KEITH JACKSON | Sources

NOOSA – The Catholic bishops of Papua New Guinea have had enough of the O’Neill government, blasting it for failing to take action on corruption and for what they have referred to as its “general incompetence”.

In a public statement, the bishops asked why an Independent Commission Against Corruption had not yet been established, despite many promises over many years, and why nothing has been done to end the Special Agricultural and Business Leases (SABLs) which are said to have led to many illegal land grabs.

They condemned SABLs for continuing to destroy the environment and the livelihoods of thousands of Papua New Guineans.

The statement also attacked the practice of politicians directly distributing government funds to the people themselves.

The bishops called this “notoriously corrupt” and said it was an impractical and failed system.

The church is one of the key providers of education in PNG but the bishops said their services were increasingly interfered with by politicians and the government.

They criticised the government's so-called Fee Free Tuition as not effectively implemented and not providing funds and materials to schools.

The O’Neill government is also not adequately supporting Catholic health centres where staff are not receiving wages and medicines and equipment are not reaching the clinics.

Saying they were talking on behalf of the people of PNG, the bishops called for answers from the government and said they are expecting change.

Wansolwara student journalists on publication day at the University of the South Pacific

SHAILENDRA SINGH | Pacific Media Centre | University of the South Pacific | Edited

SUVA - The University of the South Pacific’s recent 50th anniversary also marked 30 years of existence for its regional journalism program.

In an eventful journey, the program has weathered military coups, overcome financial hardships and shrugged off academic snobbery.

Funded by the Commonwealth, the program started in Suva in 1988 with a handful of students. Since then it has produced more than 200 graduates serving the Pacific and beyond in various media and communication roles.

USP journalism graduates have won awards, started their own media companies and taken over positions once reserved for expatriates in regional organisations.

The beginning was hardly auspicious. Founding coordinator the late Murray Masterton recalled that from the outset some academics felt journalism was a vocational course with no place in a university.

Such disdain turned out to be the least of Dr Masterton’s problems: plans to offer certificate-level courses in 1987 were almost derailed by Lieutenant Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka’s coups – the South Pacific’s first military takeover of a nation.

Masterton persevered in the face of this political earthquake and after some delays he got the program off the ground. It was a significant development in a region where journalists had little opportunity to attain formal qualifications.

It was not without irony that the Pacific’s first regional journalism program was introduced in a climate of great media repression in Fiji.

A few years later, the program’s future came under another cloud when Commonwealth sponsorship ran out. An injection of French government funds in 1993 provided a new lease of life, with the program upgraded to a BA double-major degree.

The three-year grant was supervised by François Turmel, former BBC World Service editor in London. During those lean years, Turmel often dug into his pockets to fund activities.

Then, when French funding ended in 1996, USP took over the program, appointing New Zealander David Robie as coordinator. Robie was head of the University of Papua New Guinea journalism program and a former international journalist.

During his term from 1998–2002, Robie made major curriculum changes by integrating the student training newspaper, Wansolwara, into assessment and introducing professional work attachments with news media organisations.

He was also the first journalism educator to gain a PhD in New Zealand and the Pacific, returning to Suva to graduate in 2003. He tells the story of the early decades of Pacific journalism education in his 2004 book Mekim Nius: South Pacific media, politics and education.

In 2001, I joined the USP journalism program as the first full-time local assistant lecturer. I was already a Fiji and Pacific news media professional and I went on to become the first local to head the journalism program.

After graduating with my PhD from the University of Queensland in 2016, I would become the first local PhD to teach journalism at USP. I saw to the expansion of the program with a boost in enrolments and improved facilities to cater for the new demand, including the recruitment of two local teaching assistants.

Under my watch, Wansolwara, continued to win major awards for excellence in journalism. The newspaper, founded in 1996 by lecturer Philip Cass and a number of students, became well-established as the program’s flagship publication.

Wansolwara literally means “one ocean one people” and for founding student editor Stanley Simpson, the paper was a creation of young minds who “wanted to do things their way”.

Student training newspapers are regarded as important strategic assets, and Wansolwara has certainly played crucial roles at crucial times.

The paper came to prominence for its coverage of the May 2000 nationalist coup and the ensuing hostage crisis in parliament when the deposed Chaudhry government was held in captivity for 56 days.

Professor Robie has described the 2000 coup coverage as “one of the most challenging” examples of campus-based journalism. The students’ reporting put the overseas parachute journalists to shame. As recounted by Dr Cass:

“Much of the outside coverage seemed to be done by people who were just taking the plotters’ statements at face value or else were writing their reports beside the swimming pool at the Travelodge, so the students were giving an alternative view that in many cases was much closer to what was going on.”

Not everyone appreciated the coverage. Certain USP academics, concerned about security, felt that student journalists should practice “simulated journalism”. The smashing-up of the nearby Fiji Television studios by rampaging coup supporters was the last straw for USP, which shut down the Wansolwara news website, Pacific Journalism Online.

However, Dr Robie was able to arrange for a “mirror” site at the University of Technology Sydney to allow coverage to continue. Wansolwara won the Journalism Education Association of Australia ‘best publication in the region’ award for its efforts.

It was one in a long line of awards for excellence in journalism. Such honours, along with a healthy research output, has long since silenced gibes about USP journalism’s fitness as an academic course.

In the post-2006 Bainimarama coup years and as media restrictions tightened, Wansolwara, as a student newspaper, was able to remain under the radar and operate more freely than the mainstream media.

Student reporting in the face of risks was exemplary. The April 2009 issue, which included a four-page critique of the coup, was still at press when the punitive Public Emergency Regulations were introduced.

The Solomon Islands student editor at the time, Leni Dalavera, phoned me in the dead of night, concerned that the students risked arrest. Delavera was assured that the authorities were highly unlikely to move against the students and that the lecturers were responsible for the publication.

The thrills of coup coverage aside, student journalists are also challenged in major ways during their regular beats. A 2016 Pacific Journalism Review journal article by Singh and Eliki Drugunalevu, examined how USP student journalists deal with backlash from peers offended by their coverage.

This article showed how USP’s journalism students changed their initial feelings of fear, hurt and self-doubt to a sense of pride and accomplishment.

Students felt they developed resilience, fortitude and a deeper understanding of the watchdog journalism ethos – learning outcomes which would not have been achievable through classroom teaching alone.

This reinforces the idea that students should not be cocooned, or made to practice ‘simulated journalism’, since they learn from dealing with confronting situations, a reality in journalism.

Students like Simpson, who bagged a string of national and regional awards as a professional, cut his teeth as a Wansolwara reporter.

The achievements of staff and students, the unique research undertaken by the program into regional media issues – which feeds back into teaching – and journalism’s crucial role in the region, have cemented the program’s position at USP.

In an interview in the November 2016 edition of Wansolwara, USP vice-chancellor and president, Professor Rajesh Chandra, pledged that journalism would remain part of the university’s future.

Chandra, who had strongly supported the establishment of journalism at USP, stated that good journalism was critical for an open and truly democratic society and USP’s role in training good journalists was crucial.

Professor Chandra’s comments underscore not just the journalism program’s important role at USP, but its contribution to the region as a whole. Such vindication is welcome news for all those who fought for the program and contributed to its development.

Dr Shailendra Singh is coordinator of USP’s journalism program

PNG is the most corrupt country in APEC, but the Manus contracts reflect badly on Australian governance which  appears to be hypocritical and replete with double standards

GRANT WALTON & SINCLAIR DINNEN | DevPolicy Blog

CANBERRA - Recent media revelations about the $423 million (K1 billion) contract awarded to a relatively unknown company, Paladin, to provide security and other services to refugees on Manus has attracted extensive discussion in Australia.

Most of this has centred on Paladin, the extravagant cost of the contract and rate of profit for the company (estimated at K40 million a month), and, of course, the opaque and abbreviated tendering process followed by the Department of Home Affairs.

Less has been said about what these events might say about Australia’s ongoing engagement with PNG. We argue that this case potentially serves to undermine Australia’s standing among those striving to combat corruption and improve governance in its northern neighbour.

According to the Australian Financial Review, the Australian federal government ran a ‘limited tender’ for two contracts won by Paladin.

While permissible under commonwealth procurement rules, limited tenders are the exception rather than the rule. Using a limited tender in this case raises questions owing to the profile of the contractor and the substantial sums involved, as well as the emphasis Australia places on good governance in PNG.

Our aid program spends more on good governance in PNG than on any other sector – including health and education.

Over the years there has been a significant tightening in the administration of Australia’s aid programs, as with other Western donors, in light of the potential for corruption in fragile states with weak regulatory capabilities.

Indeed, the efforts to immunise aid processes against this potential vulnerability have been proclaimed as a distinguishing feature between OECD donors such as Australia, and newer entrants to international aid such as China.

Anyone who has tendered for or been otherwise involved in an Australian-funded development project will know only too well how onerous the administrative, procedural and reporting requirements usually are.

While the contract primarily involved one department (Home Affairs) and it would be unfair to generalise across the many different parts of the Australian government bureaucracy, such nuances are likely to be missed by those following events in PNG.

From such a vantage point, tendering procedures and the awarding of lucrative government contracts are too often shrouded in secrecy, suspicion and allegations of malpractice.

While these normally relate to PNG government procedures, the Paladin case involving an Australian government contract has generated similar levels of concern on the part of many local observers.

Viewed in this light, it reflects badly on broader Australian engagement in PNG. It’s also unlikely to have gone down well with the many Australian officials and contractors working to ensure the proper management of Australia’s aid funds.

While we have no evidence of corruption and are not suggesting any in this case, this has not prevented others in PNG from making such allegations, including with regard to Paladin’s agreement with Peren Investment – a company controlled by brothers of Job Pomat, a Manus MP and key ally of prime minister Peter O’Neill.

Social media commentators have also claimed other MPs are inappropriately involved with Paladin. Though these claims have not been proven, they highlight how the Paladin case has reinvigorated debate about political corruption in our northern neighbour. It is unfortunate that Australian decision-making has been the catalyst for suspicions and allegations in this case.

The optics for Australia in PNG are not particularly good given that, on the one hand, it advocates strongly against corruption through the aid program, while on the other, it’s seen by some as potentially facilitating such practices through a contract like this one.

This is not the first time that Australia’s stance against corruption has been questioned by observers in PNG. In 2014 then-foreign minister Julie Bishop and the Australian government were criticised for failing to publicly condemn the defunding of PNG’s – until then – successful anti-corruption agency, Investigation Taskforce Sweep.

When the Paladin affair came to light, PNG ministers were quick to protest. Opposition member and former prime minister Sir Mekere Morauta criticised the deal and called for an investigation.

Finance minister and leader of government business James Marape asked O’Neill to strongly protest the contract and called on the Australian government to conduct a full-scale investigation “to help appease what is now appearing a growing disdain for the Australian government’s weak governance over matters relating to the Manus asylum deal”.

Marape also expressed concern about what the scandal would mean for PNG’s international stature. Back when the PNG and Australian governments’ first announced the Pacific Solution, some warned of the impact this would have on PNG’s international and domestic reputation. These chickens have now come home to roost.

Australia’s singular reliance on governments in PNG and Nauru to host its controversial offshore detention facilities has come at a considerable cost, and not just in financial terms. The Paladin case illuminates some of the political costs to the PNG-Australia relationship.

Drawing on NCD governor and former human rights lawyer Powes Parkop’s description of the Manus facility as a ‘Pacific Gulag’, there is a distinct undercurrent of what might be called ‘Gulag politics’ permeating aspects of the bilateral relationship.

Gulag politics is what happens when the political imperative to ensure the continued acquiescence of governments in PNG and Nauru to host these facilities takes priority over longstanding concerns with the quality of political governance in both countries.

Whether misplaced or not, this can easily give rise to the appearance of hypocrisy and double standards in relation to governance practices, and attract the kind of criticisms of Australia by Papua New Guineans that is more usually heard flowing in the opposite direction.

PHIL FITZPATRICK

Journeys to the Other Side of the World: Further Adventures of a Young Naturalist by David Attenborough, Two Roads (Hodder & Stoughton), ISBN: 978-1-47366-665-8, 414 pages, about $20-30 from most booksellers

TUMBY BAY - I think everyone with access to a television set has heard of David Attenborough, the British naturalist, broadcaster, writer and film maker.

Attenborough is 92 years old and still working. He is a passionate advocate for action on climate change and recently warned it is an existential crisis for humanity that could, if not remedied, lead to our extinction as a species.

I first saw him at a live presentation for school children in the late 1950s at the old Regent Theatre in Adelaide.

He had just published his book ‘Zoo Quest for a Dragon including the Quest for the Paradise Birds’ and it was the beginning of my fascination with the natural world and Papua New Guinea in particular.

I’ve still got my copy of that book but was interested to note that much of the PNG section has been recently republished in a compilation called ‘Journeys to the Other Side of the World’.

In 1956, Attenborough and his cinematographer, Charles Lagus, spent four months in the Highlands based at Edward Hallstrom’s experimental farm at Nondugl.

Lagus was the first cameraman engaged by the BBC to shoot natural history footage. He originally came from Czechoslovakia, now lives in Mauritius and, like Attenborough, is also 92 years old.

From Nondugl the two men walked into the Jimi Valley to join kiap Barry Griffin at the new patrol post he was building at Tabibuga.

They eventually walked with Griffin across the Bismarck Range to Aiome in the Ramu Valley and flew from there to Mt Hagen and then Nondugl.

Along the way Attenborough and Lagus got to see the work carried out by the taciturn and unflappable Griffin while they filmed and collected animals along the way.

One of the highlights of the trip was the filming of men making stone axes at Menjim in the Ganz Valley.

While on their assignment, both Attenborough and Lagus picked up a working knowledge of Tok Pisin and it seems developed a lifelong interest in PNG and its people.

Attenborough returned to make further films, including the very interesting if unfortunately titled ‘Savage New Guinea’, about first contact patrols.

The patrol was “still trudging wearily up never ending grass ridges with no sign of human habitation in sight” when Attenborough asked Griffin, “What lies there?” pointing “westward to a cloud filled valley”. “No one knows,” Griffin replied. “No one has been there.”

Attenborough’s first films and books had titles beginning with the words ‘zoo quest’ but this was later dropped as he developed an interest in not just the animals but the people he encountered on his expeditions.

Many of his films and books that describe these early encounters have become valuable records of societies that have since changed forever.

This new book gives a brief glimpse of life in Papua New Guinea that is long gone and will never be repeated.

Mining pollution turns the Pongema River red (Red Water Report)

ALY AZHAR | Earth Institute | Columbia University

NEW YORK - A new report titled ‘Red Water’ documents the social, environmental, economic, and health impacts of gold mining in Porgera, Papua New Guinea.

The report finds that the communities affected by mining do not have access to consistent and safe drinking water.

This is due, in part, to the fact that the PNG government has not met its human rights obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the right to water in Porgera, and because companies that own and operate the mine — Canadian company Barrick Gold and Zijin Mining from China — are in breach of their responsibilities to respect the right to water.

‘Red Water’ finds that the Porgera Joint Venture gold mine poses direct threats to the social and economic rights of communities living near the mine. These key findings are a result of a four-year study conducted by Earth Institute scientists, Pennsylvania State University scientists, and Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic faculty and students.

The investigation conducted over 177 interviews and meetings and collected and analysed 45 sediment samples from streams adjacent to the gold mine, 25 soil samples from local residents’ household gardens and water samples from 64 sites.

The Porgera Joint Venture releases mine waste, known as tailings, from the mine facility into the Pongema River at an average rate of over 14,000 tons per day. The tailings discharge forms what local residents refer to as the “Red River.”

A 2013 study noted the catastrophic environmental consequences of tailings discharge and noted that of the 2,500 industrial-sized mines in the world, only four mines — three of them in PNG — were found to rely on riverine tailings disposal.

According to one resident of Porgera, the local residents are “in a desperate situation. [Our] environment is not in a good condition.” Moreover, with a changing climate, water insecurity in the area is an acute problem.

The Porgera gold mine has been one of the world’s highest-producing gold mines over the course of its quarter-century history, and has accounted for a considerable percentage of PNG’s economic income.

The mine, which began operations in 1989, has long been contentious, and has generated global attention for both violence by security personnel and allegations of environmental degradation. The mine is owned by the PJV with a 95% share held by the mining companies.

The ‘Red Water’ report highlights key recommendations for the corporations who own the mine, government actors in PNG, the government of Canada, and international development partners:

Publicly commit to advance the human right to water in Porgera. The report recommends that the consortium of mining companies publicly announce a commitment to initiate a multi-stakeholder process to create a Human Right to Water Policy for the Porgera Joint Venture.

Work with the government of PNG to promote consistent access to adequate amounts of clean water for household uses in Porgera. The companies, in partnership with the Papua New Guinea government and in consultation with Porgeran communities, should invest in infrastructure improvements to provide adequate sources of safe water at the household level.

Immediately pledge to carry out an independent environmental and social audit of the PJV. This must be a full audit examining all the social, environmental, and health effects of the mine, including on water, land, flora, fauna, and human health. The results of the audit must be made public and accessible, especially for potentially impacted communities.

Adopt necessary laws and regulations to ensure that Canadian corporations respect human rights in their extraterritorial activities, and that there is access to remedy where such activities breach international human rights.

A launch event for the report will be held in April and will involve the research team and members of human rights and international development groups.

CHARLIE LYNN | Edited

SYDNEY - Since Australian environment officials assumed control of the Kokoda trekking industry in 2009, trekker numbers have declined by almost 50% from 5,621 in 2008 to 3,033 in 2018 – despite an injection of more than $50 million of aid funding.

The official response to the decline invariably refers to an aircraft crash in 2009 and a couple of deaths around the same period. The reality today is that, whenever the crash site is pointed out to trekkers, the usual response is ‘what crash?’

Prior to the discovery of the $3 billion Kodu gold and copper deposit on the southern slopes of the Kokoda Trail near Mt Bini there was no interest in the area or its people from either the PNG or Australian governments.  The appearance of bulldozers from Frontier Resources in 2006 changed that.

Concerns about the impact on the Trail and all it represents together with a technical hitch in the approval process led to the annulment of the license. A plan was then hatched to assist PNG to develop a case for a world heritage listing for the Owen Stanley Ranges.

Environment officials were dispatched from Canberra to learn about PNG – its people, the place and the Trail. The potential for extended careers and an endless loop of consultancies in pursuance of an ideological agenda was soon apparent.

The wartime history of the Kokoda campaign was sidelined early in the process because military heritage is not a relevant factor for a World Heritage listing.

The rapid increase in trekker numbers posed a dilemma for Canberra-based envirocrats, who had to appear to support wartime heritage while subverting its significance. They were also faced with the challenge of being seen to support trekking while working out how to limit it.

Their strategy involved hijacking the word ‘Kokoda’ to give relevance to their agenda and embedding ‘advisors’ in PNG government organisations including Kokoda Track Authority (KTA), Kokoda Development Program (KDP), Kokoda Initiative (KI), Conservation Environment Protection Authority (CEPA), Office of the Minister for Environment, Conservation and Climate Change (ECCC) and National Museum and Art Gallery (NMAG).

The advisors soon learned that PNG officials would look favourably at any proposal funded by the Australian aid program. This allowed them to respond to any challenge to their agenda by saying ‘this is what PNG wants’.

Their strategy also included the engagement of Australian consultants to generate a range of reports on esoteric environmental cultural and social issues.

These reports are rarely distributed for discussion and are not available on any webpages for review. The few that have been made public do not stand up to critical analysis and most are indecipherable for the average reader.

But after a decade of this, it is now possible to identify the three pillars of the Australian strategy and the indicators of a hidden agenda.

The first pillar was an innocuous notice planted within the May 2009 KTA Newsletter which advised that:

“A track analysis will be undertaken shortly to determine the works program required to repair the Track to Australian standards for Class 4 walking trails.  This is a minimum standard and seeks to provide sustainable use for the Track.  Once this report is complete it will be circulated.”

The report was never circulated. An internet search for ‘Australian standards for Class 4 walking trails’ revealed why.

Class 4 Standards reflect an extreme environmental agenda. They are based on providing trekkers with “frequent opportunities for solitude with few encounters with others”.  The maximum width for such a trail is half-a-metre. Bridges are not to be provided “except for essential environmental purposes”.  Campsites are not to allow for more than four tents.

Toilets “of minimal design are to be provided only where necessary for environmental purposes”.  The recommend trek group size is six but a “party size of four will be encouraged”. Furthermore “all publicity will be discouraged – authors will be encouraged to keep route descriptions vague – photographers and publishers will be encouraged not to identify precise locations”.

But the sting in the tail for the future of the Kokoda trekking industry was their final provision:

“Licenses may be issued on condition that guided parties conform to the recommended party size limit and to the guidelines relating to the publicity of tracks and destinations.”

If these provisions are included in the eventual legislation for a world heritage listing for the Owen Stanley Ranges it will be game over for trekking and for the livelihoods of village communities along the trail.

Unfortunately the first we will find out about this will be when the legislation is proclaimed as there is no provision for public scrutiny via Parliamentary committees or independent reviews in the PNG system. Once proclaimed it will never be revoked because of the cost and complexity of the process.

An interim strategy towards this goal was a subtle tactic to undermine the effectiveness of the PNG management system which had seen a dramatic 255% increase in trekkers from 76 in 2001 to 5,621 in 2008.

What other explanation can there be for the fact that, since Canberra assumed control of the trekking industry in 2009, there has been a 46% decrease in trekker numbers and failure to introduce a single management protocol?

Not one of the five strategies or 33 objectives planned for 2012-2015 was achieved. After a decade it is still not possible to book a campsite. There is no trek itinerary management system. There is no campsite development plan. There is no trail maintenance plan. There is no provision for the welfare of PNG guides and porters.

There is no micro-economic development plan for local villagers. They have not conducted a single village workshop to determine local needs. There is not a single toilet that meets the most basic hygiene standards along the entire trail – obviously in accordance with their Class 4 walking trails standard.

The second pillar of their strategy relates to the military heritage of the Kokoda campaign.

If the name ‘Kokoda’ had not been associated with the proposed Kodu goldmine near Mr Bini it would have been unremarkable and would now be operational.

The Chinese funded $260 million Edevu Hydro project, which will dam the Brown River and flood the catchment area, will guarantee the future water supply for Port Moresby. A study of a map of the Mt Bini goldmine on the southern slopes to the west of the Maguli Range shows that the Brown River catchment would have been well protected from any mining-forestry activity in the area.

Environment officials have never accepted the fact that the wartime history of the Kokoda campaign is the primary reason Australians want to trek the Trail. Post-trek surveys indicate they don’t do it to have an ‘environmental levitation’ or a ‘cultural awakening’ – they do it to walk in the footsteps of our troops, to experience the conditions under which they fought and died, to hear their stories and to challenge themselves.

Unfortunately for the villagers along the trail, Australia’s environmental ideology is opposed to commemoration and pilgrimage.

The ongoing challenge for envirocrats embedded in PNG government organisations is how to create the impression of an interest in the wartime significance of the Kokoda campaign while subtly subverting it.

The fact they have not produced a military heritage master plan to identify, protect, honour and interpret the Kokoda campaign over the past 10 years indicates their disregard for commemoration – as is their failure to develop a single memorial along the Trail during the decade they have been responsible for it.

Their recent attempt to create an impression of interest in the military heritage of the Trail fails the test of transparency and intent.

Why, for example, would they advertise for a ‘National Military Heritage Advisor’ during our peak holiday season (22 December 2017 – 8 January 2018) and only distribute it to a small group of selected institutions? Why was the Australian War Memorial excluded from the distribution list?

The process resulted in the appointment as Australia’s National Military Heritage Advisor in PNG of an American anthropologist with no qualifications in military history.

It simply doesn’t pass the sniff test.

One can only conclude that the wartime heritage of the trail is both an irritation and an impediment to the environmental agenda for a world heritage listing. While the listing will secure the environment of the Owen Stanleys against the potential ravages of mining, forestry, agriculture and trekking, remote villagers will be forever consigned to a subsistence lifestyle – only to be visited at irregular intervals by small groups of eco-evangelists in search of gaia.

The third pillar of their strategy relates to being seen to develop village communities while in fact disempowering them.

Over the past decade schools have been built without any provision for a regular supply of educational materials or teacher development – and health centres constructed without any provision for a regular supply of medicine to meet local community needs.

A million dollar ‘Village Livelihoods Project’ was introduced without any consultation with PNG – it inevitably failed without producing a single vegetable from a local garden or generating a single dollar in additional income for local villagers.

It’s not that Australian officials have been inactive during their lucrative tax-free posting cycles to Port Moresby. There has been an abundance of glossy brochures produced, consultants reports to digest, evasive communiques to transmit, an endless loop of meetings, forums; workshops, capacity building initiatives, social mapping projects, gender equity studies and extravagant PowerPoint presentations – virtually all one without stepping on the Trail to meet a villager or a trekker!

It would be wrong to assume that all Australians working on the Kokoda Initiative are part of the deception. Many of them are dedicated to their jobs and the longer they stay in PNG the more they like the place and the people.

However one doesn’t have to be in conversation with them for very long to hear of a deep-seated resentment for the directions they receive from their environmental masters in Canberra.

It would also be wrong to assume that Australians who trek the Trail are not environmentalists: the pristine nature of the local environment is one of the many treasured memories for trekkers who would be aghast at any activity that denuded it in any way.

Notwithstanding this, veterans’ organisations, trekkers and villagers have every cause to be very afraid. If the Class 4 Standards for walking trails is legislated as part of the provisions for a world heritage listing for the Owen Stanley Ranges it will be goodbye to commemoration, goodbye to trekking and goodbye to any opportunity for villagers along the Kokoda Trail to become economically self-reliant.

RASHMII AMOAH BELL

BRISBANE - Readers might have believed that when PNG Attitude’s publisher and editor proclaimed post-surgery, “Now time to get this old cart back on the road”, the words were reflective rather than prescriptive. Nope.

Whereas 10 minutes helping my son with Year 5 long division means immediate, uninterrupted and unspecified rest on the sofa, PNG Attitude’s recovery from five-time spinal surgery means returning to his keyboard and the company of thousands of readers around the globe.

I guess individuals like Keith Jackson are wired differently.

A few short hours after his release from hospital, I received an email from Jackson who explained that, while he was late to International Women’s Day 2019, PNG Attitude still ought to mark the occasion by recognising the women of Papua New Guinea.

I was invited to nominate a handful of women and briefly explain why.

The International Women’s Day clarion call of ‘Think equal, build smart, innovate for change’ signalled the task for the year ahead.

Innovating to remove barriers and accelerate progress for gender equality. Encouraging investment to develop gender-responsive social systems. Building services and infrastructure to meet the needs of women and girls.

“It is vital that women’s ideas and experiences equally influence the design and implementation of the innovation that shape our future societies,” the United Nations has declared and, if this is to be achieved, it will require industry leaders, start-ups, social entrepreneurs, gender equality activists and women innovators engaging with women.

In 2019, the focus is on innovative approaches to disrupt business as usual, remove structural barriers and ensure no girl or woman is left behind.

For the past 13 years, PNG Attitude has constantly encouraged Papua New Guinean girls and women to participate in dismantling social barriers through their writing

The blog’s activist attitude, trans-border outlook, issues orientation and daily publication has done much to accelerate progress for gender equality in PNG.

Furthermore, it has always had an emphasis on inclusion and participation.

Some of these activities have included the Crocodile Prize, Pukpuk Publications, fundraising to assist individual writers, the Paga Hill McKinnon Writers Fellowship, writers’ workshops in PNG, collaboration with Australian literary festivals, mentoring emerging writers, supporting writers’ groups and continuing engagement with Papua New Guinean writers through social media and personal contact.

For me - whether through reading its articles, engaging in dialogue, networking or delivering project activities - PNG Attitude has been the key digital source that influences my thinking and helps me frame strategies and solutions to enable me to move faster towards achieving gender equality and equity in PNG.

Much of this came to fruition in the tangibility and disruption of the My Walk to Equality project, which proved to be a great achievement by a disparate group of Papua New Guinean women assisted by the Australian men who had established the Crocodile Prize.

My Walk to Equality broke through the bonds of inertia and resistance, briefly blazed in glorious light, still haltingly moves forward and refuses to be vanquished,

But it was not followed up by any institutional reinforcement, probably because it was bottom-up and, despite what they claim, the big institutions much prefer top-down. ‘Not invented here’ is such a large constraint on voluntary effort – no matter how effective and worthy – being picked up by those who have the resources to make more of it.

But let me move on to those eleven Papua New Guinean women who, through PNG Attitude and the MWTE Project, I consider innovators in their national and international contributions to achieving gender equality.

Their efforts and actions don’t often receive the public attention, endorsement or investment they deserve, frequently because ‘not invented here’ applies even to the laudable and socially progressive goals of gender equality.

The syndrome emerges from two key constraints: the boundaries that knowledge must bridge as it transfers between two entities; and the irrational devaluation or rejection of external knowledge by an entity.

The women nominated here, taken as a group, would be a formidable force for change in Papua New Guinea but there has been no appetite to utilise them or their ideas in a systematic and coherent way to achieve goals that continue to prove so elusive to large and well-resourced institutions.

If you are an industry leader, game-changing start-up, social entrepreneur or gender equality activist, I encourage you to consider how your efforts, plans, budgets and investments could contribute more effectively to support these women in their work and so contribute to a future capable of accelerating progress towards gender equality in PNG.

Dr Michelle Nayahamui Rooney

Dr Rooney is prolific in her written contributions to disseminate her scholarship of Papua New Guinean issues, particularly those affecting Manus society and its sad experience of hosting the Australia-funded euphemistically-designated regional processing centre for asylum seekers.

I admire Rooney’s proactive approach to translating her academic research in a manner that is inclusive, practical and encourages participation of the non-academic population through public access and online articles. Rooney’s regular publications have been extremely helpful to me in my contemplation of issues and in refining and expanding my own thinking about how girls and women are perceived, especially by non-Papua New Guineans.

I’ve spent considerable time thinking about her recent offering in which the discussion references colonial discourse, its impact on Papua New Guineans engaging in self-representation and how this plays out in the present day between PNG and Australia through relations of gender and security.

Rooney’s ‘gender trap diplomacy’ best illuminates my own understanding, about which I have previously written: “Gender equality is impossible to achieve if the language, legislation, attitudes, and behaviours expressed by those who act or speak on behalf of Papua New Guinea women continue to reinforce doubt about facts of our assertions and thereby incapacitate our right to speak out.”

Now more than ever, Papua New Guinean girls and women need to play a significant role in demanding and directing authentic self-representation when engaging or aligning with the former colonial power Australia and more recent influences including China and the United States.

Roxanne Aila

Roxanne and I have a personal history that stretches back to our early primary school days at an international school in Port Moresby. It was a privilege but one that did not prove immune to life’s challenges in later years.  

With much admiration, and in various spaces, I have sat alongside Roxanne as she has contributed to dialogue about her experience in managing and overcoming depression. As an ambassador for the Beyond Blue organisation, Roxanne is dedicated to dismantling stigma and increasing non-judgemental public dialogue in Australia and PNG about an individual’s mental health.

Coupled with her yoga teaching, speaking and participating in workplaces and at community events, and through her blog and social media activities, Roxanne shines the spotlight on messages of positive thinking, mindfulness and meditation to assist others.

Alurigo Ravuriso-Kali

Alurigo is easily one of one of the top people with whom I would like to spend time on a regular basis if we lived in closer proximity. Connected through the MWTE Project, a recent opportunity to finally meet in-person was short-lived on account of a shared commonality - fulfilling parental responsibilities - whilst pursuing personal goals and ambition.

Nevertheless, as a role model for living through Christian faith whilst managing the realities of family life and a career, Alurigo’s warmth, authenticity and grounded nature is affecting, as are her reflections in the anthology essay ‘A Culture of Family’.

Alurigo champions positive representation through writing. She opts for a narrative that focuses on Papua New Guineans living in urban PNG who are thoughtful and give consideration to how the everyday challenges may be eased to make life more manageable, safer and happier. A culture of offering solutions and sharing.

Betty Wakia

Betty embodies the type of woman who understands the significance and necessity of proactively giving other PNG women a seat at the table when an opportunity presents itself. Truth be told, not being included and being denied access to influential platforms has been a major obstacle to the in-country impact of the MWTE Project.

Yet, Betty’s simple act of inviting us into her network saw our MWTE project come to wider attention and being nominated as the PNG country project for the United Nations Girls and Women’s Education Prize 2018. It was a welcome surprise, flawed only by PNG’s internet connectivity issues which got in the way of our preparation for the prize.

That said, the nomination demonstrated not only the advantages of teamwork in achieving a short-term goal as domestic and diaspora allies worked our way through UNESCO’s comprehensive online nomination process to ensure global attention was directed to PNG’s efforts in educating girls and women through indigenous literature.

Pauline Mago-King andLeiao Gerega

Pauline and Leiao are two journalists who have produced both creative and investigative writing informing the public about the status, progress and future directions of achieving gender equality in PNG.

Their approach encompasses perspectives from the female and male population in both urban and rural settings and interacting at the interface of government and non-government intervention. Leiao’s evocative poetry featured in the anthology extends to her print journalism and the project team recognised the potential of her written work by nominating her to present at last year’s Emerging Writers Festival in Australia, an application that was unfortunately unsuccessful.

Pauline, whilst reporting from New Zealand, extended an invitation for me to share my thoughts about the potential impact the APEC 2018 discussions would have on communities along the Kokoda Trail, especially girls and women. It was an opportune occasion during which I was able to convey what I had observed during my first trek of the Trail some months earlier, documented in the seven-part Trail of Woe series in PNG Attitude.

Alphonse Huvi

Alphonse was recently warmly congratulated by the MWTE project team on the publication and distribution of the Devare Adventist High School Anthology, a self-initiated project. I had been contacted by Alphonse in the very early stages of planning and was delighted at her milestone achievement and the efforts of students in producing the book.

In a parallel effort to her MWTE contribution, My Challenging Life, Alphonse had limited resources but with incredible supply hard work, effective communication and enthusiasm delivered a near-impossible feat in an environment where publishing indigenous literature is not considered to be an important priority.

Theresa Mekiand Tania Basiou

Theresa and Tania have inspired audiences in their advocacy for gender-equality through film and photography respectively. Theresa’s collaboration with a team of writers, actors, producers, directors and support crew saw her contribute to the production of Aliko and Ambai. Like Betty Wakia, she invited me into her network providing the opportunity to both better understand her role in the project and to interact with the film’s director, Dr Mark Eby, to whom I conveyed my positive impressions of the film.

Aliko and Ambai demonstrated to me the potential of Papua New Guinean women in film, especially as screenwriters, to engage and impact minds of all ages with realistic portrayals about co-existing respectfully, peacefully and productively in the interests of a progressive nation.

Tania is of course well known as the cover designer and contributing author for the MWTE anthology. She is a splendid photographer with a stellar portfolio produced as a result of her private and collaborative project work. The images are distinctive and offer audiences an authentic experience of how a Papua New Guinean woman perceives evolving PNG communities and other aspects of the world around her.

Mary Kini

Mary Kini passionately and articulately conveyed her human rights advocacy when presenting at the Women of Wonder Festival in Brisbane last year. Mary engaged audience members (including me) as she described the hard work, sadness and hostility of offering safe spaces, temporary shelter and referral support for girls and women fleeing unsafe, hostile and often life-threatening situations in their communities, including sorcery accusation related violence.

There’s no sense in which Mary portrayed victimhood but she did clearly get across the problems of delivering help because of communication delays compounded by strained and limited resources. What Mary refrained from elaborating, but which was evident, was the self-sacrifice involved and the threats and danger involved in the predominantly, voluntary role of helping Papua New Guineans who are in trouble.

Elvina Ogil

Elvina is the creator and host of the first Papua New Guinean feminist podcast, Who Asked Her, which first aired (via Soundcloud) in May 2018 and has produced its sixth one-hour episode. These conversations offer the thoughts, opinions and argument of the host and invited (predominantly) Papua New Guinean guests who discuss on a wide-range of issues which have included feminism, cultural appropriation, abortion and neo colonialism.

Who Asked Her is refreshing, informative and thought-provoking and has gained a legion of listeners with the first episode receiving 1,300 listens (excluding downloads) and counting. Many people are eager to join the conversation and offer their views about contemporary PNG society via social media.

Speaking to ABC radio’s Tahlea Aualiitia of Pacific Mornings program on International Women’s Day, Elvina said her self-funded podcast has a wide-reach including into parts of rural PNG and observed that listeners have commended her initiative to encourage more participation, especially of girls and women, in PNG’s public conversation.

Rashmii Amoah Bell by Keith Jackson

Rashmii is a perceptive essayist, a deep intellectual curiosity in hot pursuit of further learning and a wanna-do can-do administrator. The trio don’t often travel in the same carriage. Especially not when there are young school children and related matters constituting the complexities of daily life.

Things become even tougher when good intentions and hard work bump into the everyday cynicism of people on the make and scenarios designed to be zero sum games. As I merge with old age, I have learned to pick the leaners and users. But this does have to be learned. And the process means bumping along some very rocky roads on the way.

It was Rashmii who something less than three years ago decided she’d like to produce a really big event for International Women’s Day 2017 in Papua New Guinea. An anthology of Papua New Guinean women’s writing no less. Never been done before. No templates or precedents. No structure whatsoever. Three months, in publishing is as good as no time at all. And there was no money. But there was a burning desire to succeed.

It happened. And it was the nearest thing to a miracle you’re ever likely to see on God’s good earth. The book itself was a triumph of writing and design. The two launches (in Port Moresby and Brisbane) were marvellous and memorable. The book was distributed in its hundreds, then thousands.

Then Rashmii pressed on to make her idea more than a book, to make it a locus of movement towards equality for girls and women. And that took guts as well as effort, and meant pushing against the forces of exploitation, envy and disdain that always arise at times like this. Rashmii doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and there were plenty of them.

Some two years later, My Walk to Equality can be seen as a triumphal moment. It could also have started a triumphal movement but it did not because there were more leaners than lifters, more slackers than backers and because it was “not invented here” but by a single mum who had a grand idea and the ambition and drive to see it happen.

There’s a lot more to this story, of course, there always is. There were more people, more incidents, more bumpy roads. And there will be a lot more to come. Papua New Guinea and Australia have not heard the last of Rashmii Bell. They’ve hardly heard the beginning.

A smart institution – not one dwelling in its own vainglory or fear of competitors, but one that is smart and open – would understand that to succeed it must adopt the best of breed, which often lies way beyond its own capabilities.

That’s where Rashmii is - along with many other women like those she has featured here.

Matheson Library at the PNG University of Technology in Lae

ALBERT SCHRAM

VERONA, ITALY - The recent visit by minister Richard Maru to the Papua New Guinea University of Technology (Unitech), where he donated a few hundred thousand kina in laboratory equipment may give the impression that everything is fine.

In fact, the opposite is true.

In Papua New Guinea, there have been four major student uprisings in the five years from 2012 to 2017, the result of endless government meddling in university council affairs.

As a result, for anyone interested in student protest, it has become the world’s number one place to be. If you want to lead a peaceful family life on campus, however, it is possibly not the preferred location.

Moreover, the overtly anti-foreigner attitude of the government, chancellors and many university staff members, as demonstrated by the recent persecution of foreign vice-chancellors and academics, is not conducive to a positive working environment.

In 2012, when I accepted the vice-chancellor’s position at Unitech there was great hope that governance would be streamlined and major investments in infrastructure would take place. One minister even announced this in the international press.

None of the changes was implemented and none of the investment took place.

The traditional model of PNG university governance was at best a recipe for stasis, but most likely a pathway of gradual decline and irrelevance. In 2010, the Namaliu-Garnaut Report, an independent review of the PNG university system had rightly recommended streamlining the independent university governance structure and improving academic quality of programs. The two things are of course related.

After 2012, however, the O’Neill government followed none of these recommendations and instead proceeded to steamroll a Higher Education Act through parliament, abolishing university autonomy and giving the universities tough medicine for 10 years.

This is how the first fascist legislation in Europe in the 1930s was passed, always announced as a ‘temporary measure for exceptional circumstances’.

Meanwhile, the show must go on. During my two terms as vice-chancellor, I focused on creating employable graduates and producing world-class academic programs. Industry supported the efforts to turn Unitech into a real university with graduates who could be employed as professionals rather than as technicians.

We called this program ‘Making Unitech Fly!’ and it focused on key higher education values and creating a rule-based organisation and a mission-focused and student-centred university.

As an administrator, I had to first put in the building blocks. I established financial controls, stopped the leakage of funds and by 2017 managed to balance the budget. This was the year the university received a clean audit from the Auditor-General’s office for the first time in over two decades.

This gave us the opportunity to engage with outside industry and academic partners, in fact we were able to send 77 staff members abroad for training - almost half the academic staff.

The mismanagement and stealing stopped, the budget was balanced and industry support for international accreditation of programs increased greatly.

We significantly improved the teaching environment on 1 June 2015as the first university in the world to open an O3B installation and buy discounted laptops for all first years students. The operating environment for Unitech, however, remained extremely challenging due to government meddling and insufficient and irregular monthly funding.

Student safety and welfare issues could not be addressed vigorously due to lack of funding and political infighting.

The violent suppression of the students’ demonstration at the UPNG campus on 8 June 2016 was a major turning point. A boycott on classes had started in May 2016, the students demanding that PM Peter O’Neill submit himself to due judicial process after serious and credible allegations of fraud and corruption had surfaced. That he did not do so increased suspicions of his guilt.

The demonstration was violently suppressed with police shooting hundreds of live rounds into a crowd of peacefully demonstrating students, even following them into their dormitories. The promised investigation never happened so we don’t know who gave the orders to shoot and nobody was charged. The message was loud and clear: anyone protesting risks being shot.

On the same day at Unitech in Lae we convinced the students not to attack the police and stay on campus although in later riots one student was seriously wounded and one murdered in inter-tribal fighting. We were able to re-open the campus on 30 August and finish the academic year, unlike UPNG which abandoned classes, court action continuing long after the protest had been crushed.

As Unitech’s vice-chancellor with the principal duty of upholding the provisions of the PNG University of Technology Act, the way forward for me was clear: the government should respect academic freedom and university autonomy and stop trying to direct university affairs from Waigani.

The university council would restore the voice of the students by granting a modified version of the Student Representative Council constitution. The principle of shared governance enshrined in the University Act was to be respected.

Instead the PNG government decided to appoint political cronies as chancellors who did not follow this course of autonomy and academic freedom but reverted to how things had been before. First the government needed to get rid of all foreign vice-chancellors, who were unceremoniously insulted, disrespected, expelled, charged and, in my case, even arrested.

What’s more they were not given the legally established accumulated pay, in other words the foreign academics were cheated out of their salaries. Then the government decided to appoint political cronies as vice-chancellors, mostly relatives of current ministers.

As a result, I predict the collapse of the PNG university system within two years. First, because of the financial unsustainability, and secondly because the voice of the students has not been restored.

Unsustainable finances are not a secret in PNG and as a result no private company will give credit to universities. Now Unitech is trying to run its messing facility, for example, without qualified managers or support from a professional catering company. Students expect three meals a day for 250 days a year. We will see what happens.

My greatest mistake during my tenure as vice-chancellor was believing that my management team of supposedly highly educated Papua New Guineans had genuinely bought into the vision of turning Unitech into a rule-based organisation, a university producing employable graduates and engaging in meaningful research and knowledge transfer.

Regrettably, they said one thing to my face and did the opposite behind my back. They could not resist going to Waigani to flatter the government of the day, thus feeling more important. In this way, they failed to provide the necessary university leadership and missed the last opportunity to put Unitech on a solid and sustainable footing.

In general, there are two models for public universities: the politicised model and the shared governance model with institutional autonomy and academic freedom.

The first model, dominating in corrupt environments, is based on political control of the governance and management of universities. The university is never adequately funded but small gifts are handed out in return for demonstrations of allegiance, admiration and voter support.

The recent donation of some equipment to Unitech by minister Richard Maru is a case in point. He is not the Minister for Higher Education but has been meddling in the university. Previous donations of this kind were not effectively used. For example, some laboratory apparatus donated by the European Union is still rotting in boxes 15 years after it was donated.

Although Unitech’s Act is clearly based on universal higher education values, the ruling classes in PNG never liked this second model highlighting academic freedom and institutional autonomy. They much preferred a system where universities operated like government departments. Under my predecessor who was at Unitech for 19 years, the university became part of the mechanism of political patronage and a means of diverting public funds.

It was an uncommon honour and pleasure to be vice-chancellor for two terms serving the students of Unitech – young people who were able and talented learners, willing to overcome unimaginable obstacles to obtain a true university education.

While the politicians stayed out of my hair, we achieved substantial and rapid progress, despite the management team's lack of commitment to true transformation and constant disobedience from staff.

GRAHAM KING

BIALLA - When my children were small and living in West New Britain they would sing the Papua New Guinean version of ‘Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree’ which was ‘Kokomo Sits in the Coconut Tree’.

They also sang another version which was ‘Kokomo sits on the ‘lectric wire, jumping up and down with his pants on fire’.

I have never seen Kokomos roosting on a coconut and, besides, coconuts are palms not trees.

But in West New Britain the Kokomos love to find a tall yar tree on which they spend the night.

In Bialla over 200 Kokomos (Blyths Hornbill) fly in every afternoon at dusk to roost in a tall yar tree (Casuarina equisetifolia) in the Area 7 Executive Housing complex.

And every morning they make a raucous cacophony of noise as they wake and head off to their feeding grounds in the forests surrounding the oil palm plantations.

Plantation work necessitates an early start to the day but even on a Sunday morning it is very difficult to sleep in with the noise of the Kokomos waking up next door to our houses. 

Of course the sight and noise of Kokomos flying in of an evening, either singly or in groups with the swishing noise from the beat of their wings, makes the evening SP or gin & tonic even more pleasurable.

Over the last 12 years they have moved trees four times and I have often wondered what triggers the move.

Once lightning struck the tree and next morning there were quite a few dead birds on the ground at its base.  Of course the people took them very quickly as the beaks are highly prized in many parts of PNG as part of traditional dress.

Soon afterwards the rest of the birds moved to a new tree.

On another occasion some security guards were shooting birds with catapults. The guards were fired but the birds decided it was time to move again.

Some years ago we found that the yar tree they were using was totally rotten at the base and it was very likely it would fall down on a house.  There were other yar trees close by so, while the Kokomos were away feeding during the day, we cut down the tree.

On the birds return in the afternoon, after some confusion, they settled in a new tree near the bottom of the hill.

Rocky Roe came in 2017 to take photographs for our 40th anniversary and sent up a drone beside the tree to get some close-up photographs.  The Kokomos were immediately agitated and started flying around to escape the threat.  Rocky quickly brought the drone back to earth as he did not want he birds to attack his expensive drone.

A couple of months ago a large python managed to find the Kokomo tree, climbed up and ate two birds while they were asleep. 

Next morning the snake had a very full belly and was trying to slither off to digest his meal when a crowd of adults and children spotted him and were trying to kill him with a bush knife. 

Whilst we tried to prevent this, I’m not sure if the python survived. Most Papua New Guineans believe the only good snake is a dead one and it is most likely the moran was killed.

In any case, once again the Kokomos moved to a new yar tree. It seems they are able to sense danger and move when they consider it is no longer safe in a particular tree.

Now they are at the top of the hill again, and I wake once more to the raucous sound of the Kokomos discussing their daily plans before they heading off for another day foraging for their favourite food.

Ex-combatants from Konnou in South Bougainville surrender weapons in preparation for the referendum. Member for Konnou Willie Masiu MP said peace building is a priority in his constituency

ANTHONY KAYBING

BUKA - Bougainvilleans have been urged to present a unified front in casting their votes when the Autonomous Region of Bougainville goes to the polls for the referendum on its political future in October.

“As your leader I urge you all to vote for option two and that is independence,” President John Momis said during the final stage of the week-long Bougainville referendum roadshow.

“Having a result that presents a unified Bougainvillean choice gives our leaders the power to negotiate with the national government,” Dr Momis said.

He reminded the people that after the referendum the result will still have to be ratified by the PNG parliament as stipulated under the Bougainville Peace Agreement.

“If the national parliament fails to ratify the result of the referendum then we still have the option of a negotiated outcome where both governments will collaborate to get the best outcome for the people of Bougainville,” he said.

“This is our time to exercise our right to self-determination, it is our time to forge a new future for our children and the generations to come.

“Our civil polity must be built upon a strong national identity that adheres to freedom, tolerance and equality,” Dr Momis said.

“While we embark on the final leg of our journey together there will be challenges. Challenges that we cannot ignore but must face with grit and perseverance.

“In our journey to self-determination, permanent peace on Bougainville necessitates a credible outcome of the referendum.”

Ian Rowles with his Kabwum Trading Company Cessna 185, Lae, 1974. Soon after this photo was taken, Ian died in this aircraft in a bad weather crash (Richard Leahy)

PAUL OATES

GOLD COAST - In 1971, as a newly promoted Patrol Officer, I took a break from supervising the construction of a road between Yalumet and Derim airstrips in the Morobe District to spend a few days at the sub-district headquarters at Kabwum.

To my surprise the small town was buzzing with hundreds of prisoners – unmistakeable in their bright red laplaps featuring roughly printed broad black arrows.

“What the heck’s going on?” I asked one of the station staff.

Well, it turned out it all began over a dog. Or at least that’s what triggered the immediate problem of who was the true owner a section of land near Indagen airstrip, south east of Kabwum where Ian Rowles’ Kabwum Trading Company had a trade store and a Summer Institute of Linguistics family were translating the Bible into the local language.

Two local clans had a long-standing dispute over who owned the land, a common enough situation in Papua New Guinea and one that was usually extraordinarily difficult to determine.

It seems that on one cold Indagen morning (the airstrip is at 5,400 feet), an old man spotted a dog belonging to another old man from a rival clan going about its business on ground contested by both clans.

The old man lost his temper and kicked the dog, telling the other old man to get the animal off his land.

This reignited the long-standing argument about whose land it really was. The two had been squabbling about this for years but always took satisfaction in beginning it anew.

The ‘coconut wireless’ went into action and the story about the dispute and the dog kicking found its way to Lae where the son of the dog’s owner worked. You can be sure the incident had grown in detail and drama by the time it reached him.

The young man stopped work to make his way on foot back to Kabwum; no small feat as the track crosses the Sarawaget Range north west of Lae. The Sarawagets rise to a height of 13,500 feet and travellers have been reported frozen to death trying to cross them.

Anyway, after three days the young man negotiated the range and safely reached Indagen on a Saturday morning, which was market day at the airstrip.

Thousands of people from outlying areas crowded around the strip, selling and buying or just yarning.

On arrival, the young man ran up to the old dog kicker and knocked him to the ground which caused general mayhem as the clans clustered and began to attack their rivals.

The airstrip and its surrounds degenerated into a scene of full scale warfare, the reason for the original dispute quickly forgotten as old rivalries bubbled to the surface and pent up anger gave way to physical violence.

Flying in that morning with an aircraft full of trade store goods, Ian Rowles found he could not land as the strip was covered with fighters. Rowles flew back to Kabwum and let Assistant District Commissioner John Absalom know about the fighting at Indagen.

‘Absolvo’, as he was known around the district, marshalled his small force, unloaded Rowles’ Cessna 185, filled it with police and took off for Indagen. The rest of the detachment was sent on foot to Indagen with orders to ‘hariap igo kwiktaim’ (‘go as fast as you can’).

Rowles flew the fully loaded aircraft back to Indagen and managed to clear the airstrip of fighting warriors by buzzing it at low level a number of times.

After they had landed ‘Absolvo’ and his police rounded up the fighters, separated the clans and soon long lines of ‘wet kot’ (waiting for the court) were being shepherded to Kabwum station for their court appearance before ‘Absolvo’, now in his magisterial role.

Given the limited number of prisoners Kabwum gaol could accommodate, after sentencing many of had to be flown to other gaols. While they waited for their enforced travel they were put to work and the station soon had the best tended airstrip, lawns and stormwater drains you could imagine.

Those were the days....

The minister's pig: Was it gift enough or should it have been a horse?

ALBERT SCHRAM

VERONA - It is no secret that university governance in Papua New Guinea has been completely politicised.

Rules are not respected and there is no transparency or accountability.

Now it seems all this has been thrown out of the window, and traditional justice practices are being used to resolve university governance issues.

As a foreigner, even after having mastered the relevant anthropological literature, I found it hard to understand how wonderful customary justice principles based on restoration of social harmony, reciprocity and proportionality worked out in practice.

For people not interested in the arcane legal details of university governance, this story may help focus the mind.

In 2014, then higher education minister Delilah Gore gave two cows to Unitech because the university council allowed me to remain as lawfully appointed vice-chancellor and did not impose another.

A professor would be valued at one cow, an associate professor a pig, a senior lecturer a goat and a lecturer a dog or cat. Two cows for a vice-chancellor kind of worked out.

In 2018, however, higher education minister Pila Niningi received only one pig from the University of PNG academic staff association to say ‘sori’ for their strike, which a judge had declared illegal on a technicality.

The strike occurred after the minister tried to impose an unlawfully appointed vice-chancellor on the university.

Under the university ‘sori’ system I previously described, a vice-chancellor was valued at two cows, a professor one cow, an associate professor a pig, a senior lecturer a goat, a lecturer a dog or cat, a tutor a mouse and staff member a mere ant.

Following the principle of proportionality minister Niningi should have been worth at least two cows.

But he received only one pig.

We can see clearly how kastam is no longer respected.

Ray Sigimet - "A simple poem or story with a simple message can inspire change"

RAYMOND SIGIMET

DAGUA - I started writing poetry as a form of personal expression when I had my first piece published on PNG Attitude in September 2015.

It was a poem about my daughter who was born in 2011 and it expressed the awe and wonder she brought into my life.

My daughter exuded an inner strength and zest for life which inspired me.

She was also growing really fast and, when she started talking about going school, I realised that I had to leave something for her to enable her to find her strength and remember me later on in life.

This was when I started to jot down a few stanzas and lines.  

In my poems, I mostly write about things or issues that I read, hear or see happening in the country or region. I am always in awe of Papua New Guinea and try to capture in my poems its social changes and challenges.

My poems are mostly about life, politics and justice, land and development, family and home, spirituality, and self and identity.

I believe that humans have shared experiences that transcend time and space and when these are captured effectively in a simple poem or story with a simple message, the reader is able to relive those experiences, relate to the poetry and perhaps be inspired to create change.

I am originally from the Dagua hinterlands of East Sepik and I'm the third born in a family of nine. I can trace my pre-colonial paternal ancestry to a warrior-mercenary ancestor during the 'taim blong spia' [time of the spear = territorial wars].

My grandfathers on both side were among the first few within their clans to leave their Prince Alexander mountain hamlets and travel by boat to Madang, Lae, Salamaua and Wau before World War II.

My relatives never imagined I would one day create works of fiction like poetry and short stories and I'm the only one in my family who writes creative pieces read by a mass audience. My families have since been supportive and encouraging as they saw my writing find its place on PNG Attitude and get shared in social media.

Some family members and extended relatives have commended me and told me they can relate to the messages of the poems I published last year in two collections.

A few weeks back, I was invited to give a talk to Grade 7 and 8 students of a primary school. Their teacher wanted me to talk to them about myself as a teacher-writer and inspire them in their learning.

I talked about what learning is, the importance of reading, having a good imagination and the magic of writing.

The highest point of my life as a writer was having my poems, short stories and essays previously published on PNG Attitude republished in book form last year by Jordan Dean of JDT Publications.

After a lifetime of holding other people’s books in my hands, I now held two small books of my own.

As a teacher-writer who has been teaching for 10 years now in rural schools, my students’ proficiency and ability in English and English writing is a concern to me.

Ray and the two collections of his writing published last year

In my lessons on reading and writing, I use examples of my own writing to guide and motivate them. I tell them “If I can do this, you can also”.

Personally, I find writing to be therapeutic and relaxing. The creative state of mind is like a reflective meditation that helps me to soothe my nerves after a challenging day or hectic week in the classroom.

PNG’s oral traditions should be recorded in writing. From my experience, many village-based students are losing touch with the traditional identity and culture captured in the ancient stories and songs.

The intrusion of western knowledge has resulted in many of the old stories and songs being relegated to memory. I believe these tales and songs must be preserved in audio and in writing, although I know it would be a mammoth task to do this.

I believe Papua New Guinean writers and poets have a traditional and national duty to preserve ancient oral traditions by capturing them in tales and poetry. Chinua Achebe uses ancient proverbs from his tribal region throughout his novel ‘Things Fall Apart’. That is what PNG writers and poets should be doing before our ancient oral traditions become lost.

PNG at this time needs a national literature that must speak of the aspirations of the people after more than 40 years of independence.

In the past, black writing and poetry ignited pro-independence sentiments. Now the writing of our time should speak of the years after independence, the changes since the turn of the century and the path to the future.

Writers and poets must use their tools to record and capture aspects of the country’s history and culture, both old and contemporary.

Writing and poetry can inspire change and set a direction for the country. PNG’s shared culture, identity and history can be reflected within our writing giving our country and people a voice and purpose.

Writing and poetry also serve as platforms for the people to participate and communicate with the world in this age of mass media and information technology.

Finally, for International Poetry Day, here’s a Tok Pisin poem I like. It was originally published on PNG Attitude as well as in my book ‘Mirror on the Wall: Selected Poems, Short Stories & Essays’.

Wara Kalap

Naispela wara kalap
Long maunten antap
Kol blong en i nais tru
Harim em lap stap long yu
Taim em i ron kam daun
Na kalap paitim ston

Naispela wara kalap
Em ron yet na kalap stap
Em yu yet lukim long ai
Aninit long ol bus diwai
Nogat narapela i olsem
Ples wara kalap long en

Dispela wara kalap
Stap long naispela hap
Em i ron na kalap i stap olsem
Bipo yet long lapun tumbuna taim
Kam taim blong papamama
Na nau ol pikinini na yangpela tumbuna

Dispela wara kalap
Em kalap isi na i no rap
Save kolim nek na tingting
Na tu ol narapela samting
Taim bikpela wara i rap na doti
Em nogat tru, em klin na kalap isi

Gutpela wara kalap
Long taim blong pait na lap
Em yet gat stori blong en
Taim yu pait aninit long bik san
Na yu sot win na nek i drai
Kam kolim nek na lukluk long ai

Gutpela wara kalap
Long maunten antap
Em ron yet na kalap stap
Stap long naispela hap
Em kalap isi na i no rap
Long taim blong pait na lap

Protesting PNG landowners (One PNG)

PETER DWYER & MONICA MINNEGAL | DevPolicy Blog | Extracts

CANBERRA - The Papua New Guinea Liquefied Natural Gas (PNG LNG) project commenced exporting gas to China, Korea and Japan in May 2014.

Under agreements reached in 2009, landowners of eight petroleum licence areas, eight pipeline licence areas and a liquefaction plant site near Port Moresby were to receive royalties. By February 2019, payments had been made to people in only the last of these areas.

The identification of landowners has been a major difficulty, and assigning responsibility for completing the task has been a matter of debate.

At the close of 2018, social mapping and landowner identification studies carried out by consultants to petroleum companies, clan-vetting exercises carried out by officers of the Department of Petroleum and Energy, and alternative dispute resolution processes implemented by the judiciary had failed to solve the problem.

By this time too, agreements for two other LNG projects (in Western Province and Gulf Province) were under discussion.

In January 2019, Petroleum Minister Fabian Pok told parliament that the government would not repeat the mistakes of the first LNG project. He wanted the companies to be responsible for identifying landowners in the new LNG project areas and he wanted this done before those projects moved to production.

On 23 January, referring to the Gulf Province LNG project, prime minister Peter O’Neill said that the government “had tasked the developer to do the landowner identification process” and Minister Pok reported that Total – the developer – had agreed to do this.

The small print is not yet to hand so we cannot be sure just what the government has requested or what Total has agreed to do. Here, however, we argue that ceding responsibility for landowner identification to the petroleum companies is a seriously bad idea – bad for the companies, the government and for the people of Papua New Guinea.

Under the Oil & Gas Act 1998, final determination of landowner beneficiaries for a petroleum licence area is to be made by the responsible minister and gazetted as a Ministerial Determination.

Recent determinations provide a record of landowner beneficiary identification for specified licence areas or pipeline segments. Those determinations name clans (variously ‘major clans’, ‘stock clans’, ‘beneficiary clans’) but do not name individuals within those clans.

With reference to differential benefit-sharing arrangements they may subdivide clans as ‘highly impacted’, ‘least impacted’ and ‘invited’.

The concept of ‘landowner’ is used here in a broad and fluid sense. It is not used in agreement with any likely academic definition, with any detectable legal rigour or in conformity with a pan-PNG ideology of tenure because, of course, there is no pan-PNG ideology of tenure.

The Oil & Gas Act requires that a company applying for a petroleum development licence must submit a “full-scale social mapping study and landowner identification study of customary land owners” of that licence area.

Under the Act, customary landowners are persons whose relationship with the land has to do with “rights of proprietary or possessory kind”. Not all clans identified as landowner beneficiaries in ministerial determinations satisfy this definition. And the status of others, both the included and the excluded, as members of this category will be always amenable to contention.

No petroleum company can produce a list of clans that will conform to, or satisfy, the sorts of decisions that currently inform ministerial determinations. They did not do so in the past and they cannot do so in the future.

If companies now assume responsibility for producing a definitive list of landowner beneficiaries, there will no longer be any ambiguity about who to blame or who to take to court when the list is considered defective. The fault will be theirs.

On these counts, the desire to shift responsibility – or at least the perception of responsibility – to the petroleum companies might, in the short term, prove beneficial to the government in domains of financial management and public relations.

There is, however, another reason why responsibility for identifying landowners should remain with the government.

Only Papua New Guineans – the PNG government, courts, and the landowners themselves – can determine who owns the land in Papua New Guinea. This responsibility should not be ceded to outsiders.

It should not be ceded to American, Australian, Chinese or French companies. Papua New Guinea is not their country. They are guests.

Only Papua New Guineans can determine what is right for Papua New Guinea. The petroleum companies should recognise and acknowledge this and step back from this area of decision-making.

The government should also recognise and acknowledge this and step forward to ensure that the rights of all Papua New Guinean woman and men are guaranteed by Papua New Guineans.

Enga provincial headquarters in Wabag

DANIEL KUMBON

WABAG - Nobody believed the people of Enga Province would one day export premium strawberries. To outsiders, it seemed their main achievement was to involve themselves in tribal warfare.

That perception will hopefully be erased now that a market has been established in Singapore for Enga strawberries and possibly other agricultural products.

This is the result of hard work put in by Governor Sir Peter Ipatas who encouraged Israeli company Innovative Agro Industries to partner with the Enga Provincial Government to establish a K23 million vegetable project at Taluma in the Sirunki area of Laiagam.

Many people felt the project would fail because the local Makol tribe was involved in tribal fighting. But now strawberries are produced there for export as well as potatoes for Port Moresby.

To increase production, a second vegetable project has been established at Yogos in the Tsak Valley of Wapenamanda, an area also the scene of intense tribal warfare where hundreds of men died and millions of kina in property were lost including everything the Catholic Church owned at Tsak Pumakos.

The Enga provincial hospital project

It was risky to take multimillion kina projects to fighting zones but this direct challenge to the people has been a trademark of Sir Peter.

Enga School of Nursing, Mulitaka Secondary School, Tsak Secondary School and the multimillion kina provincial hospital under construction at Aipus are other major projects.

Where did Sir Peter draw the strength to provide visionary leadership, maintain political stability and establish projects that directly impacted on the lives of ordinary people?

I’ll go back to the time when Cr Peter Ipatas was president of Wabag local level government in the 1980s, when Enga experienced a dark period of political instability and social tension that nearly tore the province apart.

On 9 February 1984 the provincial government was suspended and premier Danely Tindiwi gaoled for seven years for misappropriation. Tindiwi was re-elected in 1992 but, after being in office for only a year, was suspended a second time on the same charges.

An old kiap, Bill Bates, was appointed administrator to run the affairs of the province, which did not please a lot of people. On 26 March 1993, the provincial headquarters complex was burnt to ashes in broad daylight.

Then people from Laiagam, Kandep, Porgera, Paiela and Maramuni threatened to break away to form their own province. Other people pushed to re-establish the provincial headquarters in a new location at Wapenamanda or Laiagam.

In August 1995 provincial government reforms were introduced and Enga regional MP Jeffery Balakau was sworn in as governor. Tindiwi became his deputy.

On that historic day, all five open members and council presidents were also sworn in as provincial assembly members. Cr Peter Ipatas was one of them.

Then PNG prime minister Julius Chan meets the new, dynamic Enga governor Peter Ipatas in 1996 to celebrate the rebirth of the provincial headquarters

Jeffery Balakau and Danely Tindiwi, who had been elected in 1992, were not to complete their full terms: Jeffery Balakau was suspended, and later dismissed, by a leadership tribunal and Tindiwi was replaced by Peter Ipatas as acting governor.

In that capacity, Sir Peter moved quickly. He rebuilt the provincial headquarters and invited then prime minister Sir Julius Chan to a ground-breaking ceremony in late 1996.

The following year he was elected by an absolute majority to serve a full term as governor and in the national parliament.

I wrote an account of this turbulent period for Enga Nius in 1993 and here are some extracts that shed light on how the people felt.

__________

The very foundations of Enga Province shook when the main provincial headquarters office complex was burnt down by arsonists in broad daylight on Friday 26 March, 1993.

At exactly seven minutes past four, I locked our office and went for a drive in my bus intending to return to complete some typing. As I drove back after half an hour, somebody at the main market waved me down and said the Bromley and Manton supermarket was on fire.

He warned me not to go in case I might receive injuries in a riot that had started. But I drove on, hoping that the Bromley and Manton shop in town did not burn down a second time.

The company had lost thousands of kina worth of goods when arsonists torched the wholesale building they were renting from the Wabag Local Level Government when late Malipu was shot in Mt Hagen in 1989.

But soon I discovered to my horror that the finance and management services as well as the upstairs commerce office were engulfed in flames. The fire was spreading fast to all parts of the complex which housed almost all government divisions including the provincial government offices, Air Niugini office, two court rooms and two conference facilities. The only divisions saved were social services, the secretary’s office and my own media unit which were housed in separate buildings.

I stood and watched hopelessly for four long hours as the complex burnt to a shouldering ruin. No sane person dared to venture close to the hot flames while the dark smoke never ceased to billow skywards to merge with dark shadows as night emerged to cover the small township as if to conceal the wanton destruction.

It was sort of strange but for a moment I laughed to myself - not the kind which expresses joy and enlightenment but the type that comes with hate and total despair as tears begin to well up in your eyes.

I heard a lone local leader from the Lanekep tribe, one of the original tribes that owned the Wabag town land shout repeatedly: ‘Why are you burning this office which belongs to everybody in Enga?” There was no response from anybody – only the flames roared on.

I came to my senses when I saw a brave men climb to the roof of my office to prevent it from catching fire. It used to be the main colonial administration office building during the colonial administration period located near the Air Niugini office on the eastern end of the PHQ complex now in the grips of a consuming inferno.

I hastily opened the main door of my office and grabbed whatever I could – my word processor, the office type writer and a few files and rushed out. Outside, I saw police beat up two looters who attempted to carry away office equipment from the Secretary’s office which was still safe.

One policeman from the Eastern Highlands explained to me why they were beating up the looters. “I don’t see any reason that prompts these people to loot state property. I don’t know if they realise that with those flames goes Enga Province,’ he said. ‘People don’t seem to see the long term implications for Enga.

“I think what normal people should do is rub mud on their bodies and mourn like they do when somebody is killed in a tribal fight. This province is burning in that fire.” In Enga society one cannot burn or destroy public property like a hausman (men’s house) or excrete near water springs that belonged to everybody.

The crowd kept growing but nobody spoke except some brave men who stood on the roofs to prevent the fire from spreading to the social services building, the secretary’s office and my own office. Most people just stood with their mouths agape staring at the flames doing its destructive work.

The silence was broken from time to time as police fired teargas to discourage looters. I came across one public servant who dared say something and his message was clear: ‘I hate to be an Engan. Everything about this place is always negative...negative. I hate to have been born here.’

With those words lingering in my mind, I left the smoldering ruins, never once looking back.

__________

Now, over 26 years later a more modern office complex stands on the old ruins with the national court house beside it.

An overseas market has been established which will encourage people to produce more strawberries, onions, potatoes and other cash crops which thrive so well in Enga.

And Governor Ipatas has recently announced the provincial government will promote tourism as the next major step to boost economic activity.

He continues to challenge the people, seeming to say: “Either you keep the projects, look after them, benefit from them or destroy them again. It’s all yours to keep or lose. I’m just doing my duty.”

Barack Obama - "books gave me the ability to slow down and get perspective"

SIMON DAVIDSON

PORT MORESBY - In the age of Facebook, tens of millions of people favour the habit of reading bite size information rather than to plough through dense tomes.

To read tomes requires time, intense concentration and mental agility. Literature that is dense and lofty taxes the mind, stretches mental barriers and breaks mental molds.

Such readers become deep readers and deep thinkers because reading shapes mental contours and fuels original and imaginative thinking.

But today’s generation prefers the less taxing and easier route of bite size information.

In one Facebook survey, the greatest engagements (likes, comments and shares) came from short posts, while longer information was ignored. In another survey, photos received thousands of likes and longer articles were snubbed.

These scenarios reflect a dangerous habit in today’s readers. The titans of social media have created algorithms that promote bite size and the masses devour these without regard to the impact such content has on their mental landscape.

According to the CEO Library, all high achievers have one thing in common - they read books, and enjoy it. Inventor Elon Musk learned to build rockets from reading books.

Barack Obama was fundamentally shaped by reading and talks about the indispensable role it played throughout his life. Reading gave him the ability to “slow down and get perspective” and “get in somebody else’s shoes”.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett credits his success to books and reads five to six hours a day. When asked how to prepare for an investing career, Buffett pointed to a stack of manuals and papers and said: “Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest”.

Microsoft’s Bill Gates takes vacations with the explicit purpose of reading and learning, and afterwards reviews the best books on his blog.

Innovators read tomes! Among high performers, reading is the one habit that links them all. They prioritise time to dedicate to reading.

The tomes we read today will make us innovative power houses. If you want to be an innovator, read with unwavering consistency.

Traditional chief, Trobriand Islands

SIMON DAVIDSON

A leader is the head,
The guardian of trust,
Placed on him by many.

A leader sees ahead,
A million miles farther
Than the followers.

A leader thinks ahead,
A million ideas at times,
At the speed of light.

A leader reads ahead,
To keep abreast of times,
To stay ahead of the trend.

A leader exercises ahead,
To keep the body primed,
To stay in shape and fit.

A leader walks ahead,
To show the way ahead-
To beat a new path ahead.

A leader inspires many heads,
To a shared vision of the future,
To create a team of followership.

A leader connects the dots,
To see what has transpired,
To gain perspective and wisdom.

A leader leads people to greatness,
A leader is a builder, not destroyer.
A leader shines through integrity.

A leader initiates change mega,
A leader creates a new revolution.
A leader makes the nation better.

Papua New Guinea's literary awards in the Crocodile Prize are preparing for a big revival later in 2019

ANNIE DORI

Winner of the 2017 Crocodile Prize Poetry Award

The voice of a child begs for a touch,
The voice of a mother in hopelessness,
The voice of a youth searching for direction,
While the old weeps in pain.

The world seems to have lost its humanity,
Portraying injustice, hatred and jealousy,
Nature seems to agree,
Allowing disaster to conquer harmony

Where has the heart of a leader gone?
The kind that stands for justice,
And brings hope to the downhearted.

The child is still begging,
There is no medicine.
The mother is still hopeless
Her child is dying.
The youth is still searching,
Schooling seems only for the rich.
The old is still weeping,
How much more do we have to cry?

BEN JACKSON

PORT MORESBY - Annie Dori always kept journals, but never for a moment thought of herself as a writer.

As a graduate nursing officer she travelled through the remote districts of Western Province and her journal pages began to fill with the voices of people she met.

They were the stories of everyday Papua New Guineans.

“We were going from village to village,” Annie said, “they were quite far apart – it can take days for people to get to the nearest health centre.”

“Mothers’ would tell their stories of giving birth with no access to a health post and disabled men described their struggles to get around.

“The young girls talked about dealing with the challenge of reaching the age of menstruation with no access to sanitary pads – these are the tough realities of life.”

Today, Annie is based in Port Moresby but continues to improve health care for Papua New Guineans, now as a project officer on a malaria program.

Her enthusiasm is palpable and her smile contagious when she talks about her work. Writing provides a foil for this energy – an outlet for processing the dark and difficult side of the health sector.

“Creative writing is a way of expressing myself,” Annie said.

“It’s not about me or what I’m facing – it’s about other people.

“I do it because I feel there’s a need, but I’m very private and don’t like sharing what I write.”

A few years ago Annie was asked to speak at a funeral service for her aunt, so she wrote a poem.

“The Fijian High Commissioner was there,” she said, “he walked up to me afterwards and asked for my piece and I said: ‘I don’t share my poems with people.’”

But in 2017, Annie was finally convinced to share and she entered a poem – ‘We Need Change’ in the Crocodile Prize, the national literary awards of Papua New Guinea.

“I was encouraged to participate and sent in just one poem,” she said.

“It focused on the challenges I saw around Western Province – how the people didn’t have access basic health services – they inspired me.”

The poem is a cacophony of the voices she heard on her travels. It is sombre and grounded in reality – and for it she was awarded the Poetry Award.

“I was shocked,” she said.

“When I was awarded with the Crocodile Prize I realised people feel something from my writing.

“It is an opportunity for people to have an outlet for their passion. While I keep hiding my writing, some people want to share theirs and they need that platform.”

Annie has continued to write, mostly for herself, but said she may find a piece to submit if the Poetry Award is sponsored to run again in 2019.

“I’m always leaning towards anything to do with health in PNG – I’m really passionate about that,” she said.

“It’s something that can be lacking and the reality of that is evident through the stories in my poem.”

It turns out Annie was a writer all along.

Manus from the air - looks peaceful but corruption, greed and exploitation roil beneath

RICHARD BAKER | The Age

MELBOURNE  - An Australian government contractor on Manus Island was asked by a senior Papua New Guinea official in 2017 for a multi-million-dollar donation to the ruling party of prime minister Peter O’Neill.

When the company, which was working for the Home Affairs department on the offshore detention regime, refused the request, the company's senior managers began to encounter problems with visas for staff to enter or remain in PNG.

The contractor, which asked that its name not be used to protect the welfare of its Manus Island-based staff, rejected the donation request and reported it to senior department officials in late 2017. It's understood more than one contractor has experienced similar problems.

If the company had made the donation of K20 million to the People’s National Congress party, it would have likely committed a criminal offence under Australia’s foreign bribery laws. There is no suggestion Mr O’Neill was aware of the donation request.

Home Affairs did not address questions on how it responded to the political donation request. A spokesman said contractors were required to abide by the laws of Australia, PNG and Nauru, including compliance with foreign bribery legislation.

An investigation by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald has found serious problems with Australia’s exposure to corruption through the $5 billion offshore detention, as well as its wider interactions on PNG.

Australia’s law enforcement integrity watchdog has identified “corruption issues” within the Australian Federal Police’s procurement practices in PNG following a 2017 whistleblower complaint.

Despite finding two instances of possible corruption within the AFP's PNG procurements, the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity referred the matter back to the police to let the force investigate itself.

Serious doubts over the adequacy of the AFP’s subsequent investigation have since emerged, with no federal police agents, unsworn staff or contract winners questioned. Instead, a paperwork audit of the contracts was done.

The Age and Herald can also reveal that Australian agencies have experienced similar problems when providing payments to PNG to shore-up the revival of the Lombrum naval base to curb China’s regional influence.

The flow of money from Australia has created a culture of expectation among some senior PNG politicians and officials.

PNG government representatives also began to make demands in high-level meetings in Canberra for Home Affairs to order its Australian-owned and operated contractors to hire PNG companies on lucrative sub-contracts.

While Australian government agencies and departments refer to PNG as a “difficult environment” to operate in, an internal 2018 AFP report seen by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald is more direct and describes PNG as having “significant corruption issues”.

Australia’s offshore detention policy, supported by both Labor and Coalition federal governments since its operational revival in 2013, has cost more than $5 billion.

Huge contracts have been awarded to companies in cloudy circumstances. These are often then split into sub-contracts involving politically-connected PNG-based interests.

This flow of money, according to several well-placed sources working for Home Affairs and the PNG government, has created a culture of expectation among some senior PNG politicians and officials.

“With offshore detention and now the Lombrum base on the agenda there is an attitude in some senior levels in PNG that they have Australia over a barrel,” said one Australian contractor with long experience in PNG.

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald last week revealed emails from within PNG’s biggest bank where a senior manager wrote that he believed his client, a PNG landowner company called NKW Holdings, was inflating its invoices to the Australian government under an $82 million contract awarded by Home Affairs.

The AFP spent almost $50 million and had dozens of officers based in PNG as part of Australia’s commitment to help the country safely host last year’s APEC summit.

At least four former PNG-based federal police officers were concerned about procurement practices and alleged conflicts of interest involving millions of dollars worth of contracts.

The Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity assessed information about the AFP’s PNG procurement arrangements and deemed that two corruption issues were identified.

It then referred the matter back to the AFP for investigation and an unsworn staff member began a paperwork audit of relevant PNG contracts.

This process found that the signatures of senior officials whose approval was required to award a $1 million building contract to Red Sea Housing Services — which had already won several federal police-funded tenders in PNG without competition - were copied and pasted in breach of procurement rules.

A handful of contracts had also not been registered on the AFP’s procurement database as required.

Several AFP officers formerly based in PNG are understood to be deeply disappointed with the way the federal police investigated their allegations. Among the allegations was the claim that direct approaches had been made to Saudi-owned building firm Red Sea Housing Services for the purchase of jet skis and provision of dogs for the PNG police.

No interviews were done with AFP officers or winning contractors and alleged conflicts of interest and a “drinking club” culture involving senior federal police based in PNG was also not investigated.

The overall finding of the paperwork audit was that nearly all the AFP’s PNG contracts were being documented properly and meeting procurement criteria. It did note that the AFP mission in PNG was extensively using exemptions in procurement rules to engage suppliers directly.

“Processes in Mission need to be looked at to ensure the justification for the items/services being procured are robust, justified and are the best use of Commonwealth resources,” the investigation report concluded.

An AFP spokesman confirmed complaints were raised and an investigation followed. But he was not able to discuss the nature of the investigation or its findings.

Lengthy written complaints by several former PNG-based AFP agents detail a broader story about the workplace culture of the federal police mission in Port Moresby and its effect on procurement practices.

The complaints raise questions about the process that led to a $1.1 million contract to provide bomb detection dogs and training to the PNG police force being awarded to a company part-owned by a former senior New South Wales policeman.

At least three former PNG-based AFP agents raised concerns about the canine contract, including the apparent loss of documentation authorising a direct approach to Queensland Police about its dogs and a subsequent directive to invite Dog Force Group Pty Ltd to tender for provision of dogs to PNG police.

Dog Force Group is part owned by former senior NSW policeman, who used to work with at least one of the AFP's PNG-based officer. There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by Dog Force Group nor doubts about its ability to carry out the contract.

However, there were contrasting opinions about whether Dog Force Group or a competing company were best qualified to fulfil the needs of the contract.

A decision by an unsworn AFP coordinator in PNG to overrule the position of the force’s maritime advisers to buy six jet skis at the cost of $100,000 at extremely short notice was also raised in the whistleblower complaint.

The jet skis were gifted to PNG police who were not trained to operate them.

“No one in mission, including Maritime advisers are qualified to operate these jet skis let alone train RPNGC members … it is irresponsible and dangerous,” the complaint stated.

The AFP spokesman said staff deployed overseas underwent special governance training. If an investigation raised issues with procurement practices overseas, action was taken to ensure to prevent future problems, he said.