come on PNG, grow up, stop hiding and complaining and putting forward pie-in-the-sky solutions. Put your shoulders to the load, men and women, coastals, islanders, highlanders, all the educated middle-class together!

You will make it happen. Just do it. You are the Party of Power!

All of you who read and contribute to various blogs and who read the PNG papers, you are the ones who must get up and be the first on the dance-floor, the first to speak, embarrassing as it may be.

Stop whingeing and making covert comments about each other. Stand up and say what you want to be done to get the nation going. If you act as one, forgetting all residues of cultural antipathies and suspicion, you’ll be surprised how fast things will change.

I thought for a while that the Christians would get it together in the last couple of elections, but they didn’t. Perhaps they too are weakened by that old, old characteristic of PNG, the ‘people over the hill syndrome’ - “em ol lain nogut ia – noken trastim ol!”

This weakness is shown in the currently fashionable view that a split into semi-autonomous regions will solve the problems. Be real, blokes; it’ll be even more disastrous than the present set up.

No, you, the well-educated, largely urban dwelling middle class of PNG, you are the future.

You have influence back home in the village because you are members of a support-group. Make your position in life, your ambitions for yourselves, your kids, and the bubus to come the glue that forms another, far more influential and fruitful commonality. Forge a huge linkage of common interest of class and aspirations for the future, as opposed to the bonds of common ancestry that help perpetuate the problems.

This is the future. Mini-states are meaningless states in the context of the wider world.

Make PNG the paradise it should be. It’ll be hard, it’ll take long, but remember…only you (with the others) can do it. If you love your country, you must raise your voice and show your face without fear.

That’s it for now, but I’ve lots more to say to anyone who wants to email me here.

PNG voices bode well for the country’s future

BY PHILIP FITZPATRICK

I’VE SPENT most of my time in PNG in the Western Province, the majority of which is an economically depressed and poverty stricken backwater.

The biggest event of the year was undoubtedly the final announcement that the liquefied natural gas project would go ahead.

While the province is not the focus of the project it is close enough to capture a heap of spin-off petroleum exploration programs, all of which will add their bit to the economy and provide some community development.

The other interesting thing in 2009 was the slow but sure appearance of PNG voices on PNG ATTITUDE.

That was particularly heartening because it showed us in concrete terms what we already know – that there are many honest, intelligent and literate people in PNG.

I think this bodes well for the future and may help the groundswell of public opinion for change that is building up. Where the latter goes in 2010 is anyone’s guess.

Among those voices for change were several strident calls for direct action, particularly among the younger contributors.  While this was tempered by the more moderate contributors it was somehow unsettling.

I was surprised to hear the calls for Papuan autonomy later in the year delivered in tones reminiscent of the Papua Besena days. I can’t see that getting anywhere soon but who knows? 

There are a couple of people I would nominate for King of Papua if it gets legs. It did demonstrate, however, that people in PNG are thinking in terms of big changes to the country.

I also watched with a mixture of bemusement and disbelief the Yes Minister/AusAid-type carry on over the Gong-for-Kiaps Campaign, added my two bob’s worth and watched it eventually come to nothing.

Perhaps the didimen and mastamaks can give it a go next year, or, heaven forbid, the chalkies. Like John Fowke suggests, perhaps we need bumper stickers and personalised number plates – can I reserve ‘KIAP-067’ before anyone else jumps in?

It is curious that there is a hint of nostalgia for the old kiap days among a few Papua New Guineans, not just us old white farts with rose-coloured glasses.

That suggests a desire for organisation on a micro level rather than the macro autonomy plan; perhaps every district in the provinces needs a dedicated zealot to get things done.

Finally, what would I like to see in 2010? Maybe some good news stories, more female comment on the blog, a bit of interest in the Australian media....

There's hope: First steps along the road to change

BY PAUL OATES

WHILE THE traditional Christmas message is one of hope for the future, I remember the message Queen Elizabeth II gave one year that began, "They say, no news is good news, but these days it seems good news is no news."

Maybe that statement could sum up the Australian media's view of PNG. Many people tend to be depressed by each new round of bad news from PNG yet, for me, there have been some encouraging signs that all is not doom and gloom.

Young, educated Papua New Guinenas are starting to stand up and challenge the status quo of yesteryear's leaders.

Politicians like Sam Basil have been prepared to speak out and be counted when it comes to issues of ethical governance. This is an encouraging sign.

Online discussions I have had with a number of PNG people have indicated a growing awareness of their government's shortcomings and what this is caused by. These are the first steps along the road to change.

No one can yet say if this will be a peaceful change yet without awareness, there can be little hope for any improvement.

I look forward to 2010 as being the year when PNG builds on those first tentative steps along the road to a better life for her citizens, wherever they live.

Big LNG cop-out threatens to leave people behind

BY PAUL OATES

PNG PRIME minister Michael Somare has admitted that PNG is not up to the challenges posed by the liquefied natural gas project.

Using the royal plural, he says "We have not trained our people for the projects which will require between 8,000 and 10,000 workers."

Clearly the PNG people are being softened up for the importing of thousands of skilled workers whose presence will be justified by the claim that there are not enough PNG workers available or, if there are, that they’re not up to it.

"How do we get 500 drivers in a day?" Somare went on to say. Now let me think? Where could PNG get 500 drivers (in a day!) and share the joy with the country who is buying the LNG? Gosh! That's a hard one.

Of course the trucks and vehicles might also come from... now let me think? Gee whiz, that’s it! Begins with 'C' and rhymes with 'miner'.

But who exactly is Somare referring to when he blames "We"? For much of the time since PNG Independence, Somare has been in charge. Who else is therefore to blame but the so called 'Father of the Nation'?

Why isn't the current Somare government getting off its collective backside and organising the training of an additional 500 drivers, if that's what is required? Where are the reciprocal training schemes to ensure PNG workers don't get left out of this bonanza?

The more Somare wrings his hands and laments how useless his own country has become, the more he condemns himself and his cronies for both inaction and underselling his own people.

To pin all your people's hopes on a PNG ‘vision’ for 2050 is about as much use as saying while the fish aren't biting today, don't worry, they’ll definitely be biting in 41 years.

Sorry, Mr Somare. Your use by date expired a long time ago.

Copenhagen a big waste of money for PNG

BY REGINALD RENAGI

THE DAILY news is very discouraging to the people of PNG.  They hope for a better future for their children and grand children one day.  But that one day is a long way off.

There are many problems affecting their livelihood and want the government to address their immediate needs. But the mass media hype in recent months is mostly about the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen and what we will tell other world leaders.

It’s no big deal. Everyone's being hoodwinked - ordinary people that is, but not intelligent PNGeans. It is one big cop out by the people running this country.

We have many important national priorities to address. Lately, however, these are being constantly overshadowed by a smokescreen of public statements about the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (or REDD) scheme, a global plan to slow down or eliminate the deforestation responsible for 20 percent of global emissions., as if it is the only viable policy option available.

REDD is only one aspect of a complex global phenomenon. PNG's delegation in Denmark seemed to have no real fall-back position if REDD was not acceptable to the world's developed nations who are the biggest biggest polluters.

In the past two weeks, critics have accused the PNG delegation of not being fully prepared for this conference. They are right.

The PM and his men forgot what is the position of our parliament and Opposition. We should have included the opposition’s stance on climate change to come up with a good bipartisan paper for Copenhagen.

We also did not need a big delegation of over 40 when half a dozen people should have been sufficient. It was morally wrong for the government to extravagantly burn several millions for this conference.

Considering the alleged eight million Kina for this conference, PNG has nothing beneficial to show for it.

The public should by now be in an uproar over their government’s spending millions for some greedy people to attend a conference that will not even reach any viable agreement.  This is a total waste of money.

The people could have used this money in many needy areas. Our women have been crying out for a cancer machine for years. Teachers and nurses need a pay rise to meet the rising cost of living. PNG’s national security situation is appalling and needs much improvement.

With a tough year about to end, the people could do with some spare money now to enjoy a nice Christmas roast in this festive season. 

Come on, Papua New Guineans, can’t you see they are laughing at our expense? Let us get rid of these greedy people in 2012.

A troubled land of discrete ever-warring tribes

BY JOHN FOWKE

ONGOING insecurity has required Médecins Sans Frontières to withdraw international staff from the Tari General Hospital.

“In the past few weeks, there have been repeated security incidents including threats to our staff that we cannot tolerate,” said Monique Nagelkerke, head of mission for MSF in Papua New Guinea.

I spent some three months at Tari in 2008, leaving before the expected arrival of the MSF team . Already MSF was running the long-neglected Lae Angau Hospital, PNG's second-biggest hospital.

I met the MSF advance team on their exploratory visit to Tari. At that time the Tari Hospital, which catered for a very large population had been without a full-time Medical Officer, to say nothing of specialist practitioners, for five years. This in an area where - aside from the nearby Catholic HIV/AIDS clinic - there is little NGO input in terms of health services.

Prior to the present pullout, the MSF team had already been withdrawn on one occasion after drunken locals besieged them at night.

It is all very well prating about corruption and maladministration as cardinal reasons for PNG's sad social decline, but one is forced to retort to all who cite these aspects, both Australians and Papua New Guineans, that the malaise is much more deeply-rooted.

This is a society which is telling us, by its own actions, that it is incapable of looking after itself on terms other than as a land of discrete ever-warring tribes, allowed to live in a territorial vacuum by the rest of the world.

Of course, this is not going to happen, and the interventions, which will come, will not be, as MSF's was intended to be, for the good of the people.

A prevailing climate that just has to change

BY PAUL OATES

MASS break outs continue from PNG gaols and one might wonder why.

There was a clue in an article in the PNG Post-Courier, which claimed there are 20 officers in Lae gaol guarding 700 prisoners.

In such circumstances, Assistant Police Commissioner Labi was quite correct to point out it could hardly be the fault of the Corrective Services officers that this breakout occurred.

Corrective Services Chief Superintendent Jaro acted with bravery and initiative to try to prevent further escape attempts, but unfortunately he was taken hostage and his efforts proved more use to the inmates than the public.

In the same newspaper, it was reported that the police who are investigating the attempted murder of PNG Chief Ombudsman, Chonox Manek, don't have the funds to properly protect important public figures.

In the meantime, millions of kina have been blown away sending the Prime Minister and a 40 plus delegation to the climate change conference in Copenhagen.

It is understood that the PM banded with his opposite numbers from the Congo and Colombia who each have some uncut rainforest still standing.

The United Nations wants to ensure the money actually goes to the proper landowners but this cartel of three has indignantly drawn the line at accepting the millions on offer to preserve their country's rainforests because they aren't happy about the provisos.

The three leaders are also incensed about another proviso that the UN send inspectors to verify that trees funded under a carbon credit scheme are not cut down.

How's the climate over there in Denmark, Mr Somare. A trifle cooler than where you come from, one might suspect.

PNG must fully embrace regional autonomy

BY REGINALD RENAGI

A RECENT editorial in the PNG press asserted that next year’s referendum in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville could have enormous consequences for the country.

I agree. In this referendum, Bougainvilleans will decide whether they want to be a part of PNG, or become a separate independent nation.

PNG governments have been complacent these past 14 years and have not seriously addressed this issue. It’s likely that early next year, faced with a call for an independent Bougainville, the government will panic and do some last minute paper shuffling to draft a new accord.

Somare will wait until the 11th hour before the referendum to talk peace or offer political platitudes as to why Bougainville should remain as part of the PNG entity.

The government has no real policy on this issue, so next year’s referendum should jolt Waigani from its deep slumber, and to plan how to accommodate the issue of autonomy within the context of PNG’s future sovereign development.

The press editorial reminded the government and public that regional autonomy is a threat that must be taken seriously.

On the contrary, I see the issue of regional autonomy not as a threat but a positive development tool for the government, if it is approached in a rational manner and as a long term strategy.

The present political and government system is not working for the people, and only fuels increasing levels of political corruption.

PNG needs a regional (State) government system where the country is divided up into five regions.

I would envisage future separate governments for Papua, Highlands, Momase, New Guinea Islands (including Bougainville) and a central government based in Waigani, pretty much like the ACT.

Since the Bougainville crisis ended, four PNG governments have gone to sleep on the issue of autonomy. It has no contingency policy if other provinces demand autonomy like New Ireland (Sir Julius Chan) and East New Britain (Leo Dion).

Autonomy means different things to different people. Autonomy can be adapted as a form of self-rule. As a compromise solution, it can provide the possibility of sharing legislative and executive powers between the national government and the provinces.

For PNG, autonomy has to be considered as both an efficient means of conflict prevention through accommodation of regional needs, and as a fundamental right of self-rule. The whole issue of political autonomy should not be seen as a threat but as a challenge.

The Somare government has not given much thought to the looming Bougainville referendum. Prime Minister Somare government must now take the bull by the horns and address the issue of autonomy as part of its national strategic plan.

 

Vital development funds being applied recklessly

BY JOHN FOWKE

Kikori MP Mark Maipakai is fuming over the payment of more than K20 million … to several landowner associations’ chairmen, instead of being routed through the joint district planning and budget priorities committee – The National, 15 December

TWENTY million to Kikori? To Kikori landowner associations? This roughly equates to K2,500 for each man, woman and child in the Kikori, let alone what it would be if restricted to the members of the landowner associations.

The truth will probably be seen in a dozen or two big, flash and over-powered luxury game-fishing-type cruisers, and flash houses with satellite phones for the privileged few, and overhead-laden fish-an- sago-marketing schemes presided over by the owners of the boats. One hopes that this will not come to pass … but!

To anyone who has spent time at Kikori this really brings home the truth of what is happening all over PNG right now.

In the Highlands today, men who had debts the like of Mexico's a few years ago, are suddenly building new coffee-factories and paying huge prices for absolute rubbish coffee, wet and full of defects, so as to be the "biggest buyer" of the district.

Roads, hospitals and schools languish courtesy of the release of huge amounts of "development" funds under various schemes of huge largesse.

This seriously depresses the quality and reputation of PNG's attractive and useful village coffee, which is far and away the largest component of its coffee exports. The product of some 400,000 small family-owned coffee blocks is a vital part of the Highlands subsistence economy.

LNG – another big bang project to taunt PNGeans

BY REGINALD RENAGI

Everyone is talking non-stop about the great benefits of the LNG project and what blessings it will bestow upon the poor people of PNG. 

Yeah, big deal. As usual, it’s all big talk from the government. As usual, there will not be any sustainable 'trickle-down' effect for the grassroots and resource owners.

Apart from little benefits to the resource owners and ordinary PNGians, as has happened many time before, everyone in the food chain (local, provincial, national governments; corrupt cronies; a dysfunctional public service; foreign investors; carpetbaggers and many special interests) will get a piece of the action (or fingers in the cookie jar).

This will further increase future prospects of political corruption on a grand scale. We will see more local member's pork-barreling pet projects sprouting up all over the country. The greedy 'pollies' will continue to fill their pockets. More wanton plundering of the people's resources by those they mandate to lead and govern this country.

Today’s typical PNG member of parliament has unfortunately and unashamedly become a greedy despot.

He has appointed himself to become his people's bank manager, funds loans officer, project manager and general carpetbagger. He will give out cash and other goods 'willy-nilly' and won't invest the time needed to be fully committed to making good laws in parliament to protect his country's natural resources.

When some senior MPs are jailed then maybe PNG political corruption levels may abate as the message sinks in.

The politicians and other unscrupulous people selling the country's resources to foreign and other special interests must be convicted. The Melanesian culture of being publicly shamed by being locked away in the kalabus for a long time might do the trick.

While LNG looks a big bang product, every man and his dog is really going at it in a feeding frenzy.

The poor rural villager is much caught up in this confusing euphoria. The people do not really understand what the hell all this excitement is about. And it’s made worse by the BS preaching of the CEO of PNG Inc.

The fact is that people will suffer more from the negative effects of this mad rush to fast track the LNG project. This is being done at the people's expense and the real problems of PNG are not being addressed by the prime minister and his government. 

Many people are fed up and look forward to 2012 when they hope the crooks will be thrown out of the Haus Tambaran by the real people of PNG.

History’s analogy: understanding PNG resentment

BY JOHN FOWKE

“While Papua New Guineans are looking forward to Christmas Day, Asians in this blessed country are looking beyond this red letter date, and with so much apprehensions, anxieties and dread… The cease-your-business-operation’ order has been issued by a group of faceless and nameless anarchic individuals who are spearheading a hate campaign against Asians in PNG… If the Chinese close shop, who could we expect to takeover from them … the grassroots? I don’t think so” [Alfredo P Hernandez, Malum Nalu blog]

What Alfredo and other less-outspoken commentators have said recently regarding a lack of interest in individual enterprise within PNG society -  which they say has led to a vacuum filled by enterprising Asians -is something to be considered, although it is not entirely correct.

It is wrong, in fact it is insulting, to ascribe signs of a growing unrest at the recent Asian invasion into many areas of business in PNG, to simple envy and  jealousy on the part of PNG'ians.

As for the presence of Philippine nationals as such in PNG, most of these, beginning in the 1970's, have been professional and administrative and trades-connected migrants who have come as workers rather than business-people.

I think this fact is recognised although Filipinos in general, like all foreigners who stay for long in PNG, are still new colonials in the eyes of most citizens.

May I recommend to Alfredo and to his countrymen who are of a similar general opinion that they look back upon the history of their own nation?

The small, semi-tribal kingdoms, rajahnates, and principalities which ruled the islands of that great Asian archipelago, today the independant Republic of Philippines, were free in the same measure as pre-colonial PNG was free up until 125 years ago.

These small Philippine kingdoms conducted their own affairs and benefitted for centuries in terms of a sporadic but important contact with seaborne traders from China, Vietnam and other neighbouring kingdoms.

Then came the Spanish explorers, and the expedition led by Legaspi in 1564 which established the foothold from which dominance and full control by Spain over the whole archipelago arose.

Spain ruled, and controlled not only the civil affairs and the laws, but also the trade of this rich colony for more than 300 years.

Spain was displaced  by the United States of America which granted full independence to the people of the Philippines in 1946, only 30 years before PNG became an independant nation.

Don't tell us, please, Alfredo, that your fathers and your uncles and grandparents, to say nothing of their ancestors right back to 1565, did not chafe under the yoke of authoritarian colonial control and colonial exploitation?

Dont tell us that even today,  Phillipine nationals don’t have any negative feelings about the heavy presence of American multinational companies and those less-desirable effects emanating from the US military presence in your country? 

Under Aguinaldo in the 1890's your people fought a vicious and prolonged guerilla war against the colonial forces of the US, until, at the cost of a great many lives on both sides, the Americans again established control over your country. 

Don’t tell us that the Filipinos of that generation together with their descendants held no animosity toward the Americans, who still have quite a large influence on the commerce and the politics of your country.

Think about this and then consider the feelings of Papua New Guineans, at one moment made free of foreign domination, and so soon after independence, once again heavily colonised in terms of influence and take up of business opportunities by aliens who seem free to break all relevant legislated controls. Is there any wonder that they feel aggrieved? 

These are new times for the Post-Courier

BY BRUCE COPELAND

It is great to see the way the PNG Post-Courier has changed its focus on family living in recent times.

There was a time when it lagged behind in presenting itself as a warm and caring newspaper.

My organisation, AIDS Holistics, raised the ire of the then managing director in 2002 by sending a letter to the editor stating that the newspaper was “cold, distant and uncaring” on HIV/AIDS awareness.

The letter was printed, but we were banned from ever having another one published. In making this decision, the Post-Courier created a problem. It allowed its rival, The National, to present the Positive Living feature that ran for over two years and 130 columns.

The Post-Courier seemed to oppose a family message. While it had a focus on children’s rights and male violence, it could be perceived to have an agenda that found difficulty in accepting a message of love between husband and wife and caring for children.

But times are changing. The Post-Courier started a NewageWoman supplement that looked at family issues and portrayed marriage and relationships as requiring love, caring, problem-solving and humour.

Then the weekend Post-Courier initiated a family focus. The newspaper was no longer cold, distant and uncaring. This came from having good women, Lillian Basse and Raela Wari, at the helm.

But one standout area remained. Positive Living. Then Jamie Maxtone-Graham started to write about nutrition. Over the months, the column has begun to show us how to eat to live long.

His last column was superb in categorising the parts of the body that have to be maintained. He is moving closer to HIV/AIDS awareness.

Meanwhile, Positive Living has found a new means of promoting its message through the new newspaper, PNG Health.

National AIDS Council director Wep Kanawi, says family living lies at the epicentre of the national HIV/AIDS response. The Department for Community Development and UNICEF now focus on the role of family in early child development. The nation has spoken.

Combating PNG corruption: a blueprint for action

BY REGINALD RENAGI

If the PNG government and parliament are really serious about combating corruption at all levels, then an Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) must be set up immediately.

Setting up an ICAC entity has been mooted many times before in various public forums, but nothing substantive has resulted.

The main reason for inaction is that successive PNG governments have always lacked the political will to stamp out corruption.

An ICAC should be a principal agency with a statutory charter to investigate and prevent corruption. It must be totally independent of the executive branch of government.

Its principal objectives should be:

To vigilantly enforce anti-corruption laws and to make corruption a high-risk crime.

To identify and eliminate opportunities for corruption in government departments and public bodies by reviewing their procedures and practices.

To promote corruption prevention in private sector business.

To educate the community about the evils of corruption and enlist their support in the war against corruption.

The anti-corruption agency needs a simple plan of action before employing more complex strategies to combat corruption.

It should conduct investigation, prevention and education through operations, corruption prevention and community relations divisions.

The agency must implement effective strategies - such as employing proactive investigation techniques - to identify and prosecute instances of corruption which might otherwise go unreported.

It should use undercover operations and intelligence and information technology if it needs to.

In addition, its investigators must be given continuous professional training to keep pace with the changing commercial environment, technological advances and developments in criminal investigation techniques.

The training should embrace a wide range of topics, including financial investigation, IT applications, computer forensics, video interview techniques, case management and court proceedings.

Joint operations groups must be established comprising retired senior officers, dedicated agents and the disciplined services. Regular meetings should be held to ensure operational liaison, address common concerns, and develop anti-corruption strategies within the respective disciplined services.

ICAC's main strategic tasks should be focused on reducing opportunities for corruption in government departments and other public bodies.

It should include advising private sector bodies on corruption prevention. The agency must conduct detailed studies of public sector practices and procedures and help them to effectively implement corruption prevention measures.

Establishing ICAC in PNG will help other state agencies develop their corruption prevention capability by producing best practice on ways to prevent, minimise or curb corruption-related opportunities in corruption prone areas like procurement, staff administration, information system security, contract letting and administration.

A good community relations strategy is required to educate the public and enlist their support in the fight against corruption.

PNG: Time for all the good men to associate

BY PAUL OATES

“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle” - Edmund Burke 1729-97)

David Ulg Ketepa asks on his blog why crime is increasing in PNG.

PNG inherited and enshrined a legal system and has laws that are the equivalent of those in any modern state. These laws derive from the PNG constitution.

In practice, however, it seems the constitution has been compromised by the use of political power.

The Office of the Ombudsman - arbiter of correct parliamentary practice – has been either unable or unwilling to act on complaints against political malpractice, burying responsible government in PNG.

There are many instances where the PNG Ombudsman could and should act. The Moti Report, Taiwan millions, missing public funds, forestry concessions and many other cases have all been canvassed in PNG Attitude.

Furthermore, the use of the Speaker of parliament in a tactical political way has effectively created a rubber stamp for the Somare cartel when any debate proves contentious.

So to crime. If PNG leaders ignore the law, why should their people not do likewise?

The long awaited Commission of Inquiry into Financial matters produced an 800-page report, so far effectively ignored.

Crime is like a rotten apple in a barrel. Unless detected and excised early, it spreads its toxin, eventually turning the whole barrel rotten.

In PNG, lawlessness has become a national disease. There are daily news reports of serious breaches of law and order, yet the government does little about it.

The government has lost control of large areas of the country, but is in denial or does not appear to be concerned.

It has been observed that crime is 95% opportunity and 5% intent. Urban drift, lack of employment, poverty and a sense of hopelessness all combine to promote the conditions for crime and violence.

Without effective control, those who see the opportunity for easy money will take a chance.

The Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary has just been given a pay rise but this seems more to guarantee police loyalty than to combat crime.

The PNG government is implicated in many shady deals; the opposition can do nothing; the institutions enforcing probity are weak; the people are denied accountability and effective law and order; and the police force is under-manned and outgunned.

The answer to David Ketepa's question is another: 'Why should we expect crime in PNG to be decreasing?'

And if Edmund Burke was alive today and living in PNG he would surely be asking, ‘Where are all the good men?’

Is this hypocrisy or are we being having a loan of

BY PAUL OATES

Sir Michael Somare to Lowy Institute, Sydney, 7 November 2008:

In Papua New Guinea, our 'old ways' have allowed our 834 tribes to survive for over 50,000 years in a very challenging natural environment. But, these ancient traditions have struggled to keep pace within an increasingly complex future.

Without true valuation for our vast environmental assets, we have struggled with schools that cannot afford the best teachers and health centers with only basic medicines.

Yet our rural communities still remember how to live sustainably, a skill many others have forgotten in the rush to get ahead. Therefore, whether we consider energy or tropical forests, the future is increasingly clear: together, we must reconstruct our value frameworks!

New environmental service markets must support tropical countries striving toward sustainable development by generating 'environmental capital' from ecosystem services that humanity has so far been exploiting for free.

From this vision, we must forge new hope!

However, bold leadership is required on both sides of the economic divide to transform the way we value our environment.

By saving the forests, indeed, maybe humanity will relearn how to save ourselves!

______________________

 

Bold words, but who said them? And what has he done to save his country's forests?

The logic of the argument is: Because you did not value our forests, we haven't been able to afford education and health services for our people.

Clearly the answer to the rest of the developed world is: Feel guilty and send more money.

We need more money so we can provide essential services while at the same time we cut down forests and continue to make me rich.

We need more money to buy flash aircraft to tour the world and take me to my health checks in Singapore.

My people are a resource that can and will be used as an asset hostage.

They will continue to be used to extract more overseas aid money so we can keep me and my friends in the manner to which we have become accustomed.

What a cop out!

There are none so blind as those who will not see

BY PAUL OATES

Two toddlers axed to death [The National]

An infant and a three-year-old girl were among four travellers axed to death at a roadblock in Ipanda village in Enga province. Wabag police commander Snr Insp Albert Beli said several women passengers were raped while some women and children were still missing.

He said the clansmen had been unhappy about a decision of a mediation handed down by the peace and good order committee. Insp Beli said the quick response of police prevented many more deaths and the roadblock was cleared but no one was arrested.

.....

I can't believe that quote ... "but no one was arrested".

The news item shows how much law and order has lapsed in PNG today.

In the days of the kiap, no stone would be left unturned until the perpetrators of these crimes were brought to justice.

The PNG government has effectively lost control of the country.

PNG has actually descended into chaos and the Australian prime minister does nothing.

The PNG government (if one can still call it a government) is unlikely to request military assistance in what is clearly becoming a civil war.

The obvious extrapolation is full scale civil war in PNG where the real losers will once again be the people.

It's been a long time in coming and could have been avoided at any time over the last 30 plus years.

By omission and commission, both PNG and Australia have allowed this situation to develop.

Rimbunan Hijau: missing the point of the riots

I don’t know whether readers are aware of my day job (what you’re reading is my early morning job) as chairman of a long-established Australian public relations company.

When I’m not playing at being retired, I turn up for work most days to advise clients on how they ought to deal with what, in many cases, are tough issues affecting their reputation.

The advice my company offers is based not on spin but on seeking to get clients to identify and address the substantive issues they face.

In this context, if I was advising Malaysian conglomerate Rimbunan Hijau, I’d be telling it to abandon its current line of argument and adopt a more intelligent approach to the problems besieging PNG.

RH, as it’s called, came to PNG in 1989 to cut down trees but has since diversified into timber mills, mass media (it owns The National), property development, retailing and IT. It employs 5,000 people, including 500 expatriates, and is a big PNG firm by any measure.

Senior RH executives just appeared before the PNG parliamentary committee inquiring into May’s anti-Asian riots, where they strongly denied allegations of human smuggling, drug running, arms trafficking and more.

The officials - executive director Nathaniel Ho, general manager Ang Cheng Chooi and corporate policy manager Axel Wilhelm - said they believe “international non-governmental organisations” are trying to sabotage RH operations in PNG.

Mr Wilhelm said in 2003 an unnamed NGO [we think he’s referring to Greenpeace] started a global campaign against forestry, with RH as its major target.

In the ensuing years, a range of allegations has been made about RH. At the inquiry, the company noted a number of perceptions it believes some people harbour about it:

that its logging ships carry illegal immigrants (“I firmly deny that aliens are brought in tin containers to logging camps and disappear into the bush,” said Mr Wilhelm)

that it’s involved in drug trafficking and arms smuggling

that it imports for retail sale low quality counterfeit products

Mr Wilhelm said RH was not surprised at the riots. Why? Because, he said, there had been incitement by the Masalai website, international NGOs and the media.

He also provided the parliamentary committee with what was termed “an investigative report compiled by an independent group”, which sounded like snooping to me.

I’m not sure RH didn’t end its appearance at the inquiry worse off than before its executives walked through the committee room door.

My advice to RH is as clear as it is free. The May riots were embedded in ordinary Papua New Guineans' feelings of disempowerment and dispossession.

As a leading PNG company, RH would exercise its social responsibility conscientiously and better protect its commercial interests by addressing that root cause.

Further reading: Download the Greenpeace brochure on Rimbunan Hijau, The Untouchables, here.

Is the Somare government running scared?

It seems extraordinary, given what the Somare government claims to be its unassailable grip on power, but it seems to be running scared of the opposition.

In two different but related actions in the last two days, the government has shown a sense of heightened nervousness.

First it threatened to disband a bipartisan parliamentary committee investigating anti-Asian riots, using as a phony excuse that the committee “has lost its credibility” and the dubious rationale that “it has become a tool to sabotage economic relations between the Philippines and PNG.”

The bipartisan panel, chaired by MP Jamie Maxtone-Graham, was seeking to establish what triggered the May protests and looting of shops owned and operated by Chinese, not Filipinos, in the highlands, Lae and Port Moresby.

It was starved of funds and official support and a so-called “government caucus” last week deemed that Mr Maxtone-Graham was no longer fit to chair the panel.

And, in defiance of parliament's express wish, the government has said it will now create its own panel to hold an inquiry - without the presence of the media.

Meanwhile fears of a no-confidence vote have led to the sudden cancellation of a crucial meeting in Bougainville by deputy prime minister Sir Puka Temu and other senior ministers.

It has been reported that a possible opposition move during the current budget session of parliament had compelled the leaders to remain in Port Moresby.

The Kokoda air crash – once in a lifetime?

BY BRUCE COPELAND

This has not been a good year for trekking. We read in the media that the numbers of trekkers has dropped 27%.

This year, five people have died on the track itself and there has been a once in a lifetime air crash at Kokoda.

That air crash. Thirteen killed, including nine Australians. We’re waiting for the investigation report to come out of the system. The two engines have been sent to Canada. That should hold things up very nicely.

But there was a massive weakness in the system of control that day. It was probably always there, but circumstances came together to make it lethal.

There was a heavy rainfall the two days before the crash. The Boroko streets were flooded. Water lapped at the door of my internet café. The low pressure system extended across the Owen Stanley Range down to Milne Bay and south to Queensland.

With the rain came winds and low cloud. Yet small aircraft still flew to Kokoda. I almost died in similar circumstances in the Tari Gap. Women were kissing family members good-bye. No one kissed me.

I would have felt terrified being a passenger on that flight and my fear would have started ten minutes before the crash. Every time I’ve flown out of Kokoda, the aircraft took off towards the town, winding its way over the mountains.

I’ve never flown out up the Eora Creek gorge, thank God. There is a flight path down the gorge 1000 feet above the ridge lines, but climbing over the gorge is a different matter.

The engines race, lifting the aircraft as it climbs between two ridge lines. Once into the gorge, there’s no turning back, particularly in fog, rain or cloud. The story of air crashes in this country - once committed, no turning back.

Eora Creek gorge is a wind tunnel through to the top of the Kokoda Gap. Each day, there is fog all the way up to Lake Myola. In bad weather, there is an eddying current through the gorge.

Probably the pilot should have aborted and escaped another way, even to Popondetta.

But there are commercial pressures. A group of trekkers cannot stay at a Port Moresby hotel for an extra day or two waiting for the weather to clear. There is pressure to move to the track. And more guests to move in.

The decision to take off was made by a young pilot. She was flying into a crash from the moment she took off.

The weather pattern on the day of the crash may only occur once in a trekking season. The weather on this day was visible on TV reports in Australia. But not in PNG.

Source: an edited extract from a soon to be published book by Bruce Copeland

Time for action: Australia has spoilt PNG rotten

BY REGINALD RENAGI

A popular PNG Attitude blogger recently raised some pertinent questions about corruption in PNG.

It embarrasses many Papua New Guineans to explain why the average politician in seems undeterred by public opinion. Unlike some democracies, where politicians caught in misconduct cases resign or are made to step aside step, not so in PNG.

In such cases, an implicated MP usually issues a public denial, accuses the media of misrepresentation, and accuses local papers of spreading false stories to discredit his reputation.

The MPs involved do not feel disgraced or compelled to temporarily step down from office to await investigations (if any). Despite public outrage, politicians unashamedly hold on to their jobs with the prime minister failing to take tough action to ensure parliamentarians do the ‘right thing’. Over the years, successive prime ministers have all failed in this regard.

The citizenry today do not even bother about writing letters of complaint. It is a complete waste of time. Except for a handful, most pollies are big disappointments to their electorates. The so-called ‘big men’ simply ignore the complainant as a trouble-maker.

As for the PNG Ombudsman Commission, it may soon be made powerless if the government has its way. The Commission started off well. After the 2007 elections, the new Chief Ombudsman discontinued master’s studies at a prestigious Australian university to take up his political appointment.

He publicly reminded the pollies and senior bureaucrats that the Commission would do its job without fear or favour and keep public officeholders on their toes.

In recent times this earlier passion has waned somewhat as a familiar trend repeats itself. As with most state institutions, the Commission has limited resources with much to do to clear a huge backlog of outstanding cases. With little capacity, the Commission has become impotent.

On the whole, the Commission has done a sterling job, but it must do more to put away some bad politicians behind bars. To do this, it will need the help of the Attorney-General’s office and law enforcement agencies.

If that is not bad enough, the government now plans to pass a bill to further regulate the watchdog. This shows the government has something to fear. If this bill is passed in parliament then PNG will experience more gross political abuses of power.

The end state will be the Ombudsman Commission becoming a mere paper tiger with no powers to stop crooks occupying public office.

PNG needs committed department secretaries, board chairmen, civil society leaders and the general public to blankly tell MPs to behave.

Moreover, the country needs strong whistleblower legislation to protect those intrepid individuals brave enough to expose graft and corruption.  Without this, PNG will continue to suffer in future as people fear retribution from a corrupt and weak governance system.

It will take plenty of guts by good, honest people in all walks of life. These people must declare that enough is enough and collectively work towards improving and strengthening good governance in PNG's national affairs.

The change strategy must start from the Governor-General but the buck stops with the PM.

Australia too can play an important role in reforming PNG politics. Australia needs to also get tough with PNG. Australia is to be blamed to some degree as, over the years, it has spoilt PNG rotten with too much aid money and no accountability.

It is time for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to diplomatically tell PNG political leaders to be more accountable for the billions spent in development aid. This is a good time for Australia to pave the way for a new political order in the Pacific.

Australia cannot rest on past laurels but be absolutely honest with the Somare government. It is time to systematically reduce AUSAid funding so PNG is forced to plan better and start living within its own means without being over-dependent on Australia.

This is one foreign policy strategy to ensure the PNG government works towards improving the quality of life of all Papua New Guineans and not just enrich a few political elites who are bleeding the country dry.

In recent times, AUSAid has become a quasi-PNG government, freeing politicians to promote pork-barreling of local projects using resources in a mostly unplanned and unbudgeted way.

There has been much lip-service paid over the years the aid program as an effective development tool, but the outcome has always been unsatisfactory. Today, PNG desperately needs more trade with Australia, not more aid.

Overall, though, the whole political mess needs to be cleaned up by the Somare government. The Prime Minister must not shirk his leadership responsibility. It is not impossible for him to clean up his act now before he exits the political scene as he has the numbers in parliament to ensure his government is highly responsive to meet the people’s needs.

Who will really benefit from the PNG LNG project

BY PAUL OATES

While the land based signing agreements for the LNG project in the country are underway, those living closer to the project sites do not know if they will benefit. [After] the Kutubu oil fields and Hides gas projects … many people living closer to the projects believe they would be left out again – PNG Post-Courier

It's the same the whole world over / It's the poor what gets the blame / It's the rich what gets the pleasure / Ain't it all a bloomin' shame – ‘She was poor but she was honest’, pre-WWI English music hall song

The old song parodies life as seen by the poor of the day, highlighting class structure and the impression that ‘the rich get richer and the poor get poorer'.

PNG is on the threshold of another mining and resources boom with the announcement of a huge liquefied natural gas (LNG) project estimated to be worth billions of dollars.

Returns from gold and nickel mining are also set to provide a further huge boost to national income. But where is all this money heading for and will the majority of people benefit?

Past performances indicate that returns from resources development rarely last unless there is long-term planning and careful management of this national treasure well before the money starts to flow.

Current disputes over land and resources have already caused one civil war in Bougainville. The difficulty of establishing ownership in PNG is exacerbated by a traditional land tenure system not geared to resource development.

This system has difficulty is establishing who are the rightful owners of land and often leads to conflict.

Whenever there is an opportunity to gain without pain, many people want a piece of the action.

The government will expect that the lion’s share will be available to PNG as a whole. Past experience indicates, however, that the funds will be frittered away on unproductive public servants and government sycophants.

News reports have made much of the launch of the resources boom but very little about how the funds will be distributed in the general good.

The people of PNG deserve to know how they and future generations will benefit from this new wealth.

Investment in security is good national insurance

BY REGINALD RENAGE

The current state of PNG’s economy should compel the Somare government to invest in national security.

While PNG is blessed with an abundance of natural resources, it is cursed with a range of economic and social problems. PNG’s citizens do not enjoy an improved quality of life and this trend is expected to worsen if economic performance does not improve to keep pace with an annual population growth of about three percent.

For years, PNG has lived beyond its means. And future prospects do not look too promising as we expect rises in unemployment, poverty, and crime as well as general social unrest, all adding to threats to our society.

The people harbour feelings of general discontent and resentment towards the government. It is only a matter of time before they direct these feelings at certain sections of the community whom they see as privileged.

These include politicians, business people, expatriates and certain individuals who are perceived as having acquired wealth through devious or corrupt means.

These anti-social feelings will create more social division. Should this eventuate, the fabric of PNG’s homogeneous society could be threatened from within.

Economic growth is vital to PNG. However, if current trends remain unchanged, PNG could increasingly become one of the least competitive countries in the region.

If PNG is to be taken seriously internationally, it must be more competitive and efficient in managing its economy and other aspects of its national affairs.

From a political perspective, an important strategic consideration here is our seeming inability to drastically reduce growing debt, which erodes our integrity as an independent nation.

The government’s inability to do something about our economic problems has strategic and security implications. If we have a weak society lacking both national will and political clout, it makes PNG more vulnerable and susceptible to external pressures.

A country like PNG cannot hope to exist without a strong society. It has to also have a sound economy with a small but credible armed force to protect its institutions, governance and unique Melanesian way of life.

As other regional countries have done, PNG must systematically strengthen its defence and security capabilities. This must be part of PNG’s long–term political reform. It is nothing more than a good investment in our future well-being.

PNG president would be a Petronius solution

BY PAUL OATES

It has been posited that a presidential system should be on the agenda for PNG.

In Australia, there are many people who would like to see a republic replace our current system of government. A referendum held a decade ago rejected the idea, but it's bound to be raised again.

The essence of the argument was that a republic would allow Australia to have its own head of state and be a nation in its own right.

Australians already have a head of state, of course, a Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, who represents the Crown. But, under our constitution, the Queen has no real power in Australia

Debate between contributors to PNG Attitude suggests that a culturally incompatible Westminster system was foisted on PNG in 1975. It also suggests the system is not working.

The notion has been raised that, if a more direct form of government was in place, people would directly elect a president and hold this person accountable.

Whether this would be the case or not is itself debatable. Are current provincial governors, for example, held accountable for the administration of their provinces? If not, why not?

And if PNG's population was better informed of its rights, would this prevent the current mismanagement and malfeasance? That's the big question. If the current system is flawed, would less rather than more checks and balances fix things?

Once someone assumes the power to manipulate a country's system of government, the opportunity to do so seems to become irresistible in order to retain power. That what’s happening in PNG already.

Would such an initiative merely become another Petronius ‘solution’?

"We trained hard ... but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization" - attributed to Petronius Arbiter, 60 AD

Crisis: Has PNG passed the point of no return?

BY PAUL OATES

When the PNG’s governor-general is quoted as claiming that poor leadership has crippled his country, it's surely time to ask whether PNG has passed a point of no return. Has our neighbour become the proverbial "dead man walking" and we haven't yet realised it?

To be able to make an objective assessment, it is essential to establish some benchmark. In public administration and the management of nation may be defined as whether the nation has systems of government that are operating effectively, that is that are achieving what they were set up to do.

So let us apply this benchmark to PNG today.

The governor-general publicly states his country is crippled due to poor leadership. Prime minister Somare is on record as saying there is corruption at most levels of the country's government services. At the same time he has clearly ignored his country's Parliament and retains power through financial incentives to those who he needs to keep him in power.

Recent press articles claim that PNG's constitution is not being followed. Other reports detail that corruption and illegal practices are endemic and occur inside the barracks of the police who are supposed to be maintaining the country's laws.

A senior defence force officer has been promoted without proper procedures being followed. And a large part of the force has mutinied on at least one occasion already.

The Australian and PNG prime ministers agree that Australia's overseas aid program hasn’t worked as desired, yet there doesn't seem to be agreement on what new methodology might work.

Foreign business interests are reportedly to act unilaterally in how they conduct their operations in PNG. Thousands of illegal immigrants stream into the country.

Report after report highlights how basic services are underfunded, unfunded or just not there anymore. It now looks like cholera is endemic. It was never a disease of PNG.

The common people's cry is that they want change in their country.

At what point will someone finally objectively agree that PNG has actually collapsed and is in fact a dead man walking? If this is so, what use is it to offer a bandaid to a dead man?

Is there anyone out there? Is no one actually putting all the jigsaw pieces together? Hullo?

We need responsive and responsible government

BY REGINALD RENAGI

What's been happening with PNG's national parliament of late is not good for the country.

The real losers in the present political debacle are ordinary Papua New Guineans. The government seems to have lost the plot since it took office in 2002.

Nothing substantial has been achieved to improve citizens quality of life.

The plain truth is that the national parliament has become dysfunctional. The government consistently uses its numbers to bulldoze half-baked bills.

The PM fails in his duty of care as CEO of PNG Inc when he allows 'legislation to be rushed through without thorough and rational debate.

To make matters worse, the Speaker constantly shows he’s the wrong person for the job - gagging debate and frustrating the opposition through his favourite tactic of numerous points of order to stop opposition MPs taking the PM and key government ministers to task over critical national issues.

There is another serious aspect to this. The PM wants the status quo to keep him in power so, despite over 40 years in politics, he seems to have forgotten the value of an opposition voice as an important alternative view.

Shutting out opposition is akin to the PM ignoring the cries of citizens about the way their country is governed. People now wonder why the PM is allowing so many problems to get out of control during his watch.

The recent recall of parliament proves this point. There was no urgent need for an early recall. It was a waste of taxpayer's money for just four hours of low quality discussion with only the government in attendance, as the opposition boycotted parliament this week. The media reports this action by the government cost taxpayers K125,000.

The exercise was a farce. It makes the PNG parliament and government a laughing stock within the Pacific region. Many educated Papua New Guineans seriously believe their government has for a long time now abandoned good governance.

The government seems to not care that the people know what it’s doing.

Many people believe it’s time for a fresh leadership to take PNG to a better place. What PNG needs now is responsive and responsible government. A government that will work well with the opposition to ensure parliament is working at peak performance.

It is time to activate a national succession plan before the 2012 election. PNG urgently needs new and better leadership to give hope to ordinary Papua New Guineans.

PNG will greatly benefit from a proactive and transformational government willing to fight for the progress and prosperity of all citizens.

As long as the current mob run a dysfunctional parliament and government, PNG seems bound to run aground. Some say PNG has already ‘gone to the dogs’ and is being sold off to special interests by its own leaders.

Ignore hysteria: we don’t need the death penalty

BY REGINALD RENAGI

The PNG media recently raised the question of whether we should implement the death penalty to deter serious crime.

This followed a public outcry after a highlands mother allegedly killed her children. Similar reactions are expressed by citizens when brutal murders are committed.

The reaction is only natural. But for years, the government has vacillated on this issue. It has passed a law on imposing the death penalty for serious crimes like murder. But it has never been imposed.

The snag is simple. The government has not made a decision about the approved method of execution. So the introduction of the death penalty is delayed while a suitable method is studied.

Execution has been used since ancient times for a wide variety of offences: sometimes to punish crime; sometimes to suppress political dissent.

Execution is final. It permanently removes people. It certainly stops a killer from murdering again. It may make us feel safer. Dead criminals are not a threat; they cannot commit further crimes.

Some people defend capital punishment by saying society has a moral obligation to protect the safety of its citizens. Murderers threaten people’s safety so by putting them to death we ensure convicted killers do not kill again.

Society may further assume a deterrent affect – you kill; you will be killed. Common sense would then tell people that if they know they will die, they will be unwilling to perform that vile act.

Capital punishment is society’s way of retribution. The criminal is made to suffer in proportion to the offence. Some say there’s still a place in modern society for the old principle of “eye for an eye” and a “tooth for a tooth”.

If the people’s cry for capital punishment is consistently rejected by an indecisive government, elements of the public may feel they need to uphold justice themselves, leading to vigilantism. In a society like PNG, where many of our people are still primitive in their thinking, we must guard against this.

There’s no such thing as a humane method of putting a person to death. Every form of execution causes the prisoner suffering. Execution is a terrifying and gruesome ordeal.

And it happens that innocent people are executed. There is no possible way to compensate for this miscarriage of justice. The death penalty removes any chance of revocation or rehabilitation.

It’s wrong for a PNG government to kill in order to teach our people not to kill.

Public opinion should not determine justice. Hysteria leads to unjust conviction and wrongful execution. An unpopular government seeking public support could easily succumb to the temptation to execute an innocent person.

The PNG government is left with three clear choices.

It can walk away from the death penalty and the problems it causes.

It can execute only the worst criminals: better than keeping them for life in prison, use the money on the more genuinely needy.

Or it can use the death penalty as a deterrent to diminish serious crime.

Personally, I strongly oppose capital punishment.

The shallow roots of PNG’s democratic politics

BY JOHN FOWKE

Papua New Guineans who are concerned about the relationship between the people and the State are also confused as to what can be achieved by citizens and voters.

The confusion exists even though Papua New Guineans have a strong conviction that a democracy is the best sort of society to live in.

Right now they’re wondering how to make progress toward change that will return the social steering-wheel to the people: how to make the decision-makers listen.

The party political system in PNG is like a drop of oil falling into still, clear water. It spreads in colourful and attractive patterns on the surface but its depth is infinitesimal.

Party politics is unappealing and largely useless. The Westminster system was imposed directly on top of the traditional political culture. There was no link to the established local government system, that seemed to be working well.

Party politics was a cultural sea-change like no other. Apart from the arrival of Christian missionaries almost a century before the national election of 1964.

As  a young public servant stationed at Talasea, I took part as a team member conducting the poll in villages from Cape Gloucester back to my base. Then I participated in the vote count at the Talasea council meeting room.

Although I had already conceived a deep affection for PNG and its people, I was too immature to give the subject of the imposition of this party-based national political system meaningful thought and analysis.

I was, however, aware of the likelihood that one result would be the effective exclusion from the chain of government of the grassroots councils, and I thought to myself that this was probably a mistake.

In hindsight it is sad that none of that generation of senior administrators like Sir Donald Cleland and Sir Paul Hasluck, nor the coven of PNG-literate anthropologists who drew income from the Territories Department, seemed to have thought much about it either.

At any rate, nothing was made public about any argy-bargy at senior level. What was essential was the implementation of a program as penetrating and full of idealism as the Christian evangelisation of pagan PNG in the latter part of the 19th century.

The level of change in society we addressed so breezily in 1964 had very shallow roots indeed.

The conversion of an ancient tribal clan-based political belief system to a concept of statehood and personal nationality was a breath-taking goal.

The adoption of a national as opposed to a clan-based political structure was an Everest undertaking; of the same magnitude as that which the Christian churches undertook.

Time for PNG to take new look at defence needs

BY REGINALD RENAGI

It would be a big plus for prime minister Somare's government to complement PNG's new 40-year strategic plan with a defence white paper.

Like Australia, PNG must now outline a plan for an overdue shake-up of the country's military. PNG must not wait for Australia and New Zealand to always take the lead security role in the Pacific.

It’s a national disgrace to see the last two governments and the present political regime without a defence, or foreign policy, view of the future. Eight years since taking office in 2002 until today, government policy has been overtaken by events.

PNG’s strategic circumstances have considerably altered, and warrant an urgent review of the national security environment. The current defence white paper is nearly a decade old.

Like defence, the country hasn’t had a new foreign policy white paper for over 18 years. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is in the process of reviewing its policy, and a new policy white paper is due soon.

The key defence reform activity should ensure all programs are properly planned and budgeted in accordance with a long term plan. Approaching reform this way will ensure the defence force is appropriately structured for the future and become more relevant to the needs of the country and its people.

The success of reform will depend ultimately on the attitude of both military and defence civilians to the changes required in building a viable and effective institution.

As in any major change, there will be difficulties with both organisation and personnel. However, with cooperation, defence can resolve them.

Defence management is comfortable with its organisational practices, which have served it well in the past. A reform program will require a review of many past practices as new and innovative ways of conducting defence business are considered.

The Defence Ministry must now make ‘sea change’ a top priority: a fresh course that will ensure that properly planned reforms are implemented in the next five years and beyond. This must be done in a way that will maximise opportunities for the people to benefit.

To better shape a learning organisation, military commanders and civilian managers must adopt a positive attitude to address new challenges in reorganising and restructuring defence. Everyone needs to march to the same drum beat.

The bottom-line is for the prime minister and his government to immediately take a proactive approach to seriously address PNG's future national security challenges.

Colonel (retired) Renagi is a former senior officer in the PNG Defence Force

Criteria to guide an effective PNG planning effort

BY REGINALD RENAGI

PNG will become a more open and competitive market economy through a process of economic reform and restructuring.

To better achieve this, the private sector is expected to support future development efforts and contribute significantly towards the national strategic plan.

Some key factors that national planners must fully take into account are:

Government modernisation programs within the region;

The future impact of economic interdependence and changing trade alignments on international relationships, and whether this will produce stability or new tensions;

The economic dynamism of Asian countries will increase the stability of the region, but if sustained will bring changes to relative national strengths;

Continuing economic and social problems in the south-west Pacific, and

National aspirations for better quality of life and well-being.

PNG’s strategic environment poses many development challenges. We are facing transnational issues with serious security implications that the government must address.

Development priorities must be driven principally by our vision, mission and core values and guiding principles derived from the Constitution.

Careful planning of future development must ensure we have the right level and mix of state management capabilities necessary for national self-sufficiency and reliance.

Therefore, development efforts must be at an appropriate level that can be economically sustained within national resources. This approach provides a rigorous, enduring basis for disciplined planning as our future strategic circumstances become more demanding.

The country’s long term plan covers 40 years and, over that time frame, we must factor in future risks with suitable inbuilt hedging strategies designed to minimise them.

The task for national planners is not easy and they need to make certain that our strategic framework is comprehensive enough to cope with future contingencies not yet discerned by even the most far sighted government analyst.

Blame shifting, buck passing & MT promises

BY PAUL OATES

The numbers are in, the analysis is done and the conclusions have been reached.

After years of receiving aid, the PNG people are worse off than before independence.

How can this have been allowed to happen?

Can it be that those in AusAID managing Australia’s aid to PNG have lacked the capabilities they need to deliver effective development programs?

Or has the political relationship been more important than the development relationship so precise arrangements aren’t important so long as the money flows?

The Australian PM declared after his visit to PNG last year that there’d be a change to the current aid program and this year Michael Somare has said it’ll be all over red rover by 2015.

But until then, what benchmarks exist for PNG aid deployment to be measured as successful before programs are renewed or re-financed?

And what outcomes are expected for the forecast Australian Federal Police assistance program? Will these be enunciated before any boots hit the ground?

US President Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that said 'The buck stops here'. In US vernacular this declared that Truman was ultimately responsible for decisions and that there would be no blame shifting.

Where does the buck stop in PNG?

The buck seems to stop nowhere. There is no buck passing or blame shifting because no-one takes responsibility for failure.

Before the last PNG election, Michael Thomas Somare promised many things to many people.

Could these now be labelled ‘MT promises’?

PNG’s constitution – honoured or dishonoured?

BY PAUL OATES

Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs, Duncan Kerr, as a young lawyer, reportedly had a large part in the drafting of PNG's constitution.

The announcement of his intention to retire from politics at the next federal election prompted me to examine the historical document that articulated the ideals and the hopes of PNG's 'founding fathers'.

At Independence, when PNG’s leaders accepted responsibility for their country, they at the same time became accountable for acting in accordance with what is expressed in their constitution.

Thirty-four years after Independence, it seems appropriate to examine if the PNG constitution remains a meaningful document and to examine, where it may not have been followed, who might be responsible for this failure.

It might then be appropriate to examine what sanctions ought to be imposed on those who, under PNG's constitution, are accountable. Fortunately the constitution clearly sets out the process of defining responsibility.

In the accompanying document, which you can download using the link below, I have selected relevant parts of PNG's constitution and, in the light of recent events in PNG, have highlighted in red some interesting areas.

It is questionable as to whether the constitution is being followed. If it is not, it could be concluded that there have been unconstitutional acts.

If so, whose then has the duty to investigate and rectify such breaches?

Download Report Card on PNG Constitution

Is PNG’s future here – and Australia bereft?

In June, after the high drama of anti-Asian riots and the low comedy of AusAID consultants paid salaries amounting to half Australia’s aid budget, I wrote that grassroots neglect and urban social dislocation compounded by low and high level corruption are gnawing at the very sinews of PNG society.

I also remarked the seeming inability of the Australian government to deal with the complex political and social dynamics of our nearest neighbour.

Now, concerns about where PNG is headed are increasingly being expressed at the highest levels in PNG itself.

On Friday, Governor-General Sir Paulias Matane, complaining of crime and corruption, said “ineffective leadership at the political, business, professional, church and community levels has crippled PNG.”

It was an elaboration of a theme Sir Paulias raised in an Independence Day address last month when he pondered aloud on what the future held. “Thirty-four years of ineffective government and public service delivery since independence has resulted in the unfortunate mess we are in today,” he said.

This was in stark contrast to Prime Minister Somare’s own words at about the same time, telling of his pride in the gains the nation had made despite the obstruction of unnamed “opportunists”.

Sir Michael blamed “loose talk” for “distracting us from the fact that we are growing our economy”. He reminisced how, in the sixties, he had “with my colleagues change[d] the course of our history and destiny as a people of one nation.”

In a recent interview on Al Jazeera, Sir Michael offered mixed messages. While saying he “didn’t think” the country’s leadership is corrupt, he admitted to serious corruption among public servants “below the level of senior departmental head” and called upon people “to reveal to us who are corrupt."

And in a statement that would worry our government, he said China’s presence in the Pacific could offset Australia’s influence in the region and foreshadowed that PNG will look to China to train its military.

What was even more noteworthy about the interview was his willingness to disparage his own nation. “Our people are like that – they like throwing stones,” he said dismissively, referring to the riots. And, in comparing the Chinese and Melanesian work ethics: “Chinese are workaholics. They’ll work all day and night; Melanesians work when we feel like it. Chinese don’t complain; my people do.”

The nub of the problem, of course, would seem not to be the people but Sir Michael’s government. “PNG needs leaders who are as clean and white as white paper,” says Morobe Governor Luther Wenge. “That is why we are going backwards. Leaders want ten percent under the table first before they work. Many leaders have dirty hands.”

Chief Secretary Manasupe Zurenuoc admits PNG is worse off than ever: “We have been independent for over 35 years and have not fared well in terms of delivering services to our people,” he says. “[Public servants] are running around Waigani without any understanding of the real problems in the provinces. They are out of touch with the real world. They just collect their pay and could not care about what happens out there.”

Councillor Mapun Papol of Mt Hagen condemns the “rot in the public service” that forces ordinary citizens to pay bribes. “If you want something to be done for you, you need to pay a bribe or else your enquiry or application will be ignored and then chucked into the bin. Bribery is a secret income for public servants.”

Treasury Secretary, Simon Tosali, admits that, even though PNG has experienced strong economic growth in recent years, unless drastic measures are enacted it “will never be able to address the economic imbalances in the country and empower people in rural areas”. People who, per capita, live on an income of around one dollar a day.

Academic James Chin – who researches the Chinese diaspora - forecasts an increase in physical attacks against mainland Chinese in PNG and makes the startling prediction that “it is almost certain that Chinese triads will establish a presence”.

He points out that, outside the oil and gas sectors, China is the biggest investor in PNG, with mainland Chinese and Malaysian Chinese predominant. The so-called ‘new Chinese’ number around 20,000 with more arriving each week mostly from mainland China, often without proper documentation.

Chin says the weight of mainland Chinese numbers and their important economic role mean they will soon dominate whole sections of PNG’s economy.

I’ve observed previously that there is high emotion in all this for many of us who lived and worked in PNG. It was once a territory Australia held in trust, and our people served and died there in peace and war. Many of us still feel a strong personal connection to its people, regarding them almost as kith and kin.

The present PNG leadership seems to have turned its back on its own people and to be drifting away from Australia. Discussions I’ve had with Australian politicians reveal anxieties about the character of a post-Somare PNG government. There are fears it could be very toxic indeed.

In fact, it’s possible that this future may already have arrived. PNG looks like it may be headed for an unstable period with outcomes inimical to Australia’s interests.

It’s not the kind of problem you want on your doorstep.

Potato crisis: Could this be the end of kaukau?

BY PAUL OATES

In a letter to PNG's The National this week, there is a timely reminder not to let traditional crops languish in favour of newer, so-called 'better' varieties.

In Ireland's potato famine of the mid 19^th Century over a million people starved when disease wiped out the Irish potato crop. Millions more emigrated.

What dreadful catastrophe will occur if there’s a famine in a heavily populated area of PNG? The current situation in the Trobriands is a classic example of what happens when too many people meet too little food.

Here’s the letter, from Gene Drekeke Iyovo, who happens to live, for the time being anyway, in China.

I REFER to the report ‘K5 million to revive potato industry’ (Sept 23). I have two main concerns with regard to potato. The first is it will replace all traditional starchy food sources like organic sweet potato, yam and taro.

A good example is the traditional sweet potato varieties in PNG are now extinct. These varieties were the best for many reasons. They were tolerant to drought, cold and heat, and it took between six and nine months to harvest.

Unfortunately, these varieties were wiped off by a new variety ‘three mun kaukau’, which can be harvested within three months as the name suggests. However, this variety is not tolerant to dry spells or cold and wet conditions.

The other fear is potato itself. If the potato is genetically modified (GM) and needs fertiliser, then it would be a disaster. The GM crop will affect any plants in its surroundings by pollination, suppress plant health and divert microbe activities on land fertility.

The potato industry will serve foreign interest through fertiliser and pathology. Pathologists will design new diseases and spread them through potato seeds and then have you pay more for the cure you desperately need.

While you are in the potato business, who is going to care for the sweet
potato, banana, yam and taro? The same applies to cabbage, broccoli, carrot, etc.

Farmers are not supposed to be led to believe that an artificial crop is their saviour. This does not mean potato is not a healthy industry. Today's technology and science have led to total manipulation of a crop in your garden.

Rather I would support traditional pest, disease, drought and dry resistant food crops handed down from my forefathers.

Well, I don’t know about the claim of deliberately introducing diseases, but the general point about relinquishing the old for the new without fully understanding the consequences seems fair. We need lapun didiman to comment here.

Racist Americans should hang heads in shame

Many Americans find it a racist slur, Papua New Guineans say it’s offensive, and I reckon it’s a bloody disgrace.

This digitally-altered photograph of a Barack Obama headshot superimposed on a Huli wigman in full traditional regalia is meant to portray the black president as an African witchdoctor. It’s also meant to be funny. It’s not. It racist, pure and simple.

It’s been pumped out on emails and websites, and splattered on posters and tee-shirts, at US anti-Obama healthcare protests.

Given that the average American expires four years earlier than the average Australian, you’d think these people would be limp with gratitude at Obama's initiative but, nup, they reckon it's black magic.

“Many Papua New Guineans living in the US and around the world are angered by the picture,” writes blogger and PNG Attitude contributor David Ketepa, a Western Highlander who now lives in Detroit, Michigan.

“To the ignorant, racist idiot who distributed this picture, this is not an African witchdoctor’s dress like you claim,” lambasted another PNG blogger. “This is totally absurd and whoever did it needs to apologise to the people of PNG for insulting us. This is our culture and we love it!”

And another PNG writer said: “Keep my country out of your foolishness.”

Americans are debating whether the doctored image is racist or satirical. Most are of the opinion that it’s racist.

These even include the protesters, a group called Tea Party, who say the image might be racist but it reflects anger about where President Obama is leading the country. Yeah, right.

Tea Party says there's been too much US government intervention, particularly in healthcare and taxes. Probably in the financial system too, eh?

That's Attitude! And from the same people who brought us the GFC. It seems totally inconsistent with ever learning how to live those extra four years.

Land of the unexpected has traps for Aussie cops

BY JOHN FOWKE

Emmanuel Narokobi, one of Papua New Guinea’s most perceptive journalists (and PNG is a nation of journalism as much as it is a land of the unexpected) wrote recently that Australian Federal Police advisers mooted for PNG may end up as mere operatives - bit players - due to resentment by the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary of ‘neo-colonial intrusion’.

The police mindset may well manifest itself in this way, although the AFP’s Assistant Commissioner Frank Prendergast has been quoted recently as saying, ”Developing the relationship between the AFP and the RPNGC has been critical in the scoping phase to ensure that the RPNGC … is comfortable with future programs of support.”

Any new program is dependent upon recognition in next year’s Australian Federal budget.

But there’s another possible and insidious trap to be aware of. Clever obfuscatory moves have frequently greeted newly-arrived overseas reformers as they confront revanchist elements within the PNG public service. Keen, and even astute, questioning of executive probity is met by a thick curtain of elaborate opacity.

I have observed first hand how the naïve newcomer can be undermined by entrenched cunning. In the late 1980s, the totally ineffective yet very expensive Assistance to PNG Police (APNGP) program was launched, funded by Australia’s aid agency AIDAB, as AusAID was then badged.

To my knowledge, only one APNGP consultant among the dozens engaged had any experience of PNG. He’d served with the RPNGC as a commissioned officer, worked in Australia, then later been appointed by the international management consultancy contracted  to roll out the first five-year tranche of the program.

The remedies and improvements this consultant advocated, on the basis he had ‘in country’ experience, were simple and commonsense.

For instance he recommended the provision of better boots, as well as raincoats and torches, before the introduction of two-man town foot-patrols each night; the latter a proposal, once implemented, which would impose a sense of purpose and prompt a positive response from the public.

Such simple measures, and remember we’re talking 15 years ago, are the sort of things which build better morale, more application to the job and increased recruitment.

But the consultant’s recommendations were not dramatic enough for the project managers, and he was ultimately ‘let go’ because his advice, put forward forcefully, was seen as simplistic and not appropriate to the objectives of the Canberra-based planners’ grand scheme.

Nevertheless, such moves - plus attention to the appalling state of most of the government housing occupied by members of the force - were objectives any experienced military commander or indeed, any experienced Australian administrator from the pre-independence era, would have embraced immediately upon taking up his posting.

In the Province where I worked, the handful of Australian policemen deployed by the project, all experienced and mature, were greeted with open arms. It’s fair to say an immediate sense of comradeship was established at Provincial police headquarters.

A spacious office had been vacated, repainted, refurnished and provided with its own fridge. An attractive and competent secretary had been identified by the Provincial Commander and instructed to make the new arrivals' learning curve as flat as possible.

On the first Saturday morning, in the interests of further edification and bonding, an overweight and hung-over HQ force of other-ranks was compelled by the Commander to parade in dress uniform with rifles, so they could be ceremonially inspected by the White Men and express, in turn, their own happiness at the arrival of their Australian benefactors.

The new men, now completely at ease, were quickly and earnestly adopted into the small pool of educated local and expatriate business and managerial people. They were showered with hospitality and offered membership of the limited but lively club and social networks.

Desperate for better service from the police and laden with expectations, the local men of influence opened their hearts, doors and social milieu to the newcomers. The result was a level of after-hours carousing, intimate friendship and sporting encounter which fairly spun the heads of these decent Sans Souci sergeants and Cunnamulla constables.

Back at Police HQ the new men were encouraged to participate in areas in which each had a particular interest.  In one case, where a marijuana-packing and shipping enterprise was suspected to exist, the new Aussie drug specialist accompanied by local drug squad detectives and a sworn witness who’d provided the initial tip-off, travelled together by road to a port a day's drive away.

Here they planned to encounter an overseas agent in the smuggling chain, a yachtsman, who they’d spring as he took delivery from an identified middleman.

The deal went sour when it was found that the star witness had adapted the venture for his own purposes, having secreted a package of compressed marijuana under the police vehicle in which the team had travelled.

The witness attempted to contact the yachtsman to make his own sale and to warn him of the planned arrest. However, he mistook an Australian consultant-policeman for the yachtsman.

The case against the drug-packager was dropped at the recommendation of the Provincial Commander because of what was said to be lack of substantial evidence. The yachtsman, I presume, sailed away laughing.

Our Australian advisers were manipulated by the local force in ways which allowed the White Men, all-unknowing, to preserve some self-respect whilst realising, perhaps, that the job was more complicated than they had expected.

The truth is that very little changed as the result of the APNGP program. The advisers eventually went home with large savings from tax-free salaries and with duty-free cars, stereos and memories of holidays in Singapore and Thailand.

As for the 15-year PNG police program, it was put into the too-hard basket.

At one juncture, I was invited to meet two visiting consultants who were planning and monitoring the project: one an Australian State ex-chief magistrate; the other a senior serving police officer on secondment from her State police service.

They were a nice, well-spoken and in their mid-fifties. I was amazed at the gauche assumptions they made about PNG and the problems of the RPNGC.

Their report of the outcome of this project, like reports of a great many other similar projects, has never been made available outside the closed circle of AusAID. A pity.

PNG is deserving in so many ways of its unofficial title as The Land of the Unexpected. It is no place for the newly arrived foreign consultant imbued with missionary zeal.

The culture is complex, and has moved beyond colonial simplicity. PNG takes Australia’s aid, but it does not necessarily share its values. The place may look straightforward, but it is sinuous.

Emmanuel Narokobi writes of neo-colonialism, and he may have point. But I wonder who’s colonising who?

Horsemen’s shadow falls over islands of love

BY PAUL OATES

"Men had to appropriate things because there was not enough to go round" [‘The shape of things to come’ by HG Wells]

The PNG press reports that the Trobriand Islands are running into serious land shortages brought on by unprecedented population growth.

It seems all arable land is under continuous cultivation and, as a result, crop yields have dropped drastically, bringing on a serious food shortage.

In turn, this has triggered other social problems never before experienced including organised gangs raiding other people's food gardens.

In the early 1960's, there were a number of scientific experiments to demonstrate what will happen when overpopulation occurs.

A large 'ratorium' was constructed consisting of mazes, fixed food and water sources and hiding places. A small number of male and female rats were then sealed inside.

Initially, the rats all had enough space and food and water and started to breed. As the population increased, living space became scarce and food and water started to give out.

Eventually the rats formed packs of the strongest, which systematically excluded the weakest from the resources they needed. Eventually they began to kill the weak and young to survive.

It seems to me that the Trobriands are a microcosm of what will soon start happening not only in the rest of PNG but worldwide unless one or all of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse intercedes.

Turn your back on history and you are doomed to repeat it.

Independent but dependent: PNG 34 years on

On this Independence Day, GELAB PIAK, in an extract from a longer paper, concludes that the nation-building task in PNG is still incomplete

Today, 16 September 2009, marks the 34th year of our independence.

We, as Papua New Guineans, are proud of our nation, but at the same time are troubled by a torturous thought. What are we really celebrating?

Yes, we are celebrating our freedom and our independence. But there is a nagging question: what is freedom?

Freedom is the power to express thoughts, words and rights and to act without objection or intimidation, unless we violate the law of our land.

Last month, metropolitan police superintendent Fred Yakasa, stopping a political march, said that the police actions were to protect the people’s rights. What rights were the police protecting? In fact, contradictorily, they deprived people’s rights and freedoms.

The people have the right, under the law of the land, to express freedoms such as freedom of speech and the right to express their thoughts, actions and words without objection.

The people also have the right to services and the elected Government has the obligation to provide services. When the Government doesn’t do what it is obliged to do, then civil society has to stand up.

The vibrancy of any democracy depends on the freedoms and the liberation of its civil society to exercise its rights. When civil society’s freedoms are suppressed, a nation’s democracy is under threat.

The opposition has on several occasions cried foul about Parliamentary democracy not being exercised. Are these tell-signs of suppression and oppression at the highest level?

What is independence? Being independent is being able to fend for oneself, to meet one’s own needs. Put that way, it is very hard to see the PNG Government providing for the needs of its people, now or in the future.

Members of Parliament need to stop their corrupt practices and gain a true nationalist feeling. Nation building is not an overnight job. It takes many people much heart and many years.

It takes the courage to change.

If the politicians are not serious about building this nation, Papua New Guinea, then who is?

Together, we need to build a Papua New Guinea nation, then we will have something to celebrate.

The hare, the eagle … and corruption

BY PAUL OATES

Slashing the dry grass in one of the paddocks yesterday, I had a thought about how easily corruption can take hold.

Early each Spring, I slash the old grass. It engenders new growth (the cattle need the protein) and reduces the risk of fire.

Out here in the bush, many fires are started by smokers disdainfully flicking lighted butts through car windows.

It’s important when slashing grass to work clockwise, so the machine throws the windrows left, and not where you mow next.

This means you start at the edge of the paddock and work inwards. As you do, the animal life in the tall grass starts retreating to the middle. For birds and predators, the tractor's work uncovers a bountiful food source.

So it is that I’m joined by a legion of birds. Goldfinches eat the thistle seeds. Then lapwing plovers, butcher birds, magpies and crows find a feast of grasshoppers. The resident brown hawk lands on a nearby ironbark and watches. Far overhead, a pair of wedgetail eagles soar the warm air in wait.

A small mob of eastern grey flyer kangaroos gets edgy and moves away. Several large hares bolt through the tall grass to the centre.

An adult hare that can disappear in two foot high grass is now clearly visible on the mown paddock. Every now and again, one runs to the limit of the slashed area, looks out on the clearing and dashes back to cover.

As the centre of the paddock approaches for slashing, it is clear the hidden hares have to make a run for it. There is a mass breakout. What the eagles waited for has arrived. They pounce on a luckless hare for dinner.

Here’s a parable. How big tragedies can grow from small things – like mowing the paddock.

It’s hot and the tractor’s drone sends the mind on an expedition. I think of PNG and of corruption.

It doesn’t take much. It can start in small ways. Taking something small. Something you need but don't have, and is available where you work.

Then you turn up late and leave early because, you tell yourself, no one knows or cares, and others do the same thing anyway. Finally, it’s a habit hard to break. Why not take the money. No one gets hurt.

The hare kept choosing the easy option. Back into the long grass until there was no long grass. Finally forced into the open: everything visible, no cover.

Then it’s just a matter of time.

Independence – evidence is we got out too early

PNG Independence probably came too soon but another five years would have seen Australia bail out, says eminent historian Prof Hank Nelson, who had dedicated most of his academic his career to studying PNG.

Emeritus Professor Nelson is now a visiting fellow at the Australian National University's Division of Pacific and Asian History.

"The evidence is we got out too early,” he told Alan Howe of the Melbourne Herald-Sun, “but it wouldn't have changed anything.”

The Country Party's Charles (Ceb) Barnes, as Minister for External Territories had, in 1971, set out the timetable for self-government and independence.

"By the time Whitlam came to power in 1972, the timetable was effectively set," Prof Nelson says.

PNG did not have the educated people it needed to run the mechanisms of a modern democracy -- the judiciary, departments of health and foreign affairs, the education system and the public service.

"In 1972, one year before full internal self-government, there was one government department headed by a Papua New Guinean," Prof Nelson said. "The rest were Australians."

While PNG may have rejected independence if there had been a vote, Australia did not want to remain. "Australia was keen to give independence to PNG for its own reasons, and they were good reasons," Prof Nelson says.

PNG represented challenges for Australia. There were some serious regional divisions in the Gazelle, Bougainville and Papua and the chances of Australia using force to impose its will "was just not on.”

"The other thing was the border with Indonesia. Already there had been various incursions by OPM (Free Papua Movement), Indonesians demanding hot pursuit," Prof Nelson said.

"There had been a couple of very nasty incidents on the border and Australians feared, again, a clash with Indonesia."

Prof Nelson says Australia naively assumed that PNG “could sustain [itself[ and even prosper."

"What we know now, much more sharply, because we can see it in Iraq, we can see it in Kosovo, Somalia, Sudan, the Horn of Africa -- to build a state is an extremely difficult process.

"We wouldn't make that mistake now."

Source: ‘Left early, but we were right’ by Alan Howe, Melbourne Herald Sun, 14 September 2009. Spotted by Eric Johns

Col. Huff’s last stand – now for the ashram

Columnist JOHN FOWKE receives a communication from a slightly frazzled Col. Huff, keen to return to obscurity

The storm-in-a rum-glass over my Colonel Blimp posting and the later contribution from an old and dear friend, Col. Huff, has prompted the latter - a sprightly nonagenarian currently at his bush retreat, a lonely and telephone-less spot north-west of Bundaberg - to pass on his regards and final comments.

He only gets to a phone each fortnight when he travels to Bundaberg to refill his larder. He regrets deeply that the once young and idealistic lads who taught and kiaped and didimaned in places such as Pindiu and Finschhafen view their years in PNG in an increasingly melancholy, if slightly self-congratulatory light - the "good years before the drought" as it were - rather than, as this old agriculturalist puts it, "the fertiliser before the crop".

We all have had a hand in forging modern-day PNG, a country which, despite its slow descent into conditions where it is widely classified as a failing state, is still one which cannot, and is unlikely ever to be, classified as a failed one.

This is simply because of the existence of a strongly cynical and Aussie-like democratic ideal in the general population coupled with a free and constantly critical local press. The latter being two of several hugely important institutions of which Oz can be justly proud.

PNG is not yet at the depths reached by such as Haiti and the Congo; but in terms of corruption, services, lifespan, re-emerging pandemics, HIV/AIDS and awful percentages of literacy and numeracy, is well on the way.

Despite this, my friend Huff insists (and I agree entirely) that our closest neighbour, in cultural terms (next to the shaky islanders in the black footy gear), is the closest to us in ways not well-recognised.

He refers to such phenomena as PNG's national obsession with League football and an emergent fondness for Union, the continued existence of a viable all-PNGian lawn bowls (clubs in all major towns) and a love of meat pies and sausage rolls and beer in stubbies.

There’s also a passion for Blundstone boots, tough-looking green workwear, barbecues and Australian slang. Oz is looked upon with favour by the broad spread of PNG's populace, and professional PNGians feel comfortable enough with Oz to arrive in Cairns as first-time visitors, hire a car or Tarago, and drive to such points of interest as Uluru, Canberra and the War Memorial and Sydney Harbour.

The Australian culture is familiar and accepting, as opposed to that which they encounter in Asian and European countries. Added to this, Col. Huff declaims, is the fact that like it or not PNG is our nearest friendly neighbour, potentially for all time.

It behoves us to return this feeling as genuinely as it exists up there, for both nations' sakes and the future welfare of both sets of children and grandchildren.

This sympathy should be expressed through our service organisations, relationships between towns and schools and universities, the mainstream churches (which all provide reliable, ethical medical and educational services in PNG), and mediums such as PNGAA and this very blog.

This as opposed to the visitation upon PNG of droves of young aspiring PhD candidates with no conception of the history or the culture, nor of the languages spoken, and who confine their activities to what may be done cowering within the high-security Oz Highcom - "Fort Shitscared" in local Port Moresby parlance.

With a few creditable exceptions, these tyros and the ‘consultants’ engaged at huge expense by Oz taxpayers thru AusAid have done little to advance and consolidate an important relationship. (I have written elsewhere of the essential requirement for a pre-PNG/Pacific-posting orientation course along the lines of that once provided by ASOPA and no longer extant - to our cost.)

Finally perhaps, I should explain that dear old Col. Huff is noted, or perhaps notorious, for two facts concerning his early life.

He was the youngest officer ever promoted to Lt. Colonel status in the Army catering corps, in which capacity, with privileges and access to consumables, he created the Australian cultural icon - a beer-drinking game distinguished with his name, i.e., "Colonel Huff for the first time....." etc.

As a gesture of good will Col is creating, at his remote hideaway, what he describes as a "Gruntling Ashram for disgruntled ex TP&NG officers."

At the Ashram, with the help of Imbroglio, the son of his old Maloid mankimasta, who Duff imported on a 447 visa (Imbroglio is a qualified cabinetmaker/shopfitter), he is establishing a concrete tennis-court and a large hauswin complete with Sepik carvings and a bar.

Imbroglio will serve the drinks wearing only a laplap to complete the illusion of time travel. Col. Huff hopes very much that this final act in a life devoted to human welfare will "hamamsim ol Masta bilong gutpela taim bipo" in an effort to fit in with the miasmic memories of those he hopes will be attracted to the Ashram.

Australia's own history of apartheid in PNG

Controversial Pacific academic DR RON CROCOMBE wrote this article for publication on Onlineopinion.com. It adds more fibre & passion to PNG Attitude's forum on the Australian legacy in PNG

Any feeling in Australia that only Papua New Guineans caused the problems they suffer from can only be based on ignorance.

Many of Australia’s colonial and post-colonial policies and practices are a major factor in the problems of Papua New Guinea today, and cause some Papua New Guinean leaders to have serious reservations about their Australian counterparts.

Despite being a colony from the 1890s, Australia ensured that Papua did not get its first high school until international pressure led to its opening in 1955. Very few others were built for a long time in a country of similar size and population to New Zealand.

Likewise for three generations nothing was done to develop Papua New Guinean leadership, in fact everything was done to block its development and ensure that leadership roles and responsibility were held by Australians and that there was no chance for the development of national consciousness or leadership.

I remember, in about 1964, being on a Qantas flight from Port Moresby to Brisbane seated across the aisle from a Papua New Guinean. It was the first time I had seen a Papua New Guinean on a flight to Australia. No one was seated next to him. The hostess gave everyone their meal except the Papua New Guinean.

I assumed it was a simple oversight so asked her if she could please get his lunch, to which she replied with scorn, “We don’t feed natives”. I objected but she explained, “It’s company policy, we are not allowed to feed natives”. I took it up with the company and they confirmed that it was indeed their policy – on the advice of the Australian officials who “understood them”. That was consistent with their practices on many fronts.

About 1966 John Guise (later Sir John Guise, the first Governor General of Papua New Guinea) was then an elected member of the Legislative Assembly with the largest majority of any member, and he was Member for Agriculture (a prototype Minister for Agriculture in the lead-up to independence).

He had been invited to study agriculture overseas with all costs paid and visited me to ask if I could help him in relation to the document he (and all Papua New Guineans) were required to fill in to seek approval to leave the country at any time for any purpose. It was an official form entitled “Application for Permission to Remove a Native”. The content was as bad as the title.

Guise was offended and humiliated by it but was used to constant humiliation, of all Papua New Guineans, not only by officials personally but by the system as a matter of policy.

I was then Director of the New Guinea Research Unit, a facility of the Australian National University (now the National Research Institute) and knew Guise personally. I saw the Administrator, Mr David Hay, about it and told him I would take it up internationally if nothing was done: not only for Mr Guise but to do away with the document for everyone.

Mr Hay was genuinely embarrassed by the system he was required by Canberra to administer and assured me he wished to have that document done away with and would act on it. He did get an improvement, but restrictions remained tight for years after.

Chris Kaputin was to be deported because she was white and dared to marry a Papua New Guinean, John Kaputin, now Sir John Kaputin, who later became for many years Minister for Foreign Affairs. Only an appeal to the United Nations stopped the deportation. But it did not stop the personal harassment they both suffered.

Any government official who even dared to invite a Papua New Guinea woman to the cinema was whisked off to the most isolated part of the nation or deported back to Australia.

The Konedobu Club was the big club for civil servants at the government headquarters. When Julius Chan (now Sir Julius Chan, twice Prime Minister and a successful businessman and recently Chairman of the Pacific Plan) came back with a degree in commerce from Australia and was appointed to the civil service, he was banned from the Konedobu Club as no non-Whites were allowed. He soon left the service.

When the East West Center and the University of Hawaii began inviting Pacific Islanders from all over the Pacific to study there, with funds provided by the US government for the purpose, students from all islands attended – except from Papua New Guinea.

The President of the East West Center told me personally that they wanted to include Papua New Guineans but had been requested by Australia not to do so. We then made unofficial arrangements to get the first two accepted despite the Australian blockage. For fear of international adverse publicity they were allowed to travel. It was a small breakthrough.

When the United Nations Trusteeship Mission issued a blistering critique of Australia for its constraints on education and training, among other things, (and that report was written by the Chairman of that Mission, Sir Hugh Foot, an Englishman and former British colonial governor), Australia could not get enough staff and had to advertise internationally, but it would only do so in White countries.

Every applicant had to send a photo so that, as was confirmed to be by an Australian official in the selection process, all non-White applicants could be weeded out without declaring their racist policy.

And all this time Papuans were Australian citizens and had been since 1906, since Britain required that. Australia had made them citizens without consultation, but would not allow them to enter the country of which they had been made citizens, nor any of the rights of citizens, nor any citizenship of their own.

When, in the 1960s, some Papuans who were part white Australian and part Papuan, asked to enter Australia, the country of which they were citizens, they were bluntly refused, as were all other Papua New Guineans.

My wife is a Cook Islander who had taught in New Zealand and Cook Islands schools and the Teachers College (and she taught at Port Moresby Teachers College). The first time she went to buy meat at the main Burns Philip shop in Port Moresby she was refused service. She came home in tears after being told that natives can only be served through the outside hatch.

She had been in many countries but never treated like that. She never went back, but it was a small part of the accepted code of the Australian system in Papua New Guinea.

One could recount similar examples by the hundred. These were not isolated or atypical events but were rigorously implemented systematic policies. There were many people of good will and good intentions in the government service there. But their best intentions had to be fitted within the policy and practice of full Apartheid.

Past misunderstandings can be overcome, and many on all sides are trying their best to do so. But any feeling in Australia that only Papua New Guineans caused the problems they suffer from can only be based on ignorance.

The genuine efforts that one sees from many people of all ethnicities and persuasions will pay off in the long run, but it will require deep rethinking of the total relationship (not only between governments) and long-term commitment to contributing to a positive and productive future.

Kicking our old colony in the guts

This article by CHRIS HERRIES was first published on line three years ago but, in the light of the current sometimes overwrought debate on PNG ATTITUDE, definitely deserves another airing

Ask almost any Australian what they think of Papua New Guinea, and the stereotyped response goes something like: “Most dangerous place in the world.” or “You’d have to be brave to go there.”

Who can blame anybody for such jaundiced views? The Australian public is merely reflecting a sensationalised media image of PNG as a murderous, lawless, corrupt state on the verge of meltdown. An August ABC Four Corners feature “Sick No Good” did much to cement that view in the public mind.

Let’s make one thing clear. Without question, PNG is afflicted with enormous development problems, among them, and featured on the ABC program, is the alarming spread of HIV-AIDS. Add to that a level of political corruption, uncontrolled exploitation of its resources by foreign multinationals and many other problems experienced by developing nations everywhere. These problems should not be censured.

Australian media stands accused, not of telling the truth about PNG, but of telling only a small fraction of the truth: the bits that titillate; the bits that feed our overbearing sense of cultural superiority; the bits that spare the Australian nation the knowledge of its own role in exacerbating, if not causing, many of Papua New Guinea’s development woes.

Now to put this tarnished image-making into perspective, imagine for a moment that media from a dominant foreign power, say Japan, came to Australia and reported on our nation to the world. And imagine if that reporting (done without sensitivity) honed in on the “stolen generation”, the mindless ways we have destroyed our soils and river systems, the drug culture among youth in our cities. And imagine if this was the total image of our nation, projected to the entire world. And there was no way of redressing or balancing such a jaundiced, distorted image.

Having spent a total of four delightful years in Papua New Guinea (spread over 35 years) I have searched for the essence of that country’s culture. In doing so it eventually dawned on me how low self esteem can affect a whole nation. This tiny nation - squeezed into a tight corner by economic globalisation, depicted unfairly as a “failed state”, pack raped for its resources - carries all the hallmarks of a person suffering from low self-esteem.

We know all about how damaging low self-esteem can be for the individual. Transpose the phenomenon of low self-esteem from the individual to an entire nation and the symptoms stay precisely the same - particularly that of self-destructiveness. Likewise the remedies. Kicking our former, struggling colony in the guts is not a recommended treatment.

PNG is nothing like the media hype suggests. Yes, the country has enormous development problems, but 95 percent of Papua New Guineans live simple, quiet village lives, tending their gardens, looking after their young and old, trying to straddle their rich cultures with growing modernity. In many ways they are far more reflective of, and honest about, their own problems than Australians are of theirs. Unlike Australia, they own their own problems. They don’t exploit other nations. They are not at war with anyone.

For the most part PNG culture exhibits many fine attributes that our modern nation has lost. In terms of sustainability, PNG stands heads and shoulders above Australia, for instance. This is not to put Australia down, just a plea to understand our former colony, not as an errant teenager run amok, but as a young nation that deserves the dignity of our respect as equals.

To help mend the hurt felt by PNG people for their media-tarnished image, I spent many hours talking with village groups, comparing the pluses and minuses of Australia-versus-PNG cultures, and of the colonial relationship that tie the two together.

Not least I spent many hours apologising for our nation’s folly in rushing the independence of PNG 30 years ago. Few Australians are aware that the undue haste with which we withdrew in 1976 left PNG without the infrastructure, the national leadership and the administrative capacity necessary for a smooth transition to independence. In short, they never had a chance.

This fateful piece of history needs to be openly owned and admitted. It should be brought right to the very centre of the contemporary debates about PNG, its governance failures and its future.

As a colonial parent, Australia performed better than most colonial powers. Our relationship with PNG was, in the main, a fairly benevolent one - albeit overshadowed throughout by an air of cultural superiority. PNG people are keenly aware that Australia’s role has not been an entirely altruistic or beneficent one, yet, in the eyes of our former dependents, we are mostly seen appreciatively as a sort of kindly uncle.

We can carry that history with some pride, but this should not blind us to the mistakes that we made, or our obligation to own those mistakes and make up for them. Our media has a responsibility to openly report on our nearest neighbour with fairness and justice. It is not good enough to just pick out a juicy story and run with it.

In the light of serious problems grappling our own nation, our overbearing sense of cultural superiority in the Pacific is badly misplaced. We have a lot to learn.

Source: ‘Kicking our old colony in the guts’ by Chris Herries, Online Opinion, November 2006

Riding the tiger’s fine, until it gets hungry

BY PAUL OATES

“Dictators ride to and fro on tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry” - Winston Churchill

In a previous article on PNG Attitude, John Fowke referred to his time in PNG as sometimes being like ‘riding the tiger’. It’s an analogy that rings true about today's PNG leadership.

It seems everyone who’s ever been to PNG has a view about what went wrong with its governance.

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, when colonies in Africa and Asia were demanding and being granted Independence, a logical and steady progression of PNG to nationhood was never straightforward. Colonialism was a dirty word. Self-determination was the flavour. That the Soviet Union held many countries in subjugation tended to be conveniently overlooked.

The accepted template was a democratically elected, multi party parliament with the political party holding the majority forming the government. This Western view was a benchmark for the United Nations.

There was little questioning of whether the Westminster system was really the gold standard. Perhaps a benevolent oligarchy, a bit like Australian colonialism itself, could provide less chaotic government. The problem was, of course, ensuring benevolence.

Until 1975 PNG was governed by an unelected bureaucracy (albeit responsible to democratically elected Australian government). Mistakes were made, but on the whole the system worked.

Arguably it worked because the people who were entering a state of being governed from outside the tribe wanted it to work because of what they saw it could offer. We, the administrators, also wanted it to work, because that was our duty. It was a miniscule team of government officers in a country (then) of three million people, and the system worked.

It worked, but it was basically government by bureaucracy. The people had known traditional bigman control and this had been briefy overlaid by gavman control. There was little awareness, and still less understanding, of the alternative of a pluralistic, democratic government.

Many PNG people look back on the period leading to Independence as a ‘good time’ for PNG. Certainly, if the benchmark was on achieving results in proportion to resources, the system delivered good outcomes.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that the Australian government these days doesn’t want to know anything about how the kiap system worked. In today’s argot it may have been politically incorrect, but it delivered effective outcomes.

The important outcome it seems it did not deliver, because it did not have the time and the opportunity, was a robust Westminster democracy where the people – the voters – were the focus of political attention.

In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the world was a different place. Newly emerging African and Asian countries were eager to demonstrate their new found power in the United Nations. The clamour for an independent PNG was overwhelming. The only question was ‘when’. ‘When’ was always going to be too soon.

Since 1975 many people have debated the timing and the circumstances of PNG Independence. In fairness, Australia did not have much say in it at all. The world was on the move and we were compelled to move with it.

One might observe that some of those anti-colonial critics who, back then, threw metaphoric mud at Australia did not themselves emerge as shining examples of democracy at work. That accusation might also include those who are now riding the PNG tiger. Recent events indicate that the tiger may be getting hungry.

Authorities must respond better to emergencies

A disaster involving VIPs might see PNG authorities respond better to national emergencies writes THE MASTER MARINER

I have come to observe one fundamental conclusion about my country and its incompetent civil servants or authorities.

Whenever there is a serious air incident in the country, the Civil Aviation Authority and third level airlines take their time both in rescuing the crash victims and following up with proper official investigations.

CAA releases details of investigations (if any) even after years have passed. It is a worrying feeling for the people.

This one [the Kokoda air crash] is fast because the Australian authorities don't stuff around with red tape like we do, because it also involves Australian lives, and because money is no object.

Australian authorities will use all the resources at their government's disposal to speed things up to the point where our government authorities are placed in a position where they have no choice but to act fast under the circumstance.

Our own authorities deny ordinary citizens of PNG quick action when nationals are involved and give the impression they do not really care enough about our own people.

This is not only due to lack of resources, but is also a direct result of poor inter-agency coordination and general incompetency by those involved.

I feel frustrated read of other plane crashes where PNG authorities have not done the right thing by families who have lost their pilot sons and daughters and passengers.

No big fanfare by anyone and they hope their memories will fade over the passage of time.

What irony we have in PNG.

With all our wealth and resources, we still cannot act professionally and fast enough to do the right thing in a national emergency.

The media people keep reporting this but the powers-that-be still have not learnt their lessons, perhaps until some so-called big men fall from the skies and a plane full of National Executive Council members goes missing in the clouds and in the sticks of Timbuktu.

There will other similar incidents in future because we have not really learnt from our past.

It’s time the government treated major air incidents and other national emergencies in a proper manner. Do you see it too?

Harim gut! This is the PNG Australia created

For those people who don’t get the picture, says JOHN FOWKE in this insightful article, the point about PNG today is that the Australians who whinge about it helped to create it

Being a kind-hearted old PNG pundit, I have allowed enough time for Bob Curtis’s [see Recent Comments here] wattles to settle back to their normal puce colour before returning to the theme of “missing the point” about social development and the dire standard of administration, services and infrastructure in PNG.

The point, which I believe to be well-understood by many of those who read my “tiger riding” posting, is that a PNG implosion such as we witness daily was inevitable and foreseen by many.

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

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

Two major factors are responsible. One was an inexplicable, apparently blind, decision made by Australia. The other was simply the function of the mismatch between PNG’s readiness and world sentiment about colonialism, which impelled Australia to grant independence as and when it did.

I left the Admin early in my PNG career - as the result of a tiff with my then boss, the late Speed Graham, following which I became a tradestore minder for the late Brian Heagney and later a plantation manager.

I remained in or directly associated with the latter until 2005, with one break working for Mobil Oil in Queensland.

I think that experience in private enterprise, after being a Patrol Officer and a Co-ops man, was salutary. Deprived of automatic deference and submission, one quickly learned the truth of PNG society, a truth which may not have been appreciated by most POs and others until they reached quite senior rank.

The truth is that in a micro-tribal society no-one matters much except one’s clan brothers and sisters and that stealing from and telling untruths to people other than one’s blood relatives is not a sin.

This is not intended as a criticism of Melanesia - it is a truism covering all micro-tribal societies. My own distant ancestry is Scottish and Scandinavian, societies which before Roman colonisation, and even after it, remained structured in and ruled by similar mores and customs.

These characteristics are part of the functional logic of such societies, where social security and personal safety are completely bound up in defence and, where possible, the expansion of one’s land and supporting resources.

In the Admin we tended to entrust responsibilities for storekeeping, for purchasing fresh foodstuffs, for issuing fuel and oversight of vehicle allocation to trusted clerks and policemen. One wonders how the books ever balanced.

I don’t recall that we ever did balance stores records properly. I think we just used to order replenishments according the clerk’s stock-take and the station’s entitlement under that vote. Similarly we would pay out for fresh foods on vouchers typed up for us.

This would never have been done in the real world of commerce. Even now one will meet an ex-Kiap here and there who speaks fondly of “good, honest old bush cops”. My own relationship with the police with whom I worked was one which I remember, largely, with considerable fondness.

However I also remember an instance involving the extremely well-concealed burning down of an entire village by a small detachment of my police during my absence in another area. A reprisal for a non-fatal accident to one of their number using a village-owned canoe at the time.

The villagers were too scared of reprisals to complain, and without other witnesses I just had to swallow my strong suspicions and accept that it had been an unfortunate accident on a windy day, as stated by my large and imposing Corporal.

The late John Black, a most perceptive pre-war Kiap well-known for his association with Jim Taylor on the Hagen-Sepik patrol published an interesting monograph relating his own experiences with, and his view of the New Guinea Police members who served with him on many ground-breaking patrols in the ‘thirties.

His analysis was deep and very interesting. His conclusion, virtually the same as mine. Police boys could often be very naughty boys for cultural reasons imprinted very deeply within them. Has anything changed?

Those who look back in anger, as some apparently do, are misguided and miss the point that this journey into modernity, set in motion with high ideals and with generosity by Australia, is a long and difficult one.

You don’t change a micro-tribal stone age culture devoid of any sense of nationhood or commonality of interest into one which can function, just one hundred years later, in a manner analogous with Australian society and the rest of the world as it was in 1975.

The second factor, one which sits at the root of all the official corruption and dysfunction in politics and public-sector operations in PNG is one which I dealt with at some length in an article published a year or more ago in PNG’s The National  and in Quadrant, the Australian conservative quarterly.

Here I showed that the decision to close down the established embryo political system comprised of the appointed District Advisory Councils interacting with the overarching and partly-democratic Legislative Council was wrong.

This linkage of institutions would logically have served the new nation very well when fully democratised and extended to include the then Local Government Councils as the grass-roots end of the whole.

It was, after all, like all systems introduced into PNG by the Australians, one which grew within the social environment peculiar to that place and time, and importantly, it was simple, well-understood - and it worked!

Although I have looked for the logic behind the creation of a Westminster-type party parliamentary system I have not found a good explanation. Only the late David Fenbury, a man of great experience and unusually high level of intellect and determination confronted the Minister for Territories, Paul Hasluck, with a different vision. This may have been as early as 1956.

What happened, as we know, was that a system which had grown over several centuries to answer the need for fairness embracing a stratified society incorporating a few powerful men at the top and a massive number of extremely poor vassals at the bottom, was introduced.

Introduced into one of the most egalitarian societies then existing on the face of the earth; a society almost entirely bare of any vestige of hereditary hierarchy; a society where every male member had equality of opportunity within his clan; where everyone had rights to the use of land and hunting and fishing resources; where everyone had the right to be heard before the assembled clan in times of controversy.

What has resulted, in the saddest paradox in this land of many paradoxes, is that the system imposed or allowed to establish itself by the Australians has produced exactly, absolutely exactly, the conditions of class-disparity, lack of equity in society and lack of justice which prevailed in the England of the twelfth century.

What more can we say, except to say sorry. It’s too late to change things back. Ask the Grand Chief.

 

The Fuzzy Wuzzies, trekking and the ABC

A recent ABC program sparked this riposte from JOHN FOWKE about the myth that tourism is a worthy reward for the ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels’, who he considers modern PNG's real pioneers

The invasion by the Japanese in what is now PNG was one prong of the overall policy of subjugation to the will of the Japanese under the Emperor and his proposed Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

We know just how prosperous and well-treated the other invaded countries - Burma, Malaya, Indonesia and so on - became under the new regime. So it is unfortunate that the myth that PNG was "forced into a war not of its own making" is widespread.

PNG was in effect, even if not widely aware of it, defending itself as much as Australia from a fate very different from that which awaited under the Australia and the League of Nations Mandate administered by Australia.

The RSL, Friends of the Kokoda Trail and those who make a living from guided tours of this widely-publicised new middle-class icon seem (I will stand corrected if wrong) ought to be aware that the labour force we call the Angels - courtesy of a famous poem in The Australian Women’s Weekly at the time - were conscripts taken from villages all over coastal and inland Papua, except for the then uncontrolled Southern Highlands District.

Thus there is no logic in believing that the development of the tourist trade associated with the Track is in itself a worthy reward for the Angels and their descendants.

One old Fuzzy conscript, who lives near Malalaua in Gulf Province, being the father of a friend of mine, carried and laboured for four years on the Bulldog Track.

Every now and again, when there is yet another story about medals and rewards for Fuzzies, he gets together the cash to buy a return fare to Moresby. All his trips, needless to say, have been fruitless. He is in his eighties now.

It is obvious commonsense and acceptable practice to limit recruitment of porters for the tourists to residents of the Track villages and their relatives. But it is erroneous to assume that the descendents of all the Fuzzies are somehow receiving reward or recognition through this casual employment.

In 1942, the Command in Port Moresby instructed its agents, the civilian Resident Magistrates in charge of each of the administrative Districts to send Patrol Officers to forcefully recruit, under threat of sentence to imprisonment, all able-bodied males of ages judged by the recruiting officer between 18 and 40.

These recruits were accompanied by police to the nearest available medical officer who checked them and all those who passed were then signed for service and sent to Port Moresby.

Men from west of Daru right around through Goaribari and Purari, Orokolo, Kerema, Central, through Mailu, Milne Bay, East Cape, Gosiago,the islands and Northern District were conscripted to the will of the Army. The only way out was to desert, and this was difficult for those whose homes lay at any distance from the borders of Central.

A few did run away, but not many. These men were conscripts, like the young Australian chokkoes they initially carried for and supported and, unknowingly, they were serving the interest of their own land and people in their arduous and dangerous work.

So is it not enough in the way of atonement for present-day PNG that since 1945 nearly fifteen billion Australian dollars has been spent towards its social and political development and eventual independence?

Australian dollars are still being spent on a young, modern nation-state with its own chosen constitution, its own laws and its own internal and foreign policies. PNG is still supported by Australian taxpayers 34 years after independence. Surely Australia has, is and, so far as it is possible to tell, will by these commitments continue to honour any debt it may owe to the people of PNG.

If rewards and recognition in terms of medals or certificates of merit are to be presented at any time, this must be the action of the PNG Government.

The truth of the emergence into independent statehood by PNG is that the founders and pioneers are not the politicians who in the mid-sixties strove to obtain independence and who founded the two original major political parties.

No. The true pioneers of modern PNG are the Fuzzies, the Pacific Islands Battalion soldiers and the police of the Royal Papua Constabulary and the New Guinea Police.

Without these men and the overseas allies together with whom they fought and defeated the Japanese invaders, there would be a very different situation ruling in PNG today.

Is back to the village PNG’s best answer?

BY PAUL OATES

After a recent two day rehabilitation course for offenders, PNG’s Director of Community Based Corrections, Negil Kauvu, encouraged them to keep striving to show they were willing to turn their back on crime and embrace their community needs.

Ms Kauvu said they had to learn about what to give back to their community, to make their community accept them and recognise that they had made a mistake, but were ready to make amends for it.

This looks like a very admirable effort in self help and I hope CBC and the rehabilitating offenders receive all the assistance they require.

It begs the question, however, of whether the same 'commitment to change' permeates the top of the political pyramid.

To change criminal behaviour, there must be viable alternatives for employment and income. The initial allure and the inevitable poverty trap of cities like Moresby, Lae and Hagen won’t change overnight.

If there is no avenue for previous offenders to earn a living, the recourse is recidivism.

Many towns and cities of PNG might benefit hugely from a reverse migration scheme: a return of those who can't survive without crime to their rural heritage. The question is whether a village would be an attractive and viable alternative these days?

The turmoil within: PNG is a country in crisis

BY GELAB PIAK

Papua New Guinea is in a state of crisis.

It is a country sinking into itself. This is the grim reality that faces PNG today.

It is uncertain whether the PNG we know today will continue to exist as service delivery mechanisms break down and provinces seek autonomy.

The cause is an incompetent bureaucracy, a corrupt government and a Prime Minister who doesn’t want to let go of his grip on power.

The government is facing a vote of no-confidence and some members have moved to the opposition, claiming the government is so corrupt that it suppresses their rights as MPs and is not delivering services.

In adjourning Parliament to November, the government seems to have breached section 124 of the constitution. As a result, Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare, Treasurer Paul Tiensten and Speaker Jeffery Nape have been referred to the Ombudsman Commission, which says there is a possibility of prosecuting them.

The government, not so long ago, announced a K500 million deficit, and defended it as insignificant. Deputy opposition leader Bart Philemon, an economist, argues that this shows that the government has mismanaged the country’s budget.

There are so many mines in PNG, yet there is little tangible development. It’s a never-ending tale of lack of funds and, after 34 years of independence, the people still live like they did hundreds of years before independence.

The Mining Act needs to be amended or the landowners of Ramu, Porgera and other mining areas will keep causing trouble because the Act gives 70 percent of the stake to the developer and leaves the land owners with less.

The education system is failing thousands of Papua New Guineans. The government fails to provide adequate stationery and text books, libraries and teachers (many remote schools manage to scrape through with only one or two teachers).

In some places buildings are rundown and schools are closing, such as Kerevat, one of the country’s pioneering high schools. Schools in Morobe, Oro and Milne Bay are also facing closure. Countless other schools rural areas, where education is direly needed, have closed over the years.

The health system is slowly crumbling. This year Health Minister Sasa Zibe described the health system as “bloody useless”. The HIV/AIDs epidemic is a looming tragedy, whole villages could be wiped out.

There is an ever-growing shortage of drugs and a never ending story of warehouse’s dumping undistributed stocks. Port Moresby General Hospital, PNG’s biggest hospital, is ill-equipped, overcrowded and the building itself is rotting. Other hospitals throughout the country are far worse.

The Police Force is at the brink of collapse says Police Commissioner Gari Baki. It needs about K2 billion to function fully and purchase much needed equipment, as criminals are becoming more sophisticated and better equipped with weapons the police don’t have.

The Police feel cornered, because due to the government’s policies are forcing the unemployed to turn to crime as a means of survival. Many men and women are selling marijuana to make a living.

Deep down in the social saucepan of PNG, in the dark hearts of the squatter settlements and shanty towns, there is growing frustration and anger towards the government.

The greedy life style of politicians has created a divide between rich and poor. It has created social classes in PNG, and the divide is getting wider.

The hot brewing social saucepan is waiting to blow off its lid. As such, PNG is a state in crisis.

Colonel Blimps miss the point of today's PNG

JOHN FOWKE examines the attitudes of some of the Australians who left PNG around Independence and those who stayed on

Some of us with an ex-Administration background stayed on in PNG, which we have a great fondness for.

Whilst none of us is filled with missionary-like passion - far from it - we have ridden the PNG tiger.

We have also maintained positive roles, in our assortment of jobs and professions, with Papua New Guineans as friends and co-workers as well as bosses. And we feel we have helped the place in small ways.

A great many ex-PNG people in Oz, both ex-Admin and others, who meet together socially and express themselves in various forums, come across as disappointed in what has gone on in PNG over the past 30 years.

They miss the point entirely in a Colonel Blimpish way which is at best obtuse and in some cases crassly derogatory verging on racist.

It hasn't been a holiday, living up there through to this decade. There have been times of extreme frustration as well as compromises and sacrifices to meet changing mores and ways of doing things.

It’s also been necessary to stay ahead in conditions of quite severe lawlessness in some parts. I was in Tari for three months last year, and I have to tell you that the Southern Highlands Province today is incredible – like a novel set in a crumbling West African state.

Although I should add that the micro-tribe-based antipathies and jealousies mean that the war-lords are really only war-lads, in terms of the force each can muster.

Riding this tiger has nonetheless been a source of immense satisfaction.

John Leahy and I once agreed we both got a drug-rush from driving through a roadblock with impunity, piling blandishments and street-smart Tok Pisin phrases to the extent that the bois relax and wave us on, shouting “Rait man! " and "Go free, Pops!".

Silly I suppose, but good memories, lots of laughs, and that's what its all about.

As for old Kiaps - old Kiaps are all that's left. Kiaps have vanished from the face of the earth as authoritative, living, working public servants.

There remain district managers and so on, but they are an emasculated and generally pretty ineffectual lot - even when they turn up to work!

Village economies let Pacific pollies off hook

Philip Fitzpatrick

Hamish McDonald writing in the Sydney Morning Herald has noted that, when it starts in 2014, the $16 billion dollar Exxon-Mobil liquefied natural gas project will instantly double PNG's GDP.

While that should be good news for the average citizen, Hamish also cites the latest Pacific Economic Bulletin which points out that, during the last resources boom in PNG in the 1990s, there was no corresponding rise in general income or welfare.

The Bulletin says PNG may have already started spending the new gas revenues before they’ve arrived. That doesn't bode well for the thousands of young people reaching working age in PNG each year.

PNG might take note of what their Melanesian neighbours are doing. Ralph Regenvanu, a Vanuatu politician, recently told a forum at the Lowy Institute in Brisbane that his country's 220,000 people "had been largely unaffected by the global financial crisis because they did not belong to a modern economy".

He said about 80 percent of Vanuatuans live in traditional villages and "rely on tradition and kinship for food, work exchanges and dispute settlement". (I personally found that if you go to the outer islands like Tanna and Espiritu Santo there is a distinct feel of PNG in the 1960s).

Vanuatu, much like PNG, has one of the highest population growths in the world. In both countries, traditional village economies have expanded to cope with population increase. There is little real poverty; no one is starving to death.

The village economies did what the pollies couldn't do, probably saving the latter from popular insurrections.

Ralph Regenvanu says: "We must make deliberate efforts to maintain the traditional economy where it exists and ensure it remains as our buffer in the uncertain global economy ". He says it needs to be incorporated into the economic mix and its supports, like traditional land tenure, need to be maintained.

This sort of philosophy flies in the face of solutions on offer from major aid donors like Australia as well as the amateur armchair experts who grace the pages of this blog from time to time.

Hamish McDonald says that "generally, neo-conservative economists argue a precondition for fast growth is sweeping aside hazy traditional land ownership systems in favour of registered, transferable individual ownership".

If you think Ralph Regenvanu is being naive, he points out that "the traditional economy has so far absorbed a 90 percent growth in population since 1980 in Vanuatu. Perhaps it is romantic to think the cash economy is even capable of this".

A World Bank study presented to the Pacific Islands Forum in Cairns last week suggested that, instead of trying to push economic development into the bush, it might be better to work on establishing communications and transport links so that the people in the bush can tap into the economy from the other direction.