Siobhain and Ryan Cole and the beloved GA8 Airvan - keeping the people of PNG connected

SIOBHAIN COLE | MAF Papua New Guinea

Being a Missionary Aviation Fellowship pilot family based at a remote outstation like Telefomin or Rumginae includes aircraft maintenance and grocery shopping trips for the family every third month to MAF’s main base at Mt Hagen. After coming back as a married couple from an extended time of leave and home assignment, Siobhain Cole traded her role as MAF PNG’s ground operations manager to being a pilot’s wife at an outstation.

She still does operations project work and flight bookings for the department she previously led, but she also has to look after the wellbeing of her pilot husband, Ryan, who flies the Twin Otter as a first officer and also the single crew GA8 Airvan, both out of Telefomin where they are one of three pilot families.

In the past, Siobhain orchestrated other pilot families’ schedules to come and go out of Mt Hagen for shopping and aircraft maintenance trips. Now she is experiencing the joys and challenges of such trips, like unexpectedly getting stuck in Mt Hagen for an extra night or two and not necessarily getting home in one go. Here she shares some of her experiences of a recent trip to Mt Hagen and back home to Telefomin, a good 90 minutes flight away, close to the western border of PNG.

TELEFOMIN - A little while back, on a Monday morning, Ryan flew me and another pilot direct to Mt Hagen to attend some operations meetings, and to swap his Airvan for another one with the intention of returning back to Telefomin before the end of the day.

Unfortunately, the aircraft he was swapping for was a little bit more broken than the poor, hard-working engineers realised and not serviceable yet. So Ryan ended up getting stuck in Mt Hagen with me for two nights and was only able to fly back to Telefomin on the Wednesday.

I felt sorry for all the people who couldn’t fly for three days because the plane was broken; but I’m awfully glad because it meant we only spent one night apart in the end, instead of three.

After the meetings were over and I’d had a handover from a friend who was going on holiday whose work I would be covering, I left Mt Hagen on the Thursday. It was the Mt Hagen based Cessna Caravan, flown by Mathias Glass and Luke Newell (who was checking Mathias into an airstrip he hadn’t been into in the Caravan before), who flew me home.

However, I’m not the queen and so I don’t get to fly direct unless the plane happens to be going direct, which is rare as Telefomin is approximately a 1.5 hour flight from Mt Hagen.

So I had the fun of flying through four other airstrips before being dropped home in Telefomin. Well, I say fun, but mums with a bunch of kids definitely wouldn’t say that and, after a full day of flying, I do feel rather tired and a little nauseous. I really don’t know how my husband does it all day every day.

At Wanakipa for the first time four years ago, Siobhain felt a little intimidated; now old friends rush to greet her

First stop was Wanakipa, which was the first bush airstrip in PNG I ever flew into more than four years ago. I remember then feeling very intimidated by the hundred or so people lined up along the edge of the runway, just staring at us.

I didn’t know what to do and back then I couldn’t speak a word of Tok Pisin, so I just awkwardly stayed under the shadow of the wing, feeling unworthy and like an animal at a safari park.

This time, four years of experience later and a little bit of language, I walked amongst the people, shaking hands with some of the women and talking to whoever would look me in the eye without running away.

Then I spotted someone with a tee-shirt that read ‘I Need A Hug’ and insisted I do as her tee-shirt said and give her a hug, which she allowed, much to the amusement of everyone watching. How much my perspective and confidence has improved in the last four years.

The second stop was Tekin, one of the more tricky airstrips to land at and the location of a successful high school which was founded by a single missionary lady, Glenda Giles, who still works there training the teachers.

Glenda is from New Zealand and has worked in PNG for over 50 years. Here we met Paul Woodington flying the Cessna Caravan based in Wewak and the three pilots started talking about their beloved aircraft whilst the agent, Patrick, ran around busily, arranging the different passengers for each aircraft.

The third stop was Rumginae, a base where MAF has two pilot families, the Eatwells and the Neufelds. Both were away at the time - the Eatwells because their Cessna Caravan was in maintenance in Australia, and the Neufelds on sick leave.

Engineer Francis Kama makes some maintenance adjustments to the Airvan at Rumginae strip

As they were away, Rick Velvin, a well-experienced ex-MAF pilot, had been covering for a few weeks. Because his GA8 Airvan had a maintenance issue, we had to drop off an engineer to fix the aircraft so Rick could fly it back to Mt Hagen before he left the country the very next day.

It’s very unusual for a Mt Hagen based aircraft to go all the way out to Rumginae but I made the most of the opportunity by using the bathroom in the Neufeld’s house. (Thanks!)

The fourth stop was Tabubil, the MAF base closest to Telefomin which Ryan flies out of several days each week. The staff there are used to me visiting from Telefomin. But today they were very surprised to find me on the Hagen plane.

Eventually, after a very long day of flying (for me) we reached Telefomin and I was very pleased to be going home, especially as Ryan was off sick that day with a bad cold.

It was much more of an adventure than I’d expected, but it got me home to our little house in the mountains and gave me the opportunity to appreciate this beautiful country in which we have the privilege of working and to meet some of the people who we have the privilege to serve.

PHIL FITZPATRICK

Velma Ninjipa shot in the face - robbery is not enough, now gunmen shoot to kill

TUMBY BAY – ABC journalist Eric Tlozek filed a story on Saturday about Velma Ninjipa who was held up by gunmen outside a motel in Port Moresby and blasted in the face with a shotgun.

Tlozek was pointing out how dangerous Port Moresby has become and how money and resources are being thrown into security for the upcoming APEC meeting in November.

The ferocity of the attack on the woman and the patent disregard for human life by her attacker reminded me of an incident in which I was involved in the Southern Highlands in 2003.

In that case we were victims of a set up. A company helicopter was supposed to meet us at a remote airstrip to pick up a payroll and whisk it away to safety. But workers on a seismic line had engineered a fake medical emergency to divert the aircraft to another location.

The inexperienced chief of the seismic camp fell for the ruse, sent the chopper elsewhere and left us on the airstrip with the payroll and no alternative but to make a run for it in our truck.

A few kilometres from the airstrip, in a planned attack, a gunman stepped out of the bush onto the road in front of the truck and without hesitation shot at the driver, Peter Mantilla.

I was sitting beside him in the truck cab. He had seen the gunman and ducked. The shotgun blast raked across the top of his head blowing a hole in the partition at the back of the cab.

Driver Peter Mantilla, ducked just in time to escape the worst of the shotgun blast

Thinking clearly despite the situation, the driver drove straight at the gunman who was busily reloading. The man jumped to one side and we powered past him up the hill and around a bend. There was a tree felled across the road.

By that stage the gunman and his mates, armed with bush knives, were running along the road after us.

We slammed into the tree, pushed it aside and continued up the hill, hoping none of the workers we had picked up at the airstrip had fallen from the back of the truck.

I pulled off my tee shirt and wrapped it around the driver’s head to try and stop the bleeding and between us, me steering because he was blinded by blood and him changing the gears, we managed to get away.

When we were far enough along the road, we stopped while I got the driver out and managed to contact the seismic camp on a hand-held radio. A helicopter was sent to help us.

There were several things about that incident that remain in my mind.

The first was the bravery of Peter Mantilla from Mount Hagen, who ended up with 27 stitches in his scalp.

The second was the way we had both remained calm during the whole incident and did what was required to remove ourselves from further harm. I think that appropriate reaction surprised both of us.

The gunman attacked the cab from the wrong angle; otherwise the outcome would have been deadly

The third was how dumb the gunman had been; he had stepped from the bush on the wrong side of the road and fired diagonally at us. If he had come from the other side he would have been able to fire straight at Peter and kill him.

The fourth and most significant thing was how the gunman had fired at Peter with absolute intent to kill him. There was no hesitation whatsoever and no attempt to just hold us up.

The same thing struck me about the recent incident in Port Moresby. A man with a shotgun who deliberately intended to kill someone.

In both cases it was lucky the gunmen didn’t have more deadly high powered weapons.

What I have a great deal of trouble comprehending is how one human being can point a gun at someone deliberately with the intent of killing them. I don’t understand this in war let alone in peacetime.

I know it happens the world over but I never expected to see it in a place like Papua New Guinea. Unlike the hotheads who injure and kill each other in tribal wars these characters are simply vicious killers and murderers. I don’t think that was common in Papua New Guinea twenty or thirty years ago.

The gunman who tried to hold us up was tracked down by Mendi police but ‘unfortunately’ drowned while they were trying to arrest him. The inspector who led the hunt told me in a quiet aside that they had to hold him under water for quite a while before he gave up.

The man who shot the woman in Port Moresby has not been caught and it doesn’t look like the police are in a hurry to catch him.

I still have a handful of flattened, razor sharp shotgun pellets I collected from the floor of the truck that are spattered with Peter’s blood. They are a reminder of how much Papua New Guinea has changed.

Montevideo Maru - the freighter's sinking was Australia's worst ever maritime disaster

GRANTLEE KIEZA | The Courier-Mail (Brisbane)

BRISBANE - They were herded onto the cargo vessel and into the hot, dark, airless hold. Beaten, bullied and bedraggled, they were slaves of the merciless Japanese army during the darkest days of Australia’s history and were treated worse than animals.

It was 22 June 1942 at the tropical outpost of Rabaul, a port on New Britain, part of the Australian mandated territory of New Guinea.

The great volcano there had erupted five years earlier but that disaster was nothing compared with the man-made carnage as Japanese soldiers thrust bayonets toward their prisoners or beat them with bamboo rods.

Soon these men — numbering more than 1,000 and including at least 49 Queenslanders — would become casualties in Australia’s worst ever maritime disaster.

Half-starved, they were marched to Rabaul’s docks and forced aboard the Japanese ship Montevideo Maru. Some gave strained smiles or a farewell wave to those left behind, the strong supporting the weak as they stumbled up the gangway, arm in arm.

It is believed there were 845 prisoners of war and 208 civilians, including Tom Vernon Garrett, a cocoa planter, whose grandson Peter Garrett became the front man for Midnight Oil and a federal government minister. 

Peter Sydney Beazley, a builder and teacher at the local Methodist mission, was among the prisoners too. His nephew Kim became federal Labor leader.

Four hundred of the men had been allowed to write letters home, but the Japanese coached them in what to say.

Sergeant Bob Burrowes, 24, told his mother and siblings in Melbourne:

Dear Folks,
Just a short note to let you know I’m all right. I am a prisoner under the care of the Japanese.
I can only write one letter so will you let [his girlfriend] Heather know.
I hope you are all OK and haven’t been worrying too much.
Keep the old bike in good nick as I will need it again.
Don’t worry.
Cheerio.
Love, Bob

Jim Burrowes OAM

He asked his family to “get Jim out if you possibly can”, but it was too late to stop Bob’s baby brother enlisting and Jim Burrowes OAM, now 95, became one of the heroic Coastwatchers, secreted in mountains around the New Guinea islands reporting on Japanese troop movements.

Speaking from his home in Melbourne’s south, Jim Burrowes revealed the trauma the war brought to his family and especially to his mother Alice.

“We started out as a family of seven but there were only three of us at the end of the war,” Burrowes says.

“We lost Bob and my other brother Tom who was killed on his first flying mission in 1943. He was only 20. My father died during the war, too, and we lost a sister in childbirth. It was very hard on poor old Mum.”

The Australian government had refused requests to evacuate troops from Rabaul in December 1941, effectively sacrificing them to the Japanese tsunami as it headed southwest after devastating the American fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Rabaul was guarded by 1,396 soldiers of Lark Force, mostly young Victorians, but they were overrun as 5,000 Japanese stormed the harbour port on 23 January 1942.

Resistance was futile and Lark Force commander Colonel John Scanlan issued his famous order, “Every man for himself”.

Those troops not captured in the first few hours retreated through the jungle, hoping to make their escape. About 400 made it after a horrendous trek across crocodile-infested rivers, battling malaria, dysentery, malnutrition, exhaustion and a murderous army on their heels.

Dickie Manson, the 11-year old boy shot by the Japanese alongside his mother accused of being spies

About 160 Australians reached Tol Plantation expecting salvation. Instead five barge-loads of Japanese soldiers were waiting on the beach. The Australians were tied together with fishing lines and, two or three at a time, were shot or used for bayonet practice as their mates sat terrified, knowing they were next.

In May 1942, Japanese soldiers lined up 11-year-old Dickie Manson — a former student of Fortitude Valley Boys’ School — and shot him as a spy beside his mother.

Then, on 22 June, the Montevideo Maru left Rabaul taking the 1,053 Australian captives as slave labour bound for the Chinese island of Hainan.

USS Sturgeon sank Montevideo Maru not knowing it carried Allied soldiers and civilians

Eight days into the voyage an American submarine, USS Sturgeon, not realising Australian prisoners were on board, began stalking the ship.

Off the northern coast of the Philippines at 2.29am on 1 July 1942, two US torpedoes set the Montevideo Maru’s oil tank on fire. It sank in just 11 minutes.

In a final act of mateship, some of the young Australians, who had already endured so much, clung on to debris in the black ocean and sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’ in memory of their comrades floating dead nearby.

None of the Australians survived, though it would be years before their families learned of their fate. Of the 88 Japanese guards, only 17 lived to tell the tale.

Brisbane businessman Phil Ainsworth, 80, president of the Rabaul and Montevideo Maru Society, was instrumental in erecting a monument to the Maru victims at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra six years ago.

The 76th anniversary of the sinking was commemorated at a service on Sunday at the Brisbane Cenotaph.

Jim Burrowes became a mining executive after the war, regularly doing business with the Japanese. He thinks often of his brothers and of his mum but says that, unlike many veterans, he holds no ill will towards Japan.

“Most of the Japanese people did not want war any more than we did,” he says.

PHIL FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - We humans tend to form many of our opinions based on what we read, hear and watch in the media. Sometimes we even adopt what we believe directly from the media, whether knowingly or unknowingly.

Media owners and producers know this and tailor the information they disseminate accordingly.

And because the bottom line for most media outlets is the number of sales they make and the profit that generates, they tend to give us what we want.

Even non-profit outlets, including social media, tend to present material in line with what they think audiences want so they can maintain interest.

What this means is that most media, rather than being leaders in shaping ideas and opinion, are actually captives of their audience.

Conservative media caters for conservative consumers and progressive media caters for progressive consumers.

In between these extremes there are various views dependent upon what particular audiences think.

Media, in short, specialises in preaching to the converted.

Or, quite often, it tries to convert the audience on behalf of the special interests (like governments or advertisers) that provide it with influence or money.

This makes the problem of presenting a balanced and unbiased view particularly difficult. Even our public broadcasters struggle with this dilemma as they seek a middle road between many conflicting views and pressures.

So what exactly is it that the public craves in its media? The short answer is ‘a good story’. And very often ‘a good story’ for people is essentially negative.

Conservatives feed on negative reports about progressives and progressives love negative reports about conservatives.

Supporters love good news about their side; opponents are joyful about bad news about the other side.

Why do you think our media are full of stories about crime, accidents, dreadful diseases, political scandals and such awfulness? Because that’s what very many people prefer to read.

Audiences tend to find tedious anything that falls outside such subjects. Perhaps because so many people’s lives are less than perfect; they find comfort in hearing about lives that are even worse than their own.

At the same time, people are particularly sceptical about anything given a positive bias (‘spin’). Except where their sporting team won or the government gave them a tax break or a wantok scored big in the lottery.

Of course, governments and businesses seek to ensure good news about themselves makes it into the media. Partly this is because they like reading good news about themselves but often it is to hide bad news or distract readers from it.

In Papua New Guinea, reporting by the two major national newspapers has adopted a formula where, because of various motives, they will mostly give the government and business a big chunk of positive spin.

But there’s a downside. For every positive story they publish about the current government, full of spin and not addressing the real issues, they lose credibility with many readers.

People don’t want to hear about how well the government is performing, they want to hear how it is really performing. And reality for most people is what they are experiencing in their lives. Try to tell a poor man that he lives in the best country in the world.

This phenomenon of ‘bad news is good news’ is reflected in the way the Australian media reports on Papua New Guinea.

Australian audiences not only expect that stories coming out of Papua New Guinea will be bad but almost require them to be so before they will take any notice.

Stories about the appalling corruption and mismanagement of the O’Neill government feeds directly into this need. From the Australian media’s point of view, the excesses and stuff ups of the O’Neill government provides excellent copy.

If Papua New Guinea ever has an honest and progressive prime minister you can bet his or her coverage in the Australian media will be minimal.

The same dynamic also applies to international audiences. That’s why stories about sorcery, cannibalism, tribal warfare and the dangers of Papua New Guinea do so well. The only exception is the occasional story about some bizarre exotica generally involving photographs of semi-naked men in bilas and bare breasted women.

Some Papua New Guineans think that many Australians actually want Papua New Guinea to fail as a nation.

A few commentators in Papua New Guinea have recently expressed this view, notably Governor Gary Juffa of Oro Province. Before him politicians like Iambakey Okuk and even Michael Somare made similar comments.

Sadly however, as expressed so many times on PNG Attitude, most Australians, including its politicians, don’t care whether Papua New Guinea succeeds or fails. Strangely, as a nation sitting on its doorstep which is more and more beguiled by China, it is entirely irrelevant to them.

That’s Australia!

All this could make you very despondent, particularly if you live in Papua New Guinea, but don’t be. Negative media is also alive and well in Australia and around the world.

If you read newspapers, listen to radio, watch television or devour the internet, you’ll see news, and even hope, of failure.

The average Australian expects that as a nation in whatever endeavour we undertake, except perhaps sport, we will fail.

Failure is, after all, a lot more interesting than success. This why we are so fascinated with Donald Trump. He’s a failure waiting to happen and we’re enthralled.

Do Australians want Papua New Guinea to fail? Yes!

Do Australians want Australia to fail? Of course!

Ben Doherty

BEN DOHERTY | The Guardian | Extract

An extract from a thoughtful piece by Ben Doherty on the Australia-PNG-China relationship. You can read the entire article here

SYDNEY - China’s aid spending in Papua New Guinea – with its focus on infrastructure and “few-strings-attached” concessional loans – risks eroding Australia’s influence in the country, with Australian aid sometimes viewed as paternalistic and unwieldy.

A Deakin University submission to a parliamentary inquiry, based on interviews with Papua New Guinean business, political, academic and community leaders argues Australia risks being diminished by rising Chinese spending.

PNG is Australia’s closest neighbour, and for reasons of proximity and a shared history – PNG was under Australian administration until 1975 – Australia has been its most significant international partner.

But China has recently dramatically increased its aid spending in PNG, with a particular focus on signature pieces of infrastructure and concessional loans.

According to the Deakin University submission, “those interviewed noted the differences of the structure, transparency and detail of Australian aid planning to that of the more opaque Chinese aid. For one interviewee, this made ‘Chinese aid more effective. Chinese aid is unconditional, no strings attached ... the government can use this aid more flexibly’.”

There was a view from some respondents that Australian aid – highly accountable, and focused on the human sectors, such as education, health and gender – was sometimes seen as paternalistic.

“It was also noted that “Australia’s influence has diminished considerably as a result of the rise in Chinese aid flows to PNG,” the submission says.

One of the authors of the submission, Prof Matthew Clarke, told the Guardian China’s aid to PNG was recognised there as a vehicle for increasing Beijing’s influence in the country, its trading sphere and leverage in the region.

“When it talks to PNG, China talks about a ‘south-to-south’ relationship,” Clarke said. “It sees itself as being a developing economy, as much more of an equal partner, which is well-received in PNG.

“And the type of aid China is offering also lends itself to the Melanesian context, the ‘big man’ political culture, where leaders can point to a piece of infrastructure and say, ‘look what I’ve delivered, look what I’ve brought’.”

Clarke said the PNG government was pragmatic about aid, and willing to play one donor off against another in order to achieve a desired outcome.

“There are probably two broad lessons: that this is not an issue that just involves Australians and China – that the voices and views of Papua New Guineans must be considered. If we fail to listen, we won’t have a good outcome,” he said.

“And that Australia needs to be smarter with its aid. For Papua New Guinean leaders, it is easier to critique the Australian aid program because another is there to compete and take its place.”

The parliament’s joint standing committee on foreign affairs, defence and trade is undertaking an inquiry into the effectiveness of Australia’s aid in the Indo-Pacific region and “its role in supporting our regional interests”.

Australia is the largest aid donor in the Pacific, with 90% of its $3.9bn aid budget directed towards partners in the Indo-Pacific.

But China’s growing interest has been followed by reports of plans to build military bases in countries such as Vanuatu, and its assertiveness in militarising atolls in the South China Sea is seen as a template for increased military influence.

Australia remains the dominant aid partner. The Lowy Institute estimates that between 2006 and 2016, Australia has dedicated $7.7bn in aid to the region, dwarfing China’s $1.7b. However, there are concerns over China’s rising interest.

The foreign minister, Julie Bishop, said small states in the region could be harmed by unsustainable debt through aid “loans”, with debt-for-equity swaps imperilling their sovereignty.

“We’re concerned that the consequences of entering into some of these financing arrangements will be detrimental to their long-term sovereignty,” she said.

Pomio wasteland - "Before we lost our land we could provide support to our relatives in times of hardship, providing them with land to garden, housing materials and cash crops. Now all that is lost"

STAFF REPORTER | Act Now PNG

PORT MORESBY - Communities affected by three Special Agriculture Business Leases (SABLs) in the West Pomio District of East New Britain Province have assessed the economic damage caused by logging and oil palm planting at more than K2.4 billion.

The damage assessment was compiled by 17 communities that have lost 42,400 hectares of customary land under the Pomata, Ralopal and Nakiura leases.

The total assessment of K2.4 billion comprises both the damage already suffered since the leases were issued and the future loss that will accrue through to 2110 if the leases are not cancelled and the land returned.

Community spokesperson Ana Sipona says the communities never agreed to the loss of their customary land or the logging and oil palm planting.

“There was never any proper awareness conducted by government departments and people did not give their free, prior and informed consent,” Sipona said

“The SABL commission of inquiry revealed the same thing happened across the country, with more than five million hectares of land being illegally acquired.”

Spokesperson Norbert Pames says the size of the damage assessment is a powerful reminder of the value of customary land to local communities and the damage they can suffer when the State facilitates or encourages customary land alienation.

“Too often our leaders are fooled by false promises of the development and government services that will follow if they sign over our land and they do not stop to think about what will be lost in the process,” he said.

The communities affected by the three SABLs are Atu, Bairaman, Gugulena, Kaiton, Lau, Malmaltalie, Manginuna, Mauna, Meinge, Mu, Polo, Pomai, Porosalel, Puapal, Rano, Rovan, and Tontongpal.

Members of the communities compiled the damage assessment using a framework developed by Dr Tim Anderson of the University of Sydney and published in 2017. The framework provides for an economic evaluation of the damage caused by activities that follow from the alienation of customary land.

“We have done a thorough assessment that includes the commercial loss of our timber and the rural production lost as a result of the logging and oil palm,” said Paul Palosualrea. “This includes subsistence food production, lost market incomes and lost export crop sales.

“Since the leases were issued we have lost 50% of our garden areas, 50% of our cash crops and 50% of our cocoa sales. This is equivalent to a loss of more than K30,000 a year for each of 900 plus families in the area.”

Spokesperson Leoba Lovatenra said the assessment of damage also includes the social values of customary land and forests and the loss of ecological goods and services.

“Before we lost our land we could provide support to our relatives in times of hardship, providing them with land to garden, housing materials and cash crops,” she said.

“Now all that is lost. There is also the loss of cultural and recreational values that are immeasurable but all have a value.

“The ecological costs includes the impacts on soil and waterways and the costs that would be involved in restoring the 18,000 hectares of our forests that have been logged and cleared.”

The total damage is equivalent to K56,659 for each hectare of customary land affected.

Mauna Ward Councillor Pius Kene explained that while the logging company, a subsidiary of Rimbunan Hijau, has exported more than 1.25 million cubic metres of logs from the three SABL areas, the communities own successful certified sawmilling operation has been put out of business.

Rimbunan Hijau has received over K300 million from its sale of logs but the communities will have lost almost K292 million in revenue from their lost sawmilling business over the lifetime of the leases.

“The big differences between our own sawmilling business and the Rimbunan Hijau operation is that ours was owned by the communities themselves and used the forests in a sustainable way while RH is a foreign multinational and has cleared large-areas of forest for oil-palm planting,” said Kene.

“It is a tragedy that the government has favoured foreign-owned destruction over sustainable locally-owned uses and left our communities to suffer the damage”.

Download - West Pomio Community Damage Assessment Report

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - As the world continues to regress towards an approximation of the state of affairs that existed at the end of the 19th century, Phil Fitzpatrick has rightly drawn attention to one of the dubious blessings that modernity has given to developing countries such as PNG.

It is a sad fact of human existence that our aggressive nature, inherent fear of the other and instinct towards tribalism frequently combines to create a state of animosity and sometimes war.

Worse still, we have proved marvellously adept at creating new technologies with to wage war more efficiently and effectively.

The developed world has now achieved mastery over methods of killing that are capable of threatening the very survival of our species.

Fortunately, thus far at least, we have felt constrained from using those technologies, mostly owing to the fear of mutually assured destruction, which has generated the exceedingly apt acronym MAD.

Less fortunately, we have enthusiastically provided vast numbers of lesser weapons to societies such as that of Papua New Guinea.

This means that people whose culture and world view is, quite frankly, hardly different from that of their ancestors, possess not bows and arrows but Armalite rifles and similar weapons.

Such armaments are exponentially more capable of doing harm than any traditional weapon. Their mere possession is deemed to confer power and authority upon the bearer in a way that no traditional weapon ever could.

The problem with seeking to use a weapon to make others submit to your will is that, in the event of non-compliance, you have to make a decision about whether to actually use it.

My cousin, a very senior police officer, has said that amongst Australia's criminal classes, any threats are regarded as meaningless unless those threatened believe they will be acted upon.

Thus a threat to kill has to be, in fact, a promise.

This is the logic that led to the lethal gang warfare that overtook Melbourne's criminal world for much of the 1990s and early 2000s.

Now PNG's criminal classes have both the weapons and the will to use them. Traditional PNG cultures valued fight leaders who were willing and able to use lethal force, although usually only in certain defined circumstances.

These men were, in practice, ruthless killers. Pre-colonial PNG was no more some sort of Arcadian idyll where people always lived in harmony than was medieval Europe. Power was exerted by force to achieve both personal and tribal ends. 

It is a very small step from that culture into the sort of the tribalism that is an intrinsic feature of criminal gangs.

So, I would contend the only really new thing about what is happening in PNG today is that men who imagine themselves to be the true heirs of a warrior culture now have access to modern weapons.

These men are, in fact, the same old breed of killers; the newness exists in the sense that the motivations may be different but not their willingness to assert power over others by exercising an assumed prerogative to kill them.

I cannot see us humans mastering our nastier impulses any time soon, whether in PNG or Syria or Eastern Ukraine or Iraq or Afghanistan or the Yemen or the good old US of A or anywhere else.

The new breed is new in the sense that the motivations are different but not so new in their willingness to assert power over others by exercising an assumed prerogative to kill them.

They blight all societies and, if their malignant energy can be harnessed by political means, they can turn into ravening killers and destroyers of any viable rules-based society.

There is much to fear in these gun wielding thugs and a failure to deal ruthlessly with them will do untold harm to PNG.

None of us want that for Papua New Guinea any more than we would wish it upon ourselves.

STAFF REPORTER | Radioinfo 

Keith Jackson - 'Chinese want to make the Pacific  a sphere of influence'

SYDNEY - Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat morning program has undergone some format changes, causing concern that there have been more cuts to the national broadcaster’s international radio service.

And, in another change, announced internally today, esteemed Pacific Affairs reporter Bruce Hill will be leaving the ABC.

The format changes “are not cuts,” according to Radio Australia manager Cath Dwyer, who has told Radioinfo the format of the morning sequence was rearranged to make it sound better.

At the beginning of this year, before Cath Dwyer took up her current position, the ABC announced that “listeners in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific will get an additional two hours of live morning weekday programming with the launch of a new morning news, talk and entertainment show.”

But the show was "a combination of different formats that wasn't working as well as we wanted it to," according to Dwyer, who explained that the morning sequence began with the half hour Pacific Beat show, then half an hour of Pacific Mornings, then a replay of Pacific Beat, another half hour of Pacific Mornings followed by AM.

“We needed to refine the format. The style and pacing of the shows were just too different, so we have consolidated Pacific Mornings into a 90 minute show and added some of our best and most relevant RN programs into the early timeslot, because they fit better with Pacific Beat and AM,” said Dwyer

“There are no cuts, in fact we have allocated slightly more resources.”

PNG media commentator Keith Jackson, previously of Jackson Wells Morris, is one of several expert observers who are worried about the changes happening to Radio Australia services in the Pacific.

"Shortwave seems like the crystal set these days, an old technology of no current relevance,” he told Radioinfo.

“But to the people of PNG and the Pacific and small boats at sea, for weather reports and general information, it was a godsend.

"Then a couple of years ago, the ABC - with no pushback from Australia's foreign affairs department - decided to save a few coins by disbanding their transmitters in Darwin and Melbourne.

"There was an immediate and prolonged protest from the islands to our near north but to no avail. The transmitters shut down, the frequencies were given up and - lo and behold - China has just grabbed them,” Jackson said.

"Now normally this would be a matter of little consequence - samting nating as we say in Pidgin English - except that the Chinese have a strong desire to make the south west Pacific part of their sphere of influence.

“Australia has known about this for years but only recently - probably pushed by the Americans - are we beginning to make a fuss about it.

"Despite this, the ABC has just decided to further cut its popular internet-based Pacific Beat program - in another act that has enraged Pacific listeners. Can its Chinese sequel be too far away?”

Stephen Howes - 'foreign exchange woes'

Director of the Australian National University’s Development Policy Centre, STEPHEN HOWES, has analysed the results of the most recent Business Advantage International’s long-running annual ‘PNG 100 CEO Survey’. Here are his conclusions…..

CANBERRA - Every year since 2012, Business Advantage International has run a survey of Papua New Guinea business executives.

Called the ‘PNG 100 CEO Survey’, it is said to be a survey of ‘senior executives from a representative sample of PNG’s largest companies, across all sectors of the economy.’

While I am not in a position to judge how representative is the sample surveyed, the results are certainly illuminating. This article summarises the trends from these surveys, and draws out three lessons.

1. The last seven years have been full of surprise for PNG business

This graph creates an index of performance against expectations.

A value above zero indicates that, for a majority of businesses, performance exceeded expectations in the year shown.

A value below zero indicates that a majority under-performed.

We all know that the last few years have been a boom-bust roller-coaster, but what is interesting—and a good indicator of the severity of this business cycle—is just how many businesses have been surprised, first on the upside then on the down.

In the boom years of 2011 and 2012, many businesses did better than expected. But from 2013 to 2016, businesses were surprised by the downturn on the economy, experiencing underperformance against expectations, especially in 2014 and 2015.

It is only last year that performance and expectations were, on average, aligned.

To give more concrete numbers: in 2012, only 15% of businesses did worse than expected, but in 2015 only 13% did better than expected.

Last year, exactly the same proportion did better and worse than expected: 37.5%.

2. PNG businesses sound positive

PNG businesses have stayed positive through the tough times. This second graph shows the expectations of businesses for the coming year in relation to investment, profits and employment.

The index is positive every year, and often quite large, indicating that, every year, more businesses were planning to do better, and invest and employ more in the coming year than the contrary.

In fact, we know this often hasn’t happened. For example, formal sector employment has fallen every year since 2013.

Whether PNG businesses really are as optimistic as they say, or whether they think they need to sound positive to bolster confidence is one of those imponderables.

3. For the last three years, the main problem identified by businesses is foreign exchange

Every year, Business Advantage asks executives to list their firms’ top hindrances or constraints. Over the years, four constraints repeatedly appear at the top of the list: security, skills shortages, utilities/telecoms, and, more recently, foreign exchange.

The figure here shows the average ratings these four business constraints have received, on a scale from 1 to 5. In 2012 and 2013, the top three constraints were security, skills shortages and utilities/telecoms.

In 2014, foreign exchange joined the top four, in third place, and in 2015, it was in third place. But since 2016 foreign exchange has been the top constraint listed by business, and by an increasingly large margin.

PNG’s foreign exchange woes are increasingly well known, but what is surprising is that they have continued for so long.

This survey of business adds to the evidence that they are the prime culprit for the economic downturn (for example, falling employment levels).

If businesses can’t import, they are not going to produce and employ. And if they can’t get their profits out, foreign investors are going to stay away.

The IMF put it well in its 2017 report on PNG: “The main impediment to private sector development is macroeconomic policies. The main obstacle to business activity and investment are difficulties in obtaining foreign exchange.”

The government’s solution to foreign exchange shortages is to borrow in dollars; the Opposition’s policy is to run down foreign exchange reserves.

But both are temporary and limited fixes that will quickly be exhausted. The exchange rate is now set by the Bank of PNG, and the nominal exchange rate has been virtually unchanged for over two years.

The only real solution is a devaluation of the exchange rate. I won’t go into all the arguments for and against here. At this stage, the point is simply that there is no other way to resolve the foreign exchange crisis.

Again, the IMF has it right: “[We] recommend that the Kina be allowed to depreciate to eliminate the current over-valuation of the currency, end the FX [foreign exchange] shortage, and promote external competitiveness.”

It is quite remarkable that traditional business concerns such as security, skills shortages and infrastructure have been displaced by concerns around foreign exchange availability.

How long will it be before government bites the bullet, and devalues the exchange rate to address what has been for the last three years the top concern of PNG business?

RAYMOND SIGIMET

DAGUA - Betel nut chewing has strong Melanesian cultural roots, especially in traditional Papua New Guinea societies in the coastal and island regions. Betel nut, also called areca nut or buai in Tok Pisin, is the seed of the Areca catechu palm tree.

The history of betel nut goes back thousands of years. It has a long history in parts of Asia and the Pacific. It is estimated that 10-20% of the world’s population chews the nut.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 600 million people use some form of betel nut. It is placed fourth as the world’s most popular psychoactive substance after nicotine, alcohol and caffeine.

Betel nut chewing is a widely practised social pastime at village level. Buai, when mixed with mustard and lime, gives chewers an adrenaline rush as it contains the stimulant arecoline, a psychoactive ingredient similar to nicotine.

Oftentimes, you hear chewers remark ‘buai spakim mi ya’ [I’m intoxicated with betel nut] and see trails of sweat streaming down their faces.

Down in the village, betel nut is readily available during most gatherings: mediations, storytelling, feasts, festivals, gossiping and other social activities.

The habit of betel nut chewing in recent times is universal in Papua New Guinea. There are chewers from all walks of life and age groups from every corner of Papua New Guinea. It has reached regions that just a few decades ago were traditionally non chewers.

Some people even identify the red of the national flag as a representation of the reddish compound that manifests when betel nut is mixed in the mouth with mustard and lime.

In urban PNG, betel nut chewing is plain to see in the workplace, at markets, schools, sports events, entertainment, in church and at home. This is despite rules and regulations prohibiting the habit and governing professional conduct.

Betel nut has become a means to an end for generating profit and also for fulfilling some sort of identity gap for chewers who had no prior cultural association with it. Its values and cultural significance are depicted through its exchange and the friendship, celebration and peace these connote.

But buai is more suited as a rural pastime and is not well-matched to an urban setting. Just like flicking away a used cigarette butt, betel nut juice in the mouth eventually has to be disposed of. In towns and cities, this is done indiscriminately by chewers and has strong negative implications for public health, hygiene and the environment.

There’s a big difference between betel nut juice spat out on bare earth and spewed out on concrete. There’s a big difference between betel husk thrown into the bush and thrown along urban walkways and beside shops.

The red betel nut spittle and the litter of husks are eyesores. They pronounce serious deficiencies in our towns and cities. They are another way of saying ‘don’t care’; they are irresponsible. Our traditional disposal of this debris has not transitioned well into the urban setting.

This general disregard makes town authorities feel defeated in their attempts at controlling the betel nut trade. Our major towns are literally defaced and littered with betel nut spittle and husk.

Betel nut has its own clichés and sland – mit buai, drai buai, spak buai, wara buai, tirip buai, piksa buai, Sepik daka, Olan daka, simel daka, pawa lain, lip daka, kol kambang, posin kambang, kina kambang, coral kambamg and more.

Now for the really bad bit. There are a multitude of negative health effects of betel nut chewing.

There’s mouth cancer and gum disease and many cases of old people who have lost all their front teeth and who still chew their paste of betel nut, mustard and lime using their remaining molars.

And there are undocumented tales of unscrupulous people who intentionally mix cancer causing asbestos (from fibro walls previously used in building construction) with lime which accelerates the rate of mouth cancer as well as promoting other illnesses.

When it comes to chewing, there are different types of chewers with their own attitudes and behaviour. Some people will chew two to three nuts at once. Some use minimal lime while others dip their whole mustard in the lime.

There are cautious chewers who have their own personal lime containers while others use the lime provided by vendors. There’s greater health risks in using lime provided by vendors; chewers being more likely to develop gum diseases or contract tuberculosis.

Traditional betel nut chewers from the coastal and islands regions have their own distinct way of identifying with betel nut and chewing. Each region has its own beliefs, customs, rituals and magic.

Unused lime is said to have high potency and is used to ward off evil spirits. Spells and enchantments are also woven into he betel nut to attract and lure people of the opposite sex.

In PNG, betel nut will be a controversial topic for a long time yet. It is so intertwined within the social, political and economic fabric of PNG society.

Perhaps, over time, some other social custom will take over and buai will be done away with. Perhaps it will eventually lose its traditional and cultural significance.

But, from where I sit right now, I can see no sign of that.

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - In the very funny television series ‘Blackadder’ the eponymous protagonist, played by the hugely talented Rowan Atkinson, has a manservant called Baldrick, played by prominent actor and historian Sir Tony Robinson.

Blackadder is constantly scheming to find ways to enhance his status, wealth or power, usually at the expense of others. In doing so he is assisted or mostly hindered by a cast of characters who manage to manifest the very worst qualities of Britain’s former aristocratic ruling elite.

A running joke throughout the series is that the exceedingly dim Baldrick often tries to help his master achieve his devious ends by devising “cunning plans”. These plans are invariably stupid and destined to fail but Baldrick is always disappointed when Blackadder points out their obvious flaws.

One of the important reasons the series resonates so powerfully with anyone familiar with history is because many of the scenarios it depicts echo the ambitions, attitudes and behaviours of real historic figures.

The sad truth is that there is a long and lamentable history amongst people in power of formulating and implementing cunning plans that have gone hideously wrong.

It seems that the historic equivalents of Baldrick have, at times, been all too persuasive in convincing self interested and gullible rulers to pursue policies that can only have destructive and ruinous outcomes.

Let me relate three examples from history that nicely illustrate this.

Julius Caesar

First, in 44BC a group of Roman Senators, calling themselves liberators, conspired to assassinate Gaius Julius Caesar, who had recently been appointed dictator for life by the Roman Senate.

Caesar was by then the wealthiest and most popular figure in Rome, having consciously positioned himself as the champion of ordinary Roman citizens and curtailed the power and influence of the Senate, which was composed exclusively of self appointed wealthy elite.

Caesar was a truly ambitious and ruthless figure but his rise to power was greatly aided by the determination of the Senate to preserve its prestige, power and authority, even at the expense of the ordinary citizenry.

The liberators’ cunning plan was to kill Caesar and then proclaim the restoration of true republican rule, with the Senate restored to its place as the seat of power. They assumed that this would enjoy the support of the majority of their fellow senators and the Roman population more broadly. Both of these assumptions proved to be badly wrong.

Far from restoring the republic, the assassination of Caesar unleashed a lengthy civil war during which huge numbers of Romans would be killed and vast amounts of wealth squandered in the struggle for power.

At length, it was Caesar’s nephew and adopted son, Gaius Octavius Caesar, who emerged victorious. While he re-established the forms of the republic, he forced the Senate to accord him the titles of First Citizen and, eventually, Imperator, thus becoming the first of the Emperors who ruled Rome and its empire over the next 400 years.

Thus the so-called liberators brought about the utter destruction of the republic they had planned to restore, their cunning plan having spectacularly back fired.

Ferdinand the Second

Another example of hideous miscalculation was the Thirty Years War which consumed most of central and northern Europe between 1618 and 1648.

The stimulus for the war came from the newly crowned Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand the Second. He was a fervent Catholic and was determined to stamp out the Protestant heresy (mainly Lutheranism and Calvinism) that had taken root in much of northern Europe. With this object in mind he decided to use military force to reimpose Catholicism across his entire empire.

This plan enjoyed some support amongst the more rabidly Catholic extremists but there was a good deal of opposition as well. Many of Ferdinand’s subordinate rulers warned him that his plan was likely to lead to open warfare but he wrongly believed that his armies would be more than sufficient to crush any resistance.

Undeterred, and certain as to the righteousness of his cause, Ferdinand unleashed his army upon those who resisted his demands that they convert to Catholicism. In doing so he unleashed one of the most protracted and destructive civil wars in European history, whose echoes are still heard today.

Thirty long and dreadful years of warfare ensued. Massacres and atrocities were common as the warring parties fought back and forth over an increasingly despoiled and depopulated central Europe. In the end, at least eight million or 30% of the population of the Holy Roman Empire was killed or died of starvation and many more were reduced to dire poverty. It was a catastrophe of unprecedented scale.

Eventually, the war subsided into a smoldering stalemate. A peace was negotiated in which the status quo of 1618 was recognised. In short, 30 years of suffering achieved precisely nothing for Ferdinand other than utterly impoverishing his empire and dramatically reducing its power and influence. The Catholic Church never really recovered its influence and is still regarded with undisguised suspicion by German and Scandinavian Protestants to this day.

Kaiser Wilhelm the Second

The third example is the First World War, the trigger for which was the assassination on 28 June 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The assassin was a lone Serbian terrorist, who was a member of the ultranationalist Black Hand movement.

There was little support for this group within Serbia but this did not prevent the German Emperor from urging his Austro-Hungarian ally to make demands of Serbia calculated to ensure that war would break out.

Kaiser Wilhelm the Second of Germany was a man of limited intelligence and insight but boundless ambition. His cunning plan was to support Austro-Hungary to take over Serbia, as part of the maneuverings associated with attempts by several European empires to fill the power vacuum being created by the slow but remorseless decline of the Ottoman Empire based in Constantinople (now Istanbul).

Wilhelm believed that Germany’s army was the most powerful in Europe and that, if push came to shove, it could defeat both the large but sclerotic Russian military (which was allied to Serbia) as well as that of Russia’s ally, France. His generals were very concerned about fighting a war on two fronts and tried to dissuade him from risking doing so, but Wilhelm’s ambition and hubris made him over confident and he rejected their advice.

His second major miscalculation was to assume that Britain, whose King, George the Fifth, was his cousin, would not intervene in the ensuing war. After all, none of its vital interests were being threatened, so why would it come to the aid of a small and remote country like Serbia?

The third huge miscalculation was that, based upon the experience of two previous wars with Austria and France, in 1866 and 1870 respectively, any war would be over within a very short time frame of no more than a few weeks. Seldom has there been a more grievously erroneous assumption than this.

The likely nature of a genuinely industrial scale war had been demonstrated all too graphically by the American Civil War (1861-1865), yet Wilhelm and many others persisted in believing that such a war could not and would not occur in Europe.

The end result of the ensuing catastrophe was the death of at least 16 million soldiers and civilians and the destruction of the Ottoman, German and Russian imperial regimes. In addition, the British and French empires were gravely weakened by the conflict, with the true extent of this being revealed during World War II.

There are, of course, many more examples of cunning plans. It seems that people in positions of power and authority are frequently deceived into believing that they possess a special insight not accorded to others. Often, initial success reinforces this belief and they are left extremely vulnerable to the shocks and unexpected developments that arise when those in power overreach themselves.

The relevance of this to the modern world ought to be apparent. We now live in an era when our political leaders have little knowledge and experience of just how badly things can go wrong when ambition and hubris, combined with ignorance and bad judgement, leads to gross political miscalculation.

We have a United States president who is, I think, dangerously ignorant and so utterly convinced of his special powers of insight that the likelihood of a gross miscalculation is very great. Quite when and in what form such a miscalculation will occur (if it hasn’t already) cannot be predicted, but its inevitability seems assured.

Papua New Guinea is particularly vulnerable to this problem. Its leadership has demonstrated ignorance, incompetence and corruption many times and has been greatly emboldened by the lack of significant legal or electoral consequences for this behaviour.

It has used or, more accurately, misused the law numerous times to thwart efforts to bring the corrupt to justice.

It has flouted parliamentary conventions when it found them inconvenient.

It has persecuted its critics, or those it merely dislikes, by misusing its administrative and regulatory powers.

It has made poor financial and economic decisions in the face of clear evidence and advice of the grave risks inherent in doing so and then denied responsibility for those decisions when they went wrong or, worse still, attempted to cover up the fact that anything adverse had occurred.

It has set up expectations that it will not accept the results of next June’s referendum on Bougainville’s independence.

In short, it is government where the good people within it are unable to control or restrain those for whom lies, evasion, maladministration and corruption are merely tools of trade to achieve political power or personal gain.

Of course, this behaviour is hardly limited to PNG as Australia’s current Royal Commission into the banking industry, as well as numerous cases of political malfeasance brought to light by the various commissions against corruption, vividly attest.

The difference is the scale and openness with which such behaviour is being witnessed in PNG.

A government like PNG’s is inevitably going to make disastrous decisions of the type I have described. The consequences of these decisions seem unlikely to result in warfare although they may well do so in places like Bougainville. However, these decisions will certainly have profound economic and social consequences, some of which are slowly becoming apparent already.

Unless good people in PNG can somehow seize control of the situation, I can foresee no good outcome for the country as a whole.

It would be tragic indeed if PNG were to suffer the same miserable fate that has befallen so many supposedly more civilized and advanced nations in the past simply because the obvious lessons of history are ignored.

PHIL FITZPATRICK

An Australian patrol officer with Biami people in the vicinity of Nomad patrol post, 1964

TUMBY BAY - In late 1964 Australia passed the National Service Act. The Act required selected 20-year old men to serve in the army for two years, followed by three years in the Army Reserve.

The Act was amended in 1965 to allow conscripts to serve overseas. The following year the prime minister announced that national servicemen would be sent to Vietnam, where a ferocious war was being fought, to serve with regular Australian army units.

Those eight years when conscription was in force were stressful and confusing for many young men of eligible age, including those in the Territory of Papua New Guinea who weren’t really sure whether they had to register or not.

Young Australian men who were living overseas didn’t have to register. Papua was an Australian territory so young men working there were technically not overseas while New Guinea was a United Nations trust territory and young men there were technically overseas.

When I turned 20 I was in the Western Highlands so I wrote to the Department of Labour and National Service to enquire whether I was required to register.

By the time I got a response I was in the Star Mountains in Papua. Did this change the situation?

The twice yearly ballots to select those who had to undergo national service involved a lottery style selection, complete with a barrel and marbles. If your birthdate came up you had to enlist, if it didn’t you missed out.

The results of the lotteries were kept secret for a long time. If I had enlisted I would have been in the seventh ballot and the secrecy didn’t end until after the eleventh ballot.

We had heard rumours that a couple of kiaps had been called up and that there were attempts to get a general exemption for the rest of us but I don’t recall ever receiving any firm advice about this.

At the time I didn’t have any opinion about whether the war in Vietnam was just or unjust but I did have an opinion about Australia’s involvement in military adventurism and expressed this in my letters to the department.

I later took part in an anti-Vietnam War march while on leave and this hardened my attitude to the war and conscription in general.

In late 1969 I eventually got a letter from the Department of Labour and National Service telling me I did not need to register. No reason given; maybe the rumour about the general exemption was true. Maybe Port Moresby had just forgotten to tell those of us living on remote patrol posts, who knows?

As it turned out, even if I had registered, my marble hadn’t come up in the ballot. It was close but not close enough.

I suspected that even if it had come up I would have been deemed medically unfit because I had flat feet. Which would have been a bit ironic because there I was hiking through the rugged Star Mountains with policemen and carriers who also had flat feet.

In 1973 the newly elected Labor government, which had fiercely opposed conscription, moved quickly to abolish the system.

There is an interesting addendum to this affair. My son left university and joined the army in the mid-1990s, serving in Timor before being selected for officer training at Duntroon and subsequently serving in Iraq.

At his interview for Duntroon he was presented with copies of my old correspondence with the Department of Labour and National Service and asked what he thought. I hadn’t told him about them or their content and he was surprised. He must have given the right answers however.

He left the army after 10 years and by that time our views on military adventurism and the reasons why it happens were pretty much the same.

Unfortunately Australia still seems to poke its nose into wars that have very little relevance for us.

Footnote

Our editor informs me that his marble was drawn in the ballot for what would have been the first draft of boys born in January 1945. So, it seems, did the marbles of most boys born that month.

The government must have been pretty worried they’d discover a lot of young Australians with flat feet.

By the way, Keith also wrote to Canberra from his outpost in the PNG Highlands to ask if he was eligible to join the forces anyway. He was told that, living in New Guinea, he was not so entitled. Like me, he was soon demonstrating against a war he had come to believe was not one Australia should have been fighting.

KEITH JACKSON

Read the US State Department’s full 2018 trafficking in persons report here

WASHINGTON DC - The government of Papua New Guinea does not fully meet minimum standards for the elimination of people trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so, according to the United States government.

This year’s annual report on trafficking by the US Department of State says that, as a result, PNG has been downgraded to the lowest of four tiers on the trafficking scale, with evidence that children as young as 10 are being forced into prostitution.

The report states PNG has taken some minimal steps to address the problem, including initiating the first investigation of a government official under anti-trafficking law, but that progress is hindered by an acute lack of resources as well as very low awareness of the problem among government officials and the public.

The PNG government did not provide or fund protective services for victims, did not systematically implement victim identification procedures and did not identify any trafficking victims in 2017. It also did not initiate any prosecutions and did not achieve a single trafficking conviction for the fifth consecutive year.

In fact, the government decreased law enforcement efforts in 2017 despite partnering with an international organisation to conduct training for officials.

The police investigated a police commander for allegedly subjecting eight women to sex and labour trafficking but, similar to past years, it did not achieve even one trafficking conviction. In fact, the government decreased efforts to protect victims.

In other cases officials did not apprehend any vessels for illegal fishing and trafficking in 2017, and logging and mining sites operated in remote regions with “negligible government oversight and authorities did not make efforts to identify sex or labour trafficking victims”.

For the sixth consecutive year, the report identified PNG as a source, transit and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labour. It cited international NGO research which found that 30% of sex trafficking victims were children under the age of 18, some as young as 10.

The report also revealed that Malaysian and Chinese logging companies arrange for foreign women to enter PNG voluntarily with fraudulently issued visas. After their arrival, many of these women—from countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, China, and the Philippines—are turned over to traffickers who transport them to logging and mining camps, fisheries and entertainment sites, and exploit them in forced prostitution and domestic servitude

Stating that the government “maintained minimal efforts to prevent trafficking”, the report made ten major recommendations for improvement including increasing collaboration with other organisations in PNG to raise awareness of commercial sex acts, especially of children.

Ming Dynasty with Midge Didham aboard wins the 1980 Caulfield Cup at 66/1 - lucky for some

ALLYN HICKS

SYDNEY - Occasionally I like to have a small flutter on the horses, usually with little success. But it’s a pleasant pursuit I continued through my PNG days and the infrequent win was always a cause of great delight.

The only time I won anything worthwhile was when former Papua New Guinea colonial politician John Pasquarelli (later Pauline Hansen's controversial adviser) advised me to back his horse, Luddenham Lass, which won.

Trevor Downs, owner of the Vanimo Hotel, also tipped me his horse, Binatang. It didn’t win but came second at odds of 100/1 so I still collected.

But my biggest pay-day ever in PNG was purely by accident. Back in the 1970s I used to regularly back a magnificent grey horse, Ming Dynasty and I had wagered on him when he won the Caulfield Cup in 1977.

Three years later, Ming was in the Caulfield again, but at nine years of age up against horses of the calibre of Kingston Town and Melbourne Cup winner Hyperno, he was given little chance.

The bookies sent him out at the beautiful odds of 66/1.

Anyway, I decided sentiment is not the go in punting so turned my back on Ming Dynasty’s and instead put my hard-earned on his full brother Star Dynasty who was also in the Cup.

From my vantage point on a stool at the bar of the Aviat Club in Moresby, I rang the bet through to bookie Jim Dwyer. There was a lot of background noise and Jim, who was a little hard of hearing, had trouble getting the details. However finally I got the bet on.

Well, you probably deduced what happened. That old Ming Dynasty, at the dazzling odds of 66/1, blitzed the field and easily won the Cup leaving me well and truly pissed off and urgently in need of another beer.

Three days later the account from Jim’s bookmakers shop arrived in the mail. At first I was tempted to tear it up but figured I’d still have to pay it so opened the envelope. To my surprise, instead of a debit slip was a cheque for more than $2,000.

Yes, you guessed it. Old Jim the bookie had misheard me over the phone and knowing that I had a soft spot for Ming Dynasty, assumed that was the horse I wanted to bet on.

Naturally I didn’t enlighten Jim about his mistake. I’m sensitive that way.

However, I had a hard time keeping a straight face when I next met him at the Aviat Club bar and he said, ”Well, Al, the old fellow got up, eh!”

I don’t know if Jim Dwyer’s bookie shop is still operating in Port Moresby but if it is and they read this, I have no intention of reimbursing them.

Natalie Whiting

KEITH JACKSON | Media Week, ABC & Sources

SYDNEY - Hobart-based Natalie Whiting has been appointed as the ABC’s Papua New Guinea correspondent, taking over the key post from Eric Tlozek, who has spent three years in the role.

Tlozek has been re-assigned as one of the ABC’s Middle East correspondents, based in Jerusalem.

Whiting currently reports for ABC News and the 7.30 current affairs program in Tasmania.

Before moving to Hobart, she was the South Australian reporter for AM, The World Today and PM. In Adelaide she won several media awards, including best radio broadcaster and was an Andrew Olle scholar and twice a finalist in the Young Walkley Awards.

Whiting has also worked as a radio, online and television journalist in Broken Hill, Orange and Sydney and has extensively covered regional and outback Australia.

Whiting said she was excited about moving to Port Moresby and working with the ABC’s local team there.

“Papua New Guinea is Australia’s nearest neighbour and our two countries have a long history and close ties,” she said.

“It’s such an important country to be reporting on and for, and I look forward to taking on that responsibility.

“Mostly, I’m excited to meet people and to tell their stories – and to be back living in an area where rugby league is the sport of choice.”

Veteran journalist, foreign correspondent and current affairs presenter John Highfield, wishing Natalie the best for the new assignment, said "PNG is a wonderful patch to cover,  and there are so many important stories for someone of your talent to communicate.

"Sean [Dorney], Eric [Tlozek] and others have cleared the path - it's yours to walk!"

"Eric will be missed," said head of Adventure Kokoda, Major Charlie Lynn OL OAM. "He developed a genuine empathy with the people he dealt with in PNG and a realistic awareness of the challenges they face.

"Natalie's appointment should be welcomed in view of the even greater challenges faced by women in PNG today."

From my point of view here at PNG Attitude, I could not be more delighted that this talented young woman has been selected for the Port Moresby post as her first assignment as a foreign correspondent.

When I found myself in Chimbu 55 years ago as a wannabe journo, I realised I was surrounded by some big and exhilarating stories and I soon found opportunities, initially as a freelance, to tell them. This led me to a terrific career in journalism and communications that I can still hardly believe I have had.

At the same time, to my vast good fortune, I have managed to retain a close and enduring relationship with the people of PNG, who I admire and respect enormously. I wish Natalie all that luck and more.

I feel sure Natalie understands that ahead lie great challenges and some rough bits, but I can think of no greater calling in journalism than to tell the story of PNG to the world.

And I'm mindful that the ABC has been in Papua New Guinea for about 70 years. It is now the only foreign news organisation with a permanent presence in the country. That long tradition of news gathering and reporting should be something for the ABC to be truly proud of.

You can follow Natalie on Twitter here - @Nat_Whiting

Paul Flanagan - making sense of the PNG budget numbers (and the political spin) for our readers

PAUL FLANAGAN | PNG Economics | Edited extracts

CANBERRA - The O’Neill-Abel government continues to refer to how new loans from the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank will help with Papua New Guinea’s budget and foreign exchange problems.

But why have they let K418 million in cheap loans slip through their fingers, especially for good projects already approved under PNG’s planning processes?

This is one of many questions raised by Treasurer Abel’s 2017 fascinating and worrying final budget outcome (FBO) report which, given the number of errors it contains, was clearly rushed.

When looking at the claimed total levels of government expenditure and revenue, it is interesting that the 2017 budget outcomes match those of Abel’s predecessor, now opposition leader Patrick Pruaitch.

One would have thought they would be closer to the figures contained in Abel’s much trumpeted 2017 supplementary budget.

Specifically, total revenue estimates were 11 billion in the Abel supplementary budget with the 2017 FBO being K11.5 billion – precisely the number of Pruaitch’s previous 2017 budget.

On the expenditure side, Abel’s FBO was K13.3 billion, again exactly the same as Pruaitch’s 2017 budget and a significant increase over Abel’s K12.9 billion supplementary budget.

Former treasurer and now opposition leader Pruaitch was more accurate in his aggregate forecasts than his successor Abel.

However, there is more.

The movement in Abel’s figures mask a significant shift between domestic funding and donor funding. Donor funding increased by K471.8 million between Abel’s supplementary budget and the final budget outcome.

It could be that this reflected a shift to increased aid dependency; although it is possible it represented a more accurate accounting of donor flows.

The 2017 FBO also provides interesting information on what happened to the budget between 2016 and the claimed results for 2017.

In aggregate, revenue increased by about K1 billion. All of this was absorbed by an increase in operational expenditure of K1 billion. However, there were reductions of K908 million in capital expenditure and K418 million in concessional loan projects – both ‘easy’ ways to cut a budget but undesirable in terms of infrastructure and similar projects.

But, when combined with revenue increases, they were enough to allow Abel to claim the budget deficit fell by K1.3 billion.

Frankly, this is not the type of structural improvement one is looking for when lowering the deficit. Having all the reduction based around reducing capital expenditure is of concern as it lowers PNG’s future growth potential.

Of particular worry is the cut in concessional loan expenditures of K418m. These ‘concessional loans” are likely to be from sources like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. Such loans are cheap – interest rates of 2-4%, much lower than the costs of borrowing from PNG’s domestic finance markets (where rates are 8% for one-year government bonds and around 12% for longer-term borrowing.

World Bank and ADB loans are also programs that have generally gone through strong and transparent project design and contracting methods.

This is the type of financing source that PNG should be seeking to increase rather than cut as they did in 2017. It was important to reduce the historically high budget deficits but doing this by slashing infrastructure programs and giving up concessional loans is difficult to explain.

In future articles, I’ll examine in detail why government expenditure is likely to be considerably greater than claimed by the final budget outcome (FBO) report. And I’ll also investigate why revenues are also likely to be lower than claimed.

But if you can’t wait for these revelations to come, my conservative estimate is that the 2017 budget deficit is likely to be at least K1 billion greater than claimed and it could be as high as K2 billion.

How you can help restore the ABC’s broadcasting services to PNG & the Pacific

A group of eminent Australian journalists associated with Papua New Guinea and the Pacific have come together to persuade the Australian government to rebuild the ABC’s once great broadcasting services to the region. They include well-known names such as Sean Dorney, Jemima Garrett, Max Uechtritz, Tess Newton-Cain, Sue Ahearn, Peter Marks and Jioji Ravulo. They have the full support of me personally and PNG Attitude with its 5,000 followers.

The Australian government is at present conducting a review of Australian broadcasting in the region. It is taking submissions until Friday 3 August (read about it here). This is a great opportunity to change Australian policy on this important issue. I strongly urge you to make a submission. And, if you need a helping hand, you’ve got three expert journalists to provide it: Sean Dorney (sean_dorney@hotmail.com), Jemima Garrett (garrett.jemima@gmail.com) and Sue Ahearn (srahearn@hotmail.com).

I ask you to act now, wherever you live. Your voice deserves - and needs - to be heard

COLIN PACKHAM | US News & World Report | Edited extract

You can read the complete article by Colin Packham here

SYDNEY - New Zealand warned in a defence report on Friday that China's rising influence in the South Pacific could undermine regional stability, in comments likely to stoke bilateral tension.

New Zealand and Australia have traditionally held the most influence in the South Pacific, but the NZ government said in the report it was now losing its sway over small island nations to China.

"New Zealand's national security remains directly tied to the stability of the Pacific. As Pacific Island countries develop ... traditional partners such as New Zealand and Australia will be challenged to maintain influence," the government report read.

"China holds views on human rights and freedom of information that stand in contrast to those that prevail in New Zealand."

New Zealand has announced it would increase foreign aid by nearly a third, in part to counter China's rising influence in the South Pacific.

"We live in turbulent times, the world is changing and there has been a re-emergence of great power competition," New Zealand defence minister Ron Mark told reporters in Wellington.

China has denied that it is using its aid to exert influence in a region blessed with significant natural resources.

But, in an interview with Fairfax Media published on Friday, Australia's outgoing defence chief Mark Binskin cited "the influence of some nations starting to come down into the southwest Pacific" as among his concerns.

As we encourage PNG Attitude readers to join in reviving Radio Australia in PNG, PHIL FITZPATRICK has been quick off the mark in making his views known to the Australian government review of Australian broadcasting to PNG and the Pacific, When you have emailed your words of advice to the review, long or short, why don't you copy your words to us for publication - email it to us here.

TUMBY BAY - This short submission relates mainly to Papua New Guinea and the now defunct shortwave radio service.

I have had a long association with Papua New Guinea that began in 1967 and has been maintained to the present.

In that time I have visited and worked in some of the remoter parts of the country, both on the mainland and in the islands.

From this experience I can attest to the extreme reliance that people in those areas had on the shortwave service. 

This included things like shipping, weather and disaster reports and news about their own country. In the latter case people often preferred the unbiased views of the shortwave service to their own local stations.

News services in Papua New Guinea have now been captured by commercial media with questionable agendas and by the government as propaganda arms for their spin.

In my time in Papua New Guinea I also observed the appalling rubbish that was broadcast on television going into the country when the contract was held by an Australian commercial television station. This rubbish was not only inappropriate but embarrassing to me as an Australian.

Most remote villages still use shortwave radios. When the Australian service stopped they were mystified and extremely disappointed. The message they received was that Australia didn’t care about them anymore.

Most Papua New Guineans have a strong affinity to Australia, even if the sentiment is rarely returned by our politicians and media, so the cutting off of the service was a real blow.

Now the Chinese have picked up the abandoned shortwave bands. That fact must be really puzzling the Papua New Guineans. They are probably asking themselves whether this means shifting their allegiance from Australia to China.

I hope that as an outcome of this enquiry the grossly stupid decision to stop the service will be reversed and it will be reinstated under the control of the ABC.

JEMIMA GARRETT*

Jemima Garrett - "Radio is still the best way to reach people with news and debate. Let's rebuild Australian broadcasting in the region on a new partnership model"

If you - or anyone you know - would like to make a submission to the Review of Australian Broadcasting in the Asia Pacific, it is taking submissions here until Friday 3 August. Background information, including on broadcast technology options is available from Supporters of Australian Broadcasting in Asia and the Pacific.  Members of this group include Jemima Garrett, Sean Dorney, Max Uechtritz, Tess Newton-Cain, Sue Ahearn, Peter Marks, Jioji Ravulo and others. 

Sean , Sue and and Jemima are happy to help you prepare a submission to the Review if you need a helping hand. You can contact them here:
Jemima Garrett garrett.jemima@gmail.com 0408 163 226
Sean Dorney sean_dorney@hotmail.com 0409 468 559
Sue Ahearn srahearn@hotmail.com 0439 474 444

BRISBANE - Despite the antipathy of some members of Australia's Liberal and National parties to the ABC, a curious confluence of events has made possible the best opportunity since 2014 for revamping the ABC’s Asia Pacific broadcasting, including Papua New Guinea.

The Australian government is currently conducting a review of Australian broadcasting in the Asia Pacific and it wants submissions from PNG and the region as well as from Australia.

It has wide terms of reference so has left the way open to hear what the audience really wants from Australian broadcasting.

Of all the countries the ABC reaches with its overseas service, PNG is the most important and the most difficult. The difficulty lies not in politics in Canberra or Port Moresby but in finding technology that can cope with the terrain.

Internet connectivity and social media is growing fast but is still not affordable, or even reliable or accessible for many. Affordable data download for audio and video is even further off.

Radio is still the best way to reach people with news and debate, but the standard method – good quality FM radio – does not penetrate hills or mountains and only reaches a maximum of around 70 kilometres from the transmitter.

It is good for cities or towns but not for the majority of people who live in rural areas. FM transmitters, like mobile phone towers, are easily blown over in cyclones.

Shortwave radio does not have the high-fidelity sound of FM but it has the enormous advantage of being unaffected by topography.

It reaches into the remotest of communities and can be picked up on low-cost receivers, powered by batteries, solar-power or simply with a wind-up handle. (Listen to some ABC shortwave from 2012 here).

In January 2017 the ABC followed-up the savage cuts it made to Radio Australia in 2014 by axing all its shortwave services to the region.

Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Charlot Salwai was so angry and fearful of the consequences that he wrote to a Senate Inquiry last year saying the loss of ABC shortwave ‘could cost many, many lives in the likelihood of another major natural disaster like Cyclone Pam in 2015’.

While the 2014 cuts were mainly as a result of the government decision to cancel the 10-year $220 million contract for Australia network television, the 2017 decision to axe shortwave was entirely the ABC’s own, as were decisions to close down FM transmitters in countries in the north and eastern Pacific.

The decision to cut shortwave left people in sensitive areas around the PNG LNG site and in other Highlands sites, on Bougainville, in the islands, the Sepik, Western Province and many other rural areas without the ABC service they were used to relying on.

In the aftermath of the earthquake earlier this year some communities waited weeks for information that could have come to them over shortwave had the ABC not ended its service.

Even in Ialibu, the prime minister Peter O’Neill’s electorate where you would expect people to be well-served, some people had no radio service, including from PNG’s own NBC. This is a common occurrence as NBC struggles to keep its transmitters operating. Even in an ideal world with all transmitters working NBC does not reach the whole country.

PNG has fared better than any from the cuts to the ABC’s Pacific service. Since 2014 there have been two new ABC FM stations, in Mt Hagen and Goroka, with another one on the way in Bougainville. But it is no use having transmitters if programs are not made in the language listeners speak or with their interests in mind.

In 2014, most of the ABC Tok Pisin staff were sacked, leaving just two heroic journalists, Sam Seke and Caroline Tiriman, to produce the only program which is left.

All Radio Australia’s English language program-makers, other than those working in the news division, were also sacked in 2014 leaving Pacific Beat and its Weekend Review program as the only shows on Radio Australia that were not uncontextualised programs made for local consumption in Australia.

Since then the ABC took the laudable initiative of appointing its first even Pasifika Australian to present Pacific Mornings, a new English-language program for the Pacific. Unfortunately, it failed to staff the program adequately so before it was a year old it has had its hours cut back.

Perhaps more worrying these cuts have done to the debate on important regional issues.

The ABC used to be the only broadcaster that reached every sub-region of the Pacific with a high-quality signal. How can the citizens the Pacific Islands Forum be part of a regional debate if they have no common platform and are unable to be part of one conversation?

The countries that do not receive ABC radio now include Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, French Polynesia, Kiribati, Nauru, New Caledonia, Niue, Palau, Marshall Islands and Tuvalu.

That brings us back to the confluence of events that makes this a good moment to propose a new model of broadcasting to the Pacific- one that would be a real partnership with the region and offer a range of specialist programs made for and by Pacific audiences.

While the ABC and the department of Foreign Affairs were looking the other way China’s state-owned media has taken hold of 10 former Radio Australia frequencies bringing the defence establishment behind proposals to revitalise Asia Pacific broadcasting.

It is clear too that the ABC has been marching in the opposite direction to other international broadcasters. Japan’s NHK, Radio New Zealand and the BBC World Service are all expanding rapidly.

In fact, if the ABC were to receive a similar funding boost to that received recently by the BBC World service (proportional to population) it would amount to more than $50 million a year.

Ironically, considering the antipathy of some in the LNP to the ABC, the independence of ABC broadcasting is an asset in an environment in which offsetting the tightly-controlled message of China’s state-run media is a key aim. 

Politically, the ground may be fertile too. A wide variety of people and organisations in the region and Australia are keen to see services restored. The Labor Party’s shadow defence minister Richard Marles has been calling for more attention to the Pacific.

Tomorrow, Monday 9 July, foreign minister Julie Bishop will highlight her government’s partnerships with the region in a speech to the PNG and Pacific community in Logan near Brisbane.

What better way to showcase the sophisticated conversations taking place between Australians and the Pacific (out-of-sight of the media), than to rebuild Australian broadcasting in the region on a new partnership model.

That new model could include podcast and video funds for freelance contributions, jobs for Pacific journalists and creatives, and greater involvement of Australian-based PNG and Pacific communities, academics, aid agencies and other interested parties.

Important note

The Australian government's submission page is a little confusing but, in addition to completing a submission online, there are email and snail mail options too.

Along with the submission, each submitter needs answer the following questions

First name
Last name
Name for publication
Organisation (if any)
Telephone number
Postal address
Email (if any)
Can your submission can be made public? YES/NO

Submissions can be sent to:

Email -

asiapacificmediareview@communications.gov.au

By post (snail mail) -

The Director, National and Community Broadcasting,
Department of Communications and the Arts
GPO Box 2154
Canberra ACT 2601
Australia

* Jemima is a former ABC Pacific correspondent and Radio Australia Pacific economic and business reporter