PNG ATTITUDE

Australian aid has failed in PNG – report

Australian aid has failed the Pacific, including Papua New Guinea, according to a report just released by the Centre for Independent Studies. The report, The Bipolar Pacific, says Australia had tipped more than K30 billion of aid into PNG since Independence, but despite this the country is classed as stagnating or becoming poorer.

PNG is categorise on top of a group of Pacific Island nations – all Melanesian countries – that have not progressed despite huge amounts of Australian aid. Other islands countries such as the Cook Islands, Samoa and Tonga had improved in that time, said CIS researchers Prof Helen Hughes and Gaurav Sodhi.

In Melanesia – PNG, Solomons, Vanuatu and Fiji - most families have no electricity, no running water, no sanitation and little health care. “PNG and SI, despite a relatively large land mass and rich natural endowments, have at best stagnated,” says the report. “Imprudent economic policies in PNG have stalled development. Revenues from minerals and timber have not been invested in physical or social infrastructure. Egregious corruption in government has led to civil unrest and crime, discouraging job-creating private enterprise. Port Moresby has become one of the most violent cities in the world.”

Meanwhile, at the Pacific Forum in Niue, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has said that Australia will strengthen the skills of local officials by offering 20,000 training opportunities regionally, 2000 places for leadership programs and 100 scholarships for senior and middle level executives at the national level.

Source: PNG Post-Courier, 20 August 2008

Call for research papers on Pacific issues

The Pacific Leadership Program is an Australian Government project designed to improve governance and leadership in the Pacific and East Timor. The program’s research committee is inviting research proposals from the region, including Australian, New Zealand and Hawaiian institutions with links to Pacific Island research bodies, to address one of two major regional issues.

The first, ‘The Cost of Corruption’, asks researchers to cover matters including now corruption costs can be assessed and quantified, where this has been done and what are the challenges and implications for the Pacific Region.

The second research paper PLP wants is a review of the state of knowledge relating to ‘Successful Models of Youth Leadership’. Researchers are asked to identify positive and negative models of youth leadership in the Pacific, whether these programs make a difference in addressing social issues facing youth and what is the role of government, NGOs and the churches.

The research papers are due for completion, respectively, in February and April next year. There’s a fee payable - $35,000 for corruption; $65,000 for youth (work that out!).

Full details are available by downloading the official document here. Download plp_research.pdf  The deadline for proposals is 12 September.

History of Keravat High in production

Barbara Short (who was Barbara Neasmith when she taught at Keravat) is on the hunt for past students of Keravat High School. Barbara taught there from 1975-81 and is now writing a history of the school that will also include details of former pupils and what they did with their lives after Keravat.

A number of past headmasters are helping Barbara write the history, including some from the 1950s. Another research source has been the Kokomo magazine. Barbara does not want the book to just deal with the running of the school. “We had the motto, tuum est, it is up to you, so I am interested in finding out what people have done with their lives,” she says.

“I realise many earlier students at Keravat, in the 1950s and early 1960s, have become leaders of PNG and we know lots about them. In this book, I hope to tell something about the lives of the hundreds of later students who graduated.”

Barbara is contacting former students and asking them to provide her with details on their lives since they left Keravat and is also asking them about “what has motivated and guided them” during their lives. She’s also seeking comments on “what they believe is needed for good leadership in PNG in the future.”

You can contact Barbara at email cbshort@bigpond.com, phone 02 9876 1018 or write to her at 27 Chesterfield Road, Epping NSW 2121, Australia.

New look at Trobriands administration

I’ve just heard from Andy Connelly after three years. Back then he was asking about ASOPA and related matters and I steered him to Ex-Kiap.net and the PNGAA, whereupon he got in touch with Chips Mackellar and Paul Oates, who he says have been very helpful in completing his MA at California State University. Andy's master's thesis, Counting Coconuts: Patrol Reports from the Trobriand Islands, 1907-34  is online here.

Now Andy has been accepted into the PhD program in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at ANU, where he will start in October, working under Chris Ballard. He’ll be writing a doctoral paper on the Australian administration of the Trobriands, starting with an analysis of colonial history and ending with an exploration of contemporary structures of power and economy in the islands. This will include looking at how the Trobrianders remember the colonial period and how they have represented and refashioned these recollections to suit their lives.

According to Andy, the online communities of PNGAA, ASOPA and Ex-Kiap.net will be pivotal in this pursuit. Andy also says one of his goals is to have more involvement with the PNGAA and we certainly look forward to the prospect of that – particularly through the Association’s newly former History & Scholarship sub-committee, chaired by Riley Warren AM.

TPNG’s legal system: the book

Bruce Ottley lived in Port Moresby from 1972-77, where he taught law at the University of Papua New Guinea. He returned to his native United States in 1978 and is now a Professor of Law at DePaul University law school in Chicago.”Thanks for providing a place for former PNG people to communicate,” he tells ASOPA PEOPLE.

For some years now, between other research and writing, Bruce has been working on a book on PNG's colonial legal system: its creation and operation and how it changed over the years. He now wants to drive this project forward. “I would love to hear from former kiaps who have stories about their experiences as magistrates of the Courts of Native Affairs,” he says. “I’m also interested in anything anyone can tell me about how the legal system actually operated in PNG in the 1950s and 1960s.”

I know that many ASOPA PEOPLE readers – especially our kiap colleagues - were active in legal, magisterial and related matters during this period and are particularly knowledgeable about the subject of Bruce’s research. You can contact him at bottley@depaul.edu