JAMES MARAPE MP

BREAKING - The ABC’s Natalie Whiting has just reported from Port Moresby that it looks very much like James Marape will prevail as PNG prime minister as numerous defectors return to government ranks pending a vote of no confidence - KJ

PORT MORESBY - This fight is not just for 2020 or 2021 or 2022, but for the next generation of Papua New Guineans to believe in themselves so they can be better off in their own land - not just a few who belong to the ruling class and status quo of Waigani.

Today, driving out from Lloata and seeing Central Province people coming out in support of us at Bautama all the way to Six Mile, where residents turned up along the road with fliers and banners, is an experience that makes you want to fight more for your country’s inheritance.

The opposition benches in parliament were half empty this morning as first one, then two, then plenty of MPs fled back to the Marape government (Bryan Kramer)

They were chanting “Take Back PNG” and one thing I can say is that you can take James Marape out but the fire is on.

There is light in the hearts of our people from Bougainville to Manus, from Samarai to Wutung and Weom.

Our people - the true owners of fish, timber, oil, gas, gold, copper, iron, and all small businesses - have found their voice.

Their voices are the 55 members of parliament who all believe that PNG can develop like Singapore, Malaysia and other countries - and why not when we are the twelfth richest resource intense country on planet earth.

Taking back PNG and her resources will not be achieved in one year but in one generation so that future generations can be better placed than where we are today.

The fight is on forever. The watchmen of our country’s resources are well and truly alive.

This fight is nothing but about controlling resources, and not for the former prime ministers of the nation who have signed for my removal.

I ask them this honest question.

If you have answered all our country’s needs, would we as Papua New Guineans be suffering now with the issues, including the Bougainville crisis, we face today?

Piku-Piku (black grasshopper)

AS TOLD BY PAPA SII TO BAKA BINA

LEGEND - Nana-Muni held the bottle out to the three girls and Sukare took it carefully between two fingers, took a quick look and passed it to Teniso.

Teniso was a tomboy and she turned the bottle upside down and let the asukena (mole grasshopper) scramble onto Sukare’s hands.

Sukare gave a scream and a wince and dropped the bottle. The asukena scurried off into the kaukau vines.

Panikame swooped down on all fours trying to pin it to the ground. But the asukena had escaped.

There was disappointment.

The two boys wanted to give Teniso a kick. But, as Metty-Mahn held up his hand to box Teniso, he saw Alonaa look his way and brought his hand back down.

“Hey, see this.” It was Papa Sii.

He had the asukena in his hand.

“See, it’s magic and I have the asukena back in my hand. Everyone can be happy again.” 

“Okay, come wash your hands. It your mama’s law you wash hands before food. Alonaa, make sure they wash their hands.”

After washing their hands, they went to their mats with their scones and cordial drinks and dug into them.

“Okay, all on your mats and don’t move. Papa Sii is going to tell us how the piku-piku (black grasshopper) got his black colour and how the asukena got his bulldozer hands.'

Nana-Muni dropped his cordial to imitate the asukena doing its bulldozing and that set Panikame laughing and Teniso choking on her scones.

They settled onto their mats, waiting for Papa Sii to start.

“When I have time later, I will tell you the story of the Ghilipo’ne and the Ghetenemoya. Right now, though, I’ll start with your favourites, Piku-Piku and his buddy Asukena.”

The children lay back on their mats and Papa Sii began.

“There were two great friends – grasshoppers: Asukena and Piku-Piku.

“Asukena burrows in the ground, especially after the rain. That was the fellow that you guys dropped and which magically appeared in my hands.

“Piku-Piku is the black cricket you find in the gardens under dead kaukau vines. That’s our friend in the green bottle that Matty Metty-Mahn has now.

“This is their story.”

__________

Asukena (mole cricket)

Asukena and Piku-Piku were good friends and would be together most of the time.

Piku-Piku was pale brown and had red lines across his stomach and Asukena was a forest green colour dotted with plenty of yellow spots.

Both grasshoppers lived at the big garden. They had their own block called the batatri. They lived in one corner of the block and each day they would explore the gardens.

They would find food to eat and take time to play and take naps as they moved from one spot to another.

They even had time to make their own fun to while the day away. So, by the end of the day, they would have been all over the garden.

Piku-Piku liked dancing and, as they moved from each plant to the next, he would do a little bit of a jive and a dance. This sometimes attracted the attention of the birds and it was such a chore to always keep an eye out for them.

Even with this danger, Asukena was not going to stop seeing his best friend. Every day he would wait for Piku-Piku and every day they would explore the garden.

One day it rained all morning and then, in the afternoon, the sun popped out from the clouds. The two friends ran out of their houses to enjoy the sun and were playing when a big bird swooped down.

Piku-Piku was the first to see the bird and took cover under a tapioca plant.

Asukena was a bit slow and the bird caught him by his hind foot. As the bird flew off, Asukena struggled free and fell down. Alas, however, he had lost his both his hind legs. The bird tried to eat the hind legs but the sharp spurs stuck in his beak and he spewed them out.

Asukena collected his hind legs and kept them in his house.

But he now had no hind legs to help him jump from tree to tree or bush to bush and could not join his friend to explore the garden anymore. He stopped seeing Piku-Piku.

Asukena was deciding where to bury the four pieces of his two hind legs when a lusowaso walepa passed by.'

The walepa took pity on him decided to see if he could use his magic to put the hind legs back on. With his lusowaso he put Asukena to sleep.

The walepa then chewed on two special leaves. One of the leaves was from the rare blue kapiak tree. The other was from a very old ghohuno tree at Garanaku. He drew out the juices and made them into a paste.

Unfortunately, the walepa did not know where the body parts had come from.

They were in four pieces, two big and two small. The paws were attached to the small parts. So he assumed these were the last legs and he joined them to the back from where the legs had torn loose.

He then looked at the thick thighs and did not know where they were to be fitted. So walepa glued one each to Asukena’s hands, the bigger side in the palm of the hands and the smaller side at the elbows.

When Asukena woke up, walepa was long gone.

He looked at his hands and tried to pry each one off. But they were stuck together. The walepa’s lusowaso was a powerful one.

Asukena tried kicking his hind leg and it snapped in two. He now had his hind legs – not big ones like before but, still, hind legs. He found that he could jump - but not as high as before.

He looked at his hands and could not understand why walepa had glued them there.

He was standing there befuddled when a bird’s shadow came over him.

Asukena dove head first into the dry kaukau leaves. He found that he could easily move the leaves aside with his big new hands and get away.

He peered out and saw the bird perched on some nearby grass. He started to push the soil aside and he found that it was easy to do that. So he burrowed.

He found he could make a tunnel and he burrowed through to Piku-Piku’s house in the garden. He peered up again and saw he was behind the bird. So he quickly crawled out of the soil and joined the surprised Piku-Piku at his house.

When it could not find Asukena the bird flew away.

Piku-Piku would now visit with his friend. He would make fun of Asukena whose hind foot was in the wrong place.

He did not mind playing with him, though. They found new ways to play. Piku-Piku would jump to some place and Asukena would run along to that place, most times stumbling over his big hands.

One time they built a big fire and were playing and having a good time. Piku-Piku stepped back and ran towards the fire. He then jumped over the fire and landed safely on the other side of the fire.

“See, I can jump over the fire. You cannot and are not fit enough to jump over the fire. ”

That was the problem. Asukena did not have big back hind legs like Piku-Piku. Asukena had lost them. And his small wings enabled him to fly short hops only.

He never showed Piku-Piku that he could make tunnels and crawl under the ground.

Asukena sat and thought about the challenge that Piku-Piku had thrown at him.

“Okay, I’ll take you up on that challenge. Build up the fire with me in the middle of it. Build the fire big so that it reaches to the skies. I will stay longer in the fire than you.”

Piku-Piku put together plenty of dry debris and Asukena climbed into the middle.

Final part tomorrow

Bougainville's former - and future - capital Arawa. Before the civil war, a large and well established town

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – In its first 80 days, the Autonomous Bougainville Government under president Ishmael Toroama has secured a number of benchmarks.

Since September’s swearing-in of Ishmael Toroama as the fourth president of Bougainville, he has been focused on realigning the government’s priorities for developing the region and making it ready for independence.

“In my inauguration speech, I said I expected ministers to take their cue from my priorities and implement them through respective department plans,” Toroama said in a statement.

He heralded a return of the Bougainville capital to Arawa, which was relinquished during the civil war of the 1990s.

On the matter of Bougainville independence, approved by 98% of voters in a referendum last year, Toroama said that while consultations had been slowed down because of the national political situation, independence preparations are at an advanced stage.

The government has recently launched the Manetai limestone project, the Tonolei agriculture project and registered the Bana Special Economic Zone.

It has also encouraged dialogue with the Konnou and Tonu factions to encourage their reintegration into Bougainville affairs.

It will soon begin to repossess government assets in Arawa in Central Bougainville in an attempt to reestablish government services in the former capital.

Most government functions are currently centralised on Buka Island, in the north.

“Before the government can establish offices in Arawa, residents must start releasing government assets,” Toroama said.

“These include houses and land that are currently occupied.

“We must be ready to allow our government to reestablish itself in Arawa.”

In an important move, a law and justice office was opened in the town last week.

Toroama said law and order is a key factor in enabling Arawa to attract development from private and government sectors.

He issued a stern warning to law breakers that his government will not tolerate challenges to the government and its laws.

James Marape and Sam Basil. "It is a bold and a confident man who will put a limit to the strange by-oaths into which the human spirit may wander" (Arthur Conan Doyle)

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – Even as late as yesterday morning, before the Papua New Guinea parliament had re-assembled, it seemed prime minister James Marape would struggle to hold on to his job.

Not that the numbers weren’t tight; they were very close Just a couple of votes in it.

But the Namah-O’Neill-Basil-Pruaitch group spearheading the opposition seemed to have the edge.

And they might have had the edge, but for two factors.

A couple of days before, Patrick Pruaitch had defeated Sam Basil 27-24 as the opposition’s nominee for prime minister.

Factor 1 was that former foreign minister Pruaitch was the choice and Basil is very ambitious.

Factor 2 was that only 51 MPs had participated in the vote that selected Pruaitch.

Normally it takes 56 votes to control the PNG parliament but three matters confused things this time.

One was that a by-election was pending, reducing available members from 111 to 110.

Another was that a government backbencher, former prime minister Sir Mekere Morauta, was in Australia on medical leave.

Happier times. Patrick Pruaitch and Sam Basil four days ago - a very long time in politics

And the third was that opposition backbencher Bari Palma was believed to be an undischarged bankrupt, and therefore not eligible to take his seat

So on Monday it looked like it might be enough for 54 members to win the day.

And by this time, the opposition’s numbers had crept up to 54.

The Marape government seemed to have 52.

The opposition had benefited by Palma, or a friend, repaying the money he owed.

When this was made known to the court, it extinguished Palma's bankruptcy so enabling him to retain his seat.

And parliament was adjourned until yesterday with the opposition seeming to be holding a narrow advantage and to be well placed.

In what might have been a farewell note, Marape wrote:

“This fight is nothing but about controlling resources, and not for the former prime ministers of the nation who have signed for my removal.

“I ask them this honest question.

“If you have answered all our country’s needs, would we as Papua New Guineans be suffering now with the issues, including the Bougainville crisis, we face today?”

But over the intervening 36 hours, the gossip was beginning to spread with increasing intensity that Basil, resenting his failure to be the opposition’s nominee for prime minister, was going to rat on Pruaitch and scurry back to the government benches.

He's on the move, the drums were beating, and a big bunch will go with him.

By yesterday morning, as members began taking their seats in the chamber, the gossip was seen to be anything but idle.

Eighteen MPs crossed from opposition to government, including seven former Marape ministers who had defected and then been sacked.

Cheering emanated from the government side of the chamber.

As ABC correspondent Natalie Whiting tweeted, “James Marape has staved off the attack on his leadership and regained control of parliament.”

And sitting alongside Marape was a smiling Sam Basil, who it can be presumed will soon be deputy prime minister again.

"I respect my Momase brother [Pruaitch]," Basil had tweeted four days ago, "and there will be no split regardless of who gets the nominee." Hmmm.

With 72 members supporting him, Marape had easily retained his position and moved to pass the budget a second time (the first had been ruled as unlawful by the supreme court).

O'Neill walks out of parliament, his authority wholly spent and perhaps with it his political career

Mumbling that the budget was unconstitutional, opposition MPs, including O’Neill and former minister Sir Puka Temu, stalked out of the chamber.

It had been in O’Neill’s interests to manufacture a Marape defeat.

But he should have suspected Basil would flip-flop if he didn’t become the prime ministerial nominee.

The member for Bulolo has done that a few times previously in his political career. He may even do it again.

Parliament was adjourned until Tuesday, 20 April 2021.

Sources: Twitter, Facebook

James Marape - "Our country needs stability, not instability. Put your country ahead of yourself"

JAMES MARAPE MP

PORT MORESBY - I am not a righteous person, so don’t praise me or another human for we all live by Him, the Great Almighty Jehovah God who created us.

Romans 8:28 has always been my mojo when the going gets tough:

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

I stand to be continually advised to do better for our country, now and into the future. If there were mistakes I made in the yesterdays, well I have learnt!

My country and people, have hope not all is bad, even if I am not around I am grooming the next generation PNG leaders who will care for our resources and the ordinary people.

Our dream is for our country to be rich and our people to be well looked after hence we are doing reforms.

Today in compliance to court direction, we sat in parliament and passed the budget for 2021 and 70 honourable MPs are now with me going back to our government retreat base.

To the family and people of the 52 MPs who maintained presence with me right through, I say thank you.

To those who moved and got back, I ask our citizens to understand them. They had work issues with me, hence they left. We have reconciled and they are back.

To the opposition, we have not been greedy. Development funds for your districts and provinces are being distributed.

Let’s all work for our country now, enough of politics.

It’s only one year to [the general election in] 2022. Support me in a better, cleaner census and common roll update next year.

Our country needs stability, not instability. Put your country ahead of yourself.

What will you honestly do in one year when you all had 43 years running this country.

Nau taimblo stretpla wok lo mas go stret! [It’s time for our work as legislators to be effective!]

Aishi Nokowano Gitehoma aka Papa Sii,  Kotiyufa Village,  Iufi-Iufa,  2013

AS TOLD BY PAPA SII TO BAKA BINA

PORT MORESBY – Before I continue this story, I should let you know that it is an adaptation of a legend told by Papa Sii, whose image is at right

I have taken the words he told me and retold it using a contemporary overlay story of some bored village children.

Children in the village are often left to their own devices and they seek out their own games and activities.

But in this story, there’s a catch.

Older children are supposed to babysit their younger siblings but, in contrast to babysitting as you might imagine it mostly being restricted to an urban house, in the village babysitters have the length and breadth of the tribal land at their calling.

I recall times babysitting and going bush to make small mumus or going to the big river for a picnic and mumu. 

Alonaa in this story is unfortunate as there are restrictions placed on him, but he pulls a genie out of Papa Sii to have him tell a legend to the children before their midday nap.

Papa Sii’s was known as Aishi, whose real name was Nokowano Gitehoma. He was from Kotiyufa village, Iufi-Iufa near Goroka in the Eastern Highlands.

Aishi was a great story teller, poet, composer, singer and keeper of stories.

He was especially famous for his ability to remember and sing songs. He was the keeper of the Homasi songs, sung in praise of the old gods of the people of the Goroka valley.

You will find some of lyrics to his songs transcribed in a number of my books.

Regretfully, Aishii Nokovano Gitehoma passed away in March 2018 aged about 70. He took with him all his songs, legends and the history of his people.

I rue that I did not realise the urgency to record what he knew. I have only captured a few smatterings and these will be reproduced in my future writings. Vale Papa Sii.

Papa Sii continuing his story:

Watching to ensure that Asukena did not climb back out of the mound of dry debris, Piku-Piku lit a fire from each side. It flared into a big bonfire and he sat by to see what would happen to his friend.

Piku-Piku waited and waited. When the fire died down, he checked among the embers but could not find Asukena. He waited for a long time.

As he sat next to the dead fire, feeling sorry for himself, someone tapped him from behind.

“Ta da, see me.” It was Asukena. “The fire did not touch me. You cannot go into the fire and come out of it like me,” he challenged.

Without thinking, Piku-Piku replied, “Ah, that’s nothing. I will fly down from that tree straight into the burning flames and come out alive,” boasted, pointing to a nearby tapioca tree.

Together the two crickets swept the bush to collect material for a big bonfire.

Piku-Piku ran up the tree and waited. When the fire was burning furiously, he jumped straight into it.

However, the fire got the better of him and he jumped straight out.

Unfortunately, the fire had scorched him. He was no longer brown and red, he was now black and blue.

Asukena laughed and laughed when he saw Piku-Piku was a different colour.

That led to a big argument and they both went their own ways.

So now, if you look under those kaukau leaves in the garden, you will find a singed black and blue Piku-Piku hiding there.

If you look more carefully you will see evidence in the soil where the clean, baked brown Asukena will be furiously tunnelling away with his bare hands.

That is how they lost their original colours and got new ones.

__________

“Oolle,” Panikame and Teniso whispered. Sukare, Metty-Mahn and Nana-Muni had fallen asleep during the story telling.

Alonaa put his hands to his lips as he slowly crept off the mat he was sharing with the two boys and left to go the village to look for boys his size to play with.

Ishmael Toroama - "Put party politics aside and vote for who will best deliver independence for Bougainville” 

ANTHONY KAYBING
Office of the Bougainville President

BUKA - Bougainvilleans are being urged to vote responsibly during the by-election for the regional seat currently underway.

“The Bougainville regional seat is equivalent to a governor’s seat in other provinces so this is not a time to vote for beginners,” says President Ishmael Toroama.

“We need quality and experienced political leaders with active national and international links, who can fight for Bougainville independence, on the floor of the Papua New Guinea Parliament.

“There are six candidates from which you are to make your choice of 1, 2 and 3.

“I appeal to you to put party politics aside and vote for who will best deliver the referendum result and independence for Bougainville,” Toroama said.

Since the inception of Bougainville autonomy following the civil war, there has been a lack of coordination between the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) and the four Bougainville national members of parliament.

Past Bougainville administrations have even tried to curb the problem by nominating their own candidates to contest national elections, but to no avail.

So Bougainville’s national MPs have more often than not operated outside of the ABG’s purview.

This has meant a lack of coordination in the disbursement of district services improvement and provincial services improvement funds.

National MPs have had their own priorities outside of the ABG which has meant a lack of harmonisation in the provision of government services in Bougainville.

President Toroama encourages people to vote for a leader who will work with the ABG and fight for Bougainville’s political aspirations on independence.

MICHAEL DOM
Ples Singsing Masterminds

LAE - On Monday 7 December Engan author Daniel Kumbon launched Victory Song of Pingeta’s Daughter, a 400-page book which based on the colonial and post-colonial history of the Wabag district and Enga Province, of which it is a part.

Keith Jackson on PNG Attitude commented that, “PNG history has most often been told by the colonisers but now home-grown authors are offering another view. Prolific author Daniel Kumbon’s latest work, Victory Song, tells the true story of a highlands family from first Western contact to today”.

That sounds like a book a few of our politicians might have an interest in championing, or perhaps not?

Just before he became prime minister, James Marape had been presented with four copies of Daniel’s self-published books.

At the time, Daniel expressed optimism that “the new government would at least see the significance of literature and the role it plays in nation building.

“Literature has the ability to provide knowledge and improve the quality of education in a country like ours where poor literacy rates remain the greatest challenge for people who continue to lack proper educational facilities.”

Daniel remarked that “there is no official encouragement for Papua New Guinean writers, but for those involved in its pursuit, literature gives us the greatest satisfaction to record history in draft form for the benefit of future generations.”

However, in November last year, just three months later, Daniel reported that he and fellow writers Betty Wakia and Caroline Evari, were “struggling to tell our prime minister that literature is very important”.

Just before he became prime minister James Marape was presented with four of Daniel Kumbon's books. Marape promised a meeting with some writers. It never eventuated, but they did get to sit outside his office for a while

They had been led to believe by the prime minister’s office that James Marape would accept a petition signed by hundreds of writers and their supporters in PNG and overseas.

This did not happen, but – given the long struggle for recognition of home-grown writing - the disappointment was no surprise.

As we move into 2021, the new Ples Singsing Papua Niuginian Writer’s Blog believes that supporting PNG authors for PNG readers is a practical way to ‘Take Back PNG’.

We will be giving back to PNG those stories (fiction and non-fiction) that belong to us and encompass who we are and what we value in our society.

Promoting PNG writers means rewarding PNG readers and encouraging PNG thinkers.

We want people to read essays from our youth, students in secondary schools, technical, vocational and teachers colleges and universities.

Hearing from you is the best way to determine the value of our cause and decide how best to achieve our goal.

This is why we have launched the Tingting Bilong Mi essay competition.

This privately funded writing contest has a five-year lifespan and aims to engage with youth aged between 16 and 36 who are currently enrolled in an educational institution.

The essay competition was launched on 1 December and ends on 31 January 2021.

Entry is free to all Papua New Guinean citizens living in-country. Three winners will be announced at the start of the school term at a date to be set in February 2021.

The subject is straightforward.

Tell us why you think the PNG government should (or should not) buy PNG-authored books.

We’ll compile the best essays into a book and have a copy delivered to the prime minister’s office.

Awards, judging and benefits

All entries will go through a preliminary judging by a panel of six published PNG writers and the final judging of the top ten will be undertaken by Australian author Phil Fitzpatrick and PNG academic and researcher Fiona Hukula.

The best entries will be published in the Post Courier and The National newspapers.

Well written essays may be edited for publication on the Ples Singsing and PNG Attitude blogs.

Cash prizes are offered for first place K500, second place K300 and third place K200.

The three winners will each receive two books by PNG authors valued at K50 each.

Selected essays will be collated into a book which will be published by JDT Independent Publishing, and the school or institute of the winning essayists will receive two copies for their library.

Exceptional and interested writers may be offered six months free coaching and mentoring by senior writers from PNG and abroad, from which they will be expected to produce one critical essay on a topic of their choice.

A small award ceremony may be held at a school in Port Moresby, Lae or Goroka dependent on logistical arrangements or otherwise books will be delivered by mail.

Download an entry form on the blog and email us here for more information. You can also Follow us on Twitter and Like us on Facebook.

We look forward to reading what you think.

Sydney Morning Herald

MIKE SCRAFTON
| Pearls & Irritations

MELBOURNE - There are many commentators with strong and legitimate concerns about China. The relationship between Australia and China is a very important one and it warrants open and vigorous debate

When those with privileged access to the public square confuse name calling and assertion with rational argument, it is important to point this out.

The ABC’s business editor Ian Verrender’s diatribe on China is a case in point.

The language employed by the critics of China and China-Australia relations is becoming increasingly intemperate.

For example, Verrender describes calls for a ‘reset’ with China following the trade frictions as “capitulation”.

China apparently seeks Australia’s “subjugation” and had dreams of  Australia becoming “a vast quarry and food bowl run by a compliant colony”.

The “increasingly hostile regime in Beijing”, which “tolerates no dissent at home or abroad”, also “thumbs its nose at global trade rules and systematically shuts Australia out of every conceivable commodity with the most spurious of excuses”.

Such inflammatory and exaggerated language doesn’t promote useful dialogue.

All the tensions in the relationship are attributed here to China’s behaviour.

The deterioration in the relationship, in Verrender’s account, stems from the Chinese government’s annoyance at having failed to acquire Rio Tinto’s iron assets in the Pilbara in 2009.

This would have “delivered control of global iron ore pricing, and with it, Australia’s future economic wellbeing”.

Now, to underpin its recovery from the Covid crisis, “China needs iron ore. And for that, it needs Australia.”

Verrender sees this situation as giving Australia “a powerful card” up its sleeve, although “one any Australian government would be loath to play”.

For Verrender, it’s time to move on.

He seems to be saying that because China “cannot source iron ore in sufficient quantity anywhere else”, at least not for the near future, Australia has sufficient leverage in the relationship to create the space and time for “our exporters to secure new markets”.

While he accepts “it will take years, perhaps decades” for this to happen, he seems confident because “it has been done before” when the UK joined the common market.

That’s it then.

Anyone seeking a rapprochement with China is effectively a quisling, it’s all China’s fault, and apparently Australia can with equanimity set about decoupling from our largest trading partner.

The first problem with this neat conclusion is one of symmetry.

Many commentators view China as a whole. The ‘hostile regime’ is judged by the sum of its activities – strategic, economic, and trade policies and investments – domestic and international.

Yet, Australia wants China to compartmentalise Australia’s activities.

Australia’s wholehearted participation in US military planning and operations in East Asia, significant investment in military capability designed to operate in China’s adjacent seas, enthusiastic alliance-building against China, bullhorn criticism of China’s domestic affairs and a raft of legislation aimed at restricting Chinese activities in Australia are not expected to generate any response in China.

However, taking the total of Australia’s anti-China activities into account, the restrictions by China on some items of trade seems proportionate, even restrained.

The judgment that the Chinese demand for iron ore gives Australia some executable weight in the relationship deserves further examination.

First, it’s worth thinking about how Australia would exercise this “powerful card”. Then it’s worth considering the options China has for loosening the grip of Australia’s dominance of its iron ore imports and how long it might take to wean itself off Australian mining.

The iron trade between Australia and China seems to produce two dependencies. In a tussle it would be a question of who can best bear the most pain, and bear it the longest.

Australia might restrict supply and drive up the price of ores going to China in the hope of forcing it to modify its behaviour. By artificially maintaining a high price it might ameliorate the effect on government revenues flowing from mining.

But the international environment is Newtonian, and for every action there is a reaction.

High ore prices provide opportunities for ‘non-traditional’ ore exporters to enter the market, as the high prices in 2020 have already shown, with ‘non-traditional’ ore supply at a five year high.

And China could find many other avenues to punish Australia for such aggressive and coercive action through iron ore exports.

The biggest long-term threat to Australia iron ore exports is from the Simandou deposit of high quality iron ore in Guinea, West Africa.

There are serious obstacles facing the development of Simandou, including a difficult-to-access location and the massive infrastructure investment required.

China is at the forefront of attempts to get this mine operating as the quality and quantity of the ore would enable China to diversify its own supply and drive down prices. But as things stand now, the prospect of Simandou coming on line within a decade is slim.

Faced with a threat to supply from Australia hanging over its head China could be motivated to wear the short-term pain and wear the costs of accelerating the project to secure a long-term supply of iron ore.

In the scheme of things a decade is not a long time and it is questionable whether Australia could adjust economically to the loss of exports to China in that period.

The enormous discrepancies in the relative economic power between China and Australia, and the greater ability of China to direct investment toward national interests, seems to have been overlooked in Verrender’s one-dimensional analysis.

China will continue to be a dominant economic and military presence in East Asia and will exercise growing influence.

It is not clear how it makes sense to decouple from China while the rest of the region becomes more integrated and finds more ways to manage, and benefit from, the necessary relations with their giant neighbour.

Students protest against the establishment of a Confucius Institute at University of Adelaide

ALBERT SCHRAM
| Edited extract

Link here to read Dr Schram’s complete essay, ‘China and the West: institutional autonomy, academic freedom, and student movements in the Pacific’

VERONA - In Papua New Guinea for a total of six years I was vice-chancellor of the PNG University of Technology (Unitech) in Lae, the second largest and second oldest university in the country.

As prescribed in the university acts, I was ex-officio member of the councils of both my own university and the country’s oldest and largest university, the University of PNG.

In 2014, I became aware of the pressure on UPNG to open a Confucius Institute. At the time there was much confusion in the UPNG council about this, believing it may be somehow harmful to the Christian nature of the country.

At Unitech things started innocently enough, with the Chinese asking us if some of our civil engineering students could work with them on a nearby road-building project.

With few such opportunities available, I followed the advice of the head of the department and signed an agreement with them. For Christmas, to my surprise, I received a bottle of whiskey, which I was allowed to accept under the university’s gift policy.

In 2016, in the run-up to the 2017 elections, national politicians had given money and arms to student groups from different tribes and used students to fight their proxy battles. In the ensuing fights on campus, four buildings were burned down.

In 2017, I decided to reach out to the Chinese in an effort to transparently establish a Confucius Institute on campus.

At the time, after the recession and famine of 2014-15, the government of PNG was not providing all of its monthly grants for operational expenses.

In addition, we needed funds for infrastructure and my hope was that, following an established process with the Chinese, we could get some initial investment on campus.

The university council had approved a campus development plan and established an open and transparent expression of interest process. The rules for granting a contract were clearly stipulated, and, to assure probity, all negotiations were disclosed to the council.

I was told that the procedure to establish a Confucius Institute was to host a visit of a Chinese delegation and then follow through with a visit to China.

I was asked to meet a representative of a communist party-controlled construction company in Port Moresby.

After I agreed to this meeting, a Chinese delegation decided to visit the Unitech deputy vice-chancellor on campus.

Clearly, I had already been categorised as too law-abiding, and I was never told what was transpired at this meeting.

Although the Confucius Institute program headquarters is in Beijing, in practical terms the first step from the Chinese side was to receive a visit and sign an agreement with a sponsor Chinese university.

Then a Chinese director of the future Confucius Institute is selected and trained. All training happens at Chongqing Normal University in Sichuan province in China.

When I met this university’s president, he quickly verified with me that Western university presidents serve terms of three or four years limited to a maximum of two terms.

Since I was in the second half of my second term, he expressed scorn for these strange western practices and basically ignored me from that moment onwards.

Clearly, the deputy vice-chancellor had been earmarked as the preferred contact, although formally I needed to sign the agreement.

Later I became aware that, under the table, members of the management team and council were offered trips to China for health reasons or simply for shopping.

In the Chinese approach to Unitech, the Confucius Institute process was central but was followed quickly by offers to invest, each step ‘greased’ by gifts or outright bribes.

There is little doubt in my mind, that my refusal to let Chinese construction companies bypass the decisions of the university council, my decision to stay with Cisco routers instead of Huawei and my independence and failure to react when bribes were offered, meant the Chinese saw me as an inconvenience.

Conversely, the eagerness with which council members, the deputy vice-chancellor and pro-vice chancellors reacted to Chinese overtures meant that alternative prospects were easily found.

Regrettably, many of us in the West take university autonomy and academic freedom for granted, because we have never dealt with issues like these.

In the wake of China’s aggressive foreign policy, the West must stand up for sovereignty, individual liberty and rights, fair and reciprocal trade, and the rule of law.

Too often the argument that ‘China is different’ is utilised to justify its crude power politics.

Western-style universities in developing countries are particularly vulnerable to the Chinese Communist Party’s corrupting influence because of structural underfunding and the constant growth of the student population. 

A strong position must be adopted that Western aid will only be forthcoming if human rights, freedom of inquiry, academic freedom and university autonomy are respected, and not sacrificed to the pressures of the CCP.

In the history of the frail democracies of the Pacific region, student movements have been fundamental to uphold democratic and core higher education values.

Regrettably today, it is governments giving in to Chinese pressures that have sidelined and muzzled the voice of the students.

Moreover, governments have gained control over university appointments and governance, often in blatant disregard of university statutes and acts.

Agents of the Chinese Communist Party have been highly successful in leaning on governments to push out independent university administrators, taking advantage of weak institutions and a high level of corruption in many of these countries.

The CCP has encouraged curtailment of freedom of student and academic expression.

In Papua New Guinea, for example, all student movements at universities were silenced in the run-up to the APEC meeting of 2018 in Port Moresby, which was accompanied by lavish Chinese loans for the building of roads, conference centres and other infrastructure.

In the run-up to the meeting, two foreign vice-chancellors were exposed to baseless allegations, harassed by police, threatened and made to leave the country.

In the Pacific and other regions, university autonomy and academic freedom have been eliminated.

In Europe, if we understand the strategy and tactics used by the Chinese Communist Party, we can still act together to prevent its undue influence on our universities.

Only in autonomous universities where academic freedom is cherished, democracy can thrive and backsliding and totalitarian temptations are resisted.

As the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) students wrote: "Be aware or be next”.

Derived from a lecture delivered at the 'Scholars at Risk' seminar, part of the Italy Speaker Series, on 11 December 2020

MV Craestar alongside the small ships’ wharf at Kieta circa 1965 (Peter  Steele)

BILL BROWN MBE

THE CHRONICLE CONTINUES - On 24 July 1968, Craestar (1), Conzinc Rio Tinto's (CRA) research vessel, motored into Kieta harbour.

None of the onlookers were excited, even though Craestar had a helicopter sitting on a landing pad over the stern.

The townsfolk had seen it all before. CRA had been using the vessel's helicopter to move drilling gear around Panguna since 1965.

Patrol Officer Max (MH) Heggen and I had spent much of that Wednesday setting up the District Office and moving my gear to the new location.

Kieta region (Bill Brown)

I was about to start my new role as Deputy District Commissioner of the Bougainville district.

The next morning when Craestar sailed for Tonelei and Buin, I sent Heggen along to keep an eye on things.

The geologists were about to commence investigating the area covered by Prospecting Authority 50 - some 430 square miles of the south-eastern corner of Bougainville.

I knew when the vessel would return to Kieta as CRA Area Manager Colin Bishop had presented me with the schedule – some would say my orders.

He told me when Craestar would arrive and when the geologists would fly by helicopter to test the inland streams for minerals.

The area of unusual mineralisation was in the foothills—behind Aropa airstrip—near the villages of Abaru, Aurui, Nasioi and Unabato in the South Nasioi Census Division, and Karuru and Sipuru in the Kongara.

A Bell 47G helicopter on Bougainville's west coast (Darryl Robbins)

Three months earlier, in May 1968, when CRA's Frank Espie told the Port Moresby meeting that the Craestar team would investigate Prospecting Authority 50, I warned attendees that the landowners might resort to violence to protect their land.

But nobody seemed to care. The Administration gave CRA the go-ahead.

Assistant District Officer Chris (C) Warrillow and Cadet Patrol Officer Ian (IB) Sloan (2) spent most of July in the area, and many hours telling the people about the impending CRA exercise.

Warrillow's reports strengthened my concerns. When he told the people that CRA would be testing their land for minerals, they were adamant that the company was not welcome and that villagers would combat any intrusion onto their land.

All their coastal land - over 6,000 acres- had already been alienated and those precious foothills were all they had left.

The Aurui villagers were the most vehement, but the people from Nasioi and Unabato villages also levelled savage threats.

Craestar arrived in Kieta from Tonolei Harbour at 1 pm on Saturday 3 August 1968. Heggen disembarked and returned to his accommodation at the Kieta Hotel.

The geologists stayed on board and next day took the Aurui villagers by surprise - flying in by helicopter on a Sunday morning.

They grabbed their mineral sample from a stream some distance from the village, thus avoiding a confrontation with the people, but later in the day Peter Itomui forced them to retreat from Siromba, another South Nasioi village.

The farce continued on Monday morning when Warrillow and I met with Atkinson (3) at the District Office. Still with work to do, but terrified by the villagers the previous day, he wanted support for his team so they could return to the area.

Extract from Chris Warrillow's Field Officers Journal of 6 August 1968 (Bill Brown)

District Commissioner Des Ashton was busy elsewhere, but we had our instructions.

Warrillow would fly into Unabato with Atkinson on Tuesday morning. The people knew Warrillow, so he would not need any police.

As Craestar's helicopter, a Bell 47G, was only authorised to carry two passengers at a time, the other two geologists could follow on a second flight.

The operation went more or less as we anticipated.

At 9.30 am on Tuesday, 6 August 1968, Atkinson and Warrillow flew from Craestar at Kieta to a landing spot near Sipuru village.

Two other geologists followed on the second flight at 10 am, after which the helicopter shuttled the whole team to Karuru village.

That was when villagers began to obstruct the geologists and to abuse and hassle the pilot.

When the people at Unabato became more numerous and more aggressive, Warrillow closed the operation down and the party flew back to Kieta.

Warrillow arrived on the second flight at 2.55 pm, reported to Ashton, and wrote up the day's events in his Field Officers Journal.

The District Commissioner's radiogram sent to headquarters in Port Moresby at 10.01 am on 7 August summarised what had transpired:

“ADO Warrillow accompanied party in [a] small helicopter Tuesday and [was] forced to withdraw from Unabato.

"Essential from Administration viewpoint party return to the area as soon as possible.

"Intend escorting party into area overland with strong police escort tomorrow Thursday. Anticipate minor opposition.”

Old CRA road at Pakia Gap (John Dagge)

Early on Thursday 8 August, Sub-Inspector Chris Coady with the police riot squad from Barapina drove to Kieta over the range through Pakia Gap to meet with Warrillow and the CRA team of three geologists and two Bougainvillean field assistants.

In a convoy of five vehicles, they then drove down the Aropa airstrip road and took the four-wheel drive track into the foothills.

The Administrator described the operation to Canberra by telex:

“On 6th August a helicopter party accompanied by ADO [Warrillow] withdrew from Unabato after some scuffling. ADO, police officer and twenty police escorted CRA party overland to Unabato 8th August.

"Forty males initially confronted patrol increasing to eighty, including women.  They attempted to prevent prospecting and twice broke through police cordon.  Three individuals were lightly struck with police batons and one arrested.”

Even the Australian Communist Party’s Tribune newspaper cobbled a reasonably accurate story together with "details drawn from the Territory press" and ran it on 25 September:   

“After Atkinson was intercepted by the villagers and told not to work there, he returned with the Assistant District Officer, a Mr Warrillow. The villagers stopped his operations by dumping his equipment in the river. Two days later the CRA party accompanied by Mr Warrillow, and a number of police returned to the area.

"The police formed a cordon around the prospecting group, but the villagers twice broke through the cordon and pushed Mr Atkinson into the river. One of the villagers, a man named Batung, was arrested and appeared in court on the following Tuesday. A magistrate was flown in from Rabaul to hear the case, and Batung was given two months hard labour.”

I had words with Warrillow when he returned from Unabato on 8 August 1968. He did not like being told to take the man he had arrested to the hospital for a check-up and he was still aggrieved the following morning when he typed his three-page report.

He concluded: "My verbal report was made to yourself upon my arrival in Kieta at 1905 hours. The arrested man was medically examined this morning and was found to require NO MEDICAL TREATMENT WHATSOEVER."

Many years later, Warrillow was almost contrite when he emailed me:

“I reported to you at about 7 pm as soon as I got back from Unabato, totally exhausted mentally and physically, soaking wet, hungry, and thirsty. I told you I had used a baton on a man and arrested him and brought him in for trial. You told me to take him to the hospital for a medical examination, and I was pissed-off because I knew there was nothing wrong with him. I knew how hard my token baton tap had been!

“So, when the doctor (next morning) told me there was nothing wrong with the guy I had to include in my report, "See, up yours Brown, I told you there was nothing wrong with him!" Thus, I used the upper-case emphasis, and now I apologise to the one who was the wiser at that time.”

Geology team in trouble as Panguna villagers try to stop it from collecting stream sediment samples (Roger Majoribanks)

Donald Denoon, Professor of History at the Australian National University in Camberra, probably jeopardised his reputation for meticulous research when, in the year 2000, he made a wild guess at the meaning behind that final sentence.

Without so much as checking with Warrillow, he wrote: "To the kiap's palpable relief (and perhaps surprise) he required 'NO MEDICAL TREATMENT WHATSOEVER." (4)

Denoon was not the only one to get it wrong. In 2013, former CRA geologist Roger (RWM) Majoribanks (5), now highly qualified with a PhD from the Australian National University, and seemingly with an ego, concocted a mix of fact and fantasy on his website here.

He added to our knowledge of the geologists’ unaccompanied Sunday morning sortie, but his contention that “the overwhelming majority of islanders [Bougainvilleans] welcomed the exploration team from the Craestar– they wanted a mine to bring infrastructure and jobs” was nonsense.

His statement—twice-repeated—that a kiap had been ambushed and hacked to death with machetes a few months earlier was a fabrication or a delusion.

According to Majoribanks, he and Warren Atkinson and Jeff Scott (6) landed in some overgrown gardens a few hundred meters from a village on 5 July.

Sometime later when he was taking samples in a stream, three young men threatened him with machetes and chased him. Atkinson and Scott were chased from another location.

When a large crowd of villagers – men, women, and children - surrounded the helicopter, the geologists "quickly flew off, glad to be still alive."

Majoribanks was more confused when he described the incident that occurred on 8 August 1968. He said it happened on 6 July and that 50 members of the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary, armed with long wooden pick-axe handles, assembled on the government wharf at Sohano, where Craestar was moored. Marjoribanks wrote:

"An inspector from Melbourne and a sergeant from Mt Hagen, with a shotgun and sidearms, led the uniformed force. A young Australian civilian Patrol Officer, known in PNG as a 'Kiap' was in overall charge.

“After he and the other two geologists joined the group, they boarded vehicles and bounced along the coast road before being driven for two more hours on ever-smaller tracks, followed by a two-hour trek along jungle paths to their destination.”

Bill Brown contemplates the dilemma of bringing mining to Bougainville, Kieta, 1968

Once again, the reality was very different. Twenty, not 50 members of the police, escorted the group, and they carried truncheons, not pick-axe handles.

The Craestar was at Kieta, not at Sohano - a small island in Buka Passage at the northern tip of Bougainville. Departing Kieta by vehicle at 8:50 am, the group arrived at Siromba 55 minutes later and walked to their destination, Unabato.

I spent most of August filling in for DC Ashton. He appeared at the office first thing in the morning, read the newly opened mail, passed it to me to draft replies for his signature and left for other spheres.

I was on a learning curve. I knew next to nothing about how a District Office worked or its day-to-day routine. Even so, for the first time in Bougainville, I was relaxing – no longer worrying night and day of something going wrong with the CRA turmoil.

If Warrillow had not organised the Craestar helicopter to fly me to Aropa airstrip on Tuesday 13 August, I would have been in trouble for missing the Wednesday Administration–CRA meeting in Port Moresby.

Ashton had a leisurely drive to the airport to catch the outbound flight; I made it with minutes to spare.

Craestar was still alongside the small ship's wharf in Kieta when I left, so I was surprised to hear Espie announce that it had completed the survey in the South Bougainville and was moving to the British Solomons.

(I was more relieved when at the next meeting three months later on 12 November, Espie said the survey results were not encouraging, and the company was surrendering Prospecting Authorities 50 and 51.)

Des Ashton meets village people near Kieta, 1968 (Bougainville News)

Back in Bougainville from Port Moresby, Ashton took me with him when he drove up the Pinei valley to explain CRA’s plans to the people.

He knew I had some rapport with leaders Councillor Teori of Pakia and Councillor Naika of Sieronji. I introduced him to the meeting. He did all the talking and nobody listened.

They had heard CRA’s plans explained many times before – by me, by Henderson, by Warrillow, by Glover and by Heggen.

They didn’t believe us when we told them that the company was “only looking”—evaluating and planning—and we were a tad uncertain ourselves.

Many of them had stopped listening to the new Radio Bougainville when Ashton commenced his weekly program, Toktok Bilong Nambawan Kiap (The District Commissioner Speaks) warning them not to hinder CRA or get in the company’s way.

The people from both sides of the Pinei Valley – the Nasioi and the Eivo - were horrified that the company was planning a road with a 60 feet-wide easement, gun-barrel straight up the valley through their economic crops.

The Pakia people were prepared to prevent the company taking their village and the surrounding land for a town in the foothills and mountain valleys where they grazed their pigs and hunted. They were also opposed to the road easement which was 200 feet wide.

On 22 August Councillor Teori lost his cool. He told a survey team to get off his land and felled an employee, Daniel, who was cutting a survey line.

Areas covered by CRA prospecting authorities 50 and 51, later relinquished by the company

Ross Henderson, told of strife between Pakia villagers and a North Gap survey team, visited Nairovi and Pakia accompanied by five constables. After more than two hours of discussion, he decided to arrest Councillor Teori and take him to Kieta.

The Pakia people - men and women -intervened and stopped Henderson and the police from taking him. Henderson reported to Ashton in Kieta, leaving Councillor Naika and Constable Narokai at Pakia to talk to the people and help them understand.

I would have preferred that Henderson had been less aggressive. Now we were locked in; Teori had resisted arrest and had to be arraigned.

Henderson returned to Pakia accompanied by Sub-Inspector Alex (AW) Fyfe (7) and 10 extra police. The Sub-Inspector served a warrant of arrest on Teori and, after a struggle, Teori and some others were handcuffed, placed in vehicles and taken to Kieta.

A magistrate from Rabaul sentenced Teori to three months in gaol on 3 September. It was time to contact the Public Solicitor Peter (WA) Lalor.

Lalor had already made public statements regarding the ownership of minerals on native land (8) and he sprang into action when I called. Within a few days Teori-Tau and his co-accused were released on bail.

I had no idea that Teori's appeal would result in a challenge to the validity of the Territory's mining laws in the Supreme Court in October 1969.

In December 1969, Teori’s case went to the High Court of Australia. Teiori maintained a close dialogue over the next four tears and he supported the kiaps working in his area.

As a precautionary measure, at the end of August ADOs Warrillow and Glover and eight constables spent five cold and bleak days under canvas at the top of the range between Pakia and Panguna. Their task was to escort the team surveying the North Gap alternative route.

Ashton was back on the Panguna scene early in September 1968. He took DO Ross Henderson, Sub-Inspector Chris Coady, and Constable Narokai with him when he walked around Guava ridge on 12 September.

They helicoptered from Paguna to Deomori Marist Mission, talked with Father Weemaes (9) then walked to Kokorei and Guava. The following day Ashton accompanied Henderson to Moroni village to check a drill access road and to ensure CRA relocated to avoid disturbing a graveyard.

Around mid-September, the people from the villagers on the western fall - in the lower Kawerong and Jaba – protested when CRA destroyed a vital food source.

Hydraulic flushing of volcanic ash overburden into the Kawerong River, 1968 (Bill Brown)

The company, using a 1,000 horsepower hydraulic pump and two bulldozers, flushed 75,500 cubic metres of volcanic ash overburden down the Kawerong into the Jaba killing the fish and other creatures that lived in the waterway.

The Darenai, Pisinau and Kokomate villagers were not overawed by the 70 intruders.

District Officer Bob (RA) Hoad and three police had been tasked to escort the team trying to work out how to dispose of the overburden and  tailings - six surveyors and engineers and 60 Nagovisi assistants.

On 3 October when they ordered Hoad and the team to begone or they be forcibly removed, District Commissioner Ashton sent Sub Inspector Coady and 10 constables as reinforcements.

Three days later, he helicoptered to the camp to mediate, but it was not until the Member of the House of Assembly, Paul Lapun, flew from his home at Mabes village in the Banoni that a temporary solution was found and work resumed.

We should have been prepared.  At a meeting in May 1968, the company reported that if the project went ahead 61,164,390 cubic metres of overburden material would be flushed downstream in the two-year period before production.

After the mine commenced, the tailings, more than 98 percent of the 72,500 tonnes milled each day would flow into the Kawerong River.

At the November meeting, the company reported:

“Serious pollution of the river system was inevitable: contaminated by suspended clay and solids, and possible increased copper content. There was a probability of non-toxic levels of cyanide in the effluent from the concentrator. A lethal effect on fish had already attracted vehement opposition.”

1969 was going to be a brutal year. CRA added Phil (PHN) Opas QC to their team, the Public Solicitor, Peter Lalor, sent a member of his staff, Talbot Lovering, to our aid, and Tom Ellis transferred Patrol Officers Mike (MF) Bell and John Russell-Pell to strengthen our team.

At the end of November 1968 I took over as District Commissioner Bougainville when Des Ashton departed for four months leave to Australia.

Footnotes

(1) In an earlier life as Asahi Maru No 8, a Japanese fishing vessel, Craestar was abandoned by her owners when she went aground on a reef near Sigatoka, Fiji, in February 1962. Re-floated in 1962, she was converted to a cargo vessel and traded between Fiji and the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) but her 120 tons of cargo capacity was too small. CRA purchased the ship in May 1965.

(2) Ian Bruce Sloan, Cadet Patrol Officer - born July 1948; returned to Australia December 1968.

(3) Warren John Atkinson, geologist, was team leader. Born in Australia in June 1935, he returned there in March 1967 after spending almost four years overseas. He commenced three months stints on Craestar circa April 1967.

(4) ‘Getting under the skin: the Bougainville copper agreement and the creation of the Panguna mine’ by Donald Denoon, Melbourne University Press, 2000.

(5) Roger William Moncrief Marjoribanks, geologist, was born in Scotland in December 1943 and flew to Australia from London in August 1966 to work for CRA Exploration. According to his web page, he graduated from Glasgow University in 1966 as a BSc with 1st Class Honours and was the class medallist.

(6) Allan Geoffrey Scott, 26, graduated in 1966 and went to Bougainville in February 1967 as a CRA geologist on the first of many assignments.

(7) Sub Inspector Alexander Wallace Fyfe, born in Scotland in 1933, had a distinguished career in the Victoria Police, the Royal Papua and New Guinea Constabulary, the Commonwealth Police and the Australian Federal Police. He was awarded the chief commissioner's certificate for bravery and eight commendations for efficiency in police duties in Victoria and was awarded the Royal Papua and New Guinea Constabulary Valour Medal.

(8) Discharged from the AIF (Australian Imperial Force) in Rabaul in 1946, William Andrew (Peter) Lalor joined the Administration as a Patrol Officer. While posted to Milne Bay, he was in Samarai when a powerline came down and, while rescuing another person, he stepped on the live wire and was severely burnt. Recovering in Melbourne  he completed a law degree and transferred to the Department of Law in PNG. In 1960 he was appointed to be PNG’s first Public Solicitor.

(9) Father Willy (WCA) Weemaes arrived in Australia from Holland in November 1966. He took over as parish priest at Deomori in 1967 upon the transfer of Father Wilhelm Woeste.

Images

1 - Map of the Kieta region (Bill Brown)

2 - Areas covered by CRA prospecting authorities 50 and 51, later relinquished by the company (Bill Brown)

1 - MV Craestar alongside the small ships’ wharf at Kieta, circa 1965 (Peter Steele)

2 - A Bell 47G helicopter on the ground near Torokina (Darryl Robbins)

3 - Old CRA road at Pakia Gap circa 1968 (John Dagge’s Covid shoe box)

4 - From Roger Majoribanks webpage - “Villagers near Panguna copper deposit in Bougainville Island try to stop CRA geologists from collecting a stream-sediment sample. The geologists (wearing orange hi-vis jackets) are Jeff Scott at left and Warren Atkinson at right. The guy wearing the Akubra hat is the Kiap. The third geologist with the party (me) is hanging back, trying to keep out of harm’s way (and taking photographs).” The kiap, Chris Warrillow, was wearing an army slouch hat not an Akubra purchased from a disposal store in 1958.

5 - Bill Brown relaxing in Kieta August 1968

6 - District Commissioner Des (DN) Ashton, Kieta 1968 (Bougainville News)

7 - CRA flushed 100,000 cubic yards (75,500 cubic metres) of volcanic ash overburden down the Kawerong River as a test in 1968, almost a year before they took the decision to proceed to construct the mine (Bill Brown)

JIMMY AWAGL

An invisible tremor shakes the earth
as an enemy crosses our paths

Like a silent wind uprooting our lives
and bearing the curse of disease

Small but forceful it penetrates
wherever it lands, crushing lungs,

A mysterious enemy invading all
around the globe, an invisible smoke

Challenging life and reeking of death
stealthily making its way through us all

Never seen in the past, but engulfing
all as it moves with swift opportunism

No curing yet, just prevention so far,
no stopping just yet, killer from China

Tony Heffernan - "My father was terribly upset over the accident and never stopped blaming himself. My sister told me it was the only time she had ever seen Dad cry"

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - Our first grandson was born while we were living in Hervey Bay in Queensland. His other grandparents, who belong to a small Lutheran congregation nearby in Maryborough, organised his christening there.

The Lutheran pastor was an American who had been a missionary in Papua New Guinea. I was still scooting back and forth from Australia to PNG doing social mapping, so we had a common interest.

Out of that event I allowed myself to be talked into teaching adults how to read and write at the Hervey Bay branch of the Maisie Kaufman Learning Centre.

It was only one day a week and it fitted in with my irregular work pattern, so I volunteered.

Many of the students at the learning centre were required to attend training there as a fulfilment of their welfare payment obligations but others attended out of interest or need. Quite a few were Islander or Aboriginal Australians.

While the program at the centre was funded by the federal government, it could only afford to pay a supervisor. For teachers it depended upon volunteers.

I’m no teacher so my approach was based largely on instinct.

The students were a mixed bunch with varying degrees of intellect and comprehension but my assorted methods seemed to work reasonably well; each student required a different approach.

One of the students was a man in his mid-fifties named Tony.

When he was about nine years old Tony had been involved in a bad accident with a lawnmower. His left hand was mangled, he lost a lot of blood and while in hospital contracted pneumonia and then had a stroke. All that left him mentally impaired.

He was a nice bloke and we got on well. He told me he had always wanted to learn to read and write but all his attempts had so far failed. He was one of those people that the system tends to ignore.

He was a very gentle and intelligent individual but there were linkages and processes in his brain that didn’t seem to work very well.

I wondered how he had managed to cope without learning to read and write. He explained some of his methods and as an example took me to the supermarket to show me how he shopped.

Simple things like fresh vegetables and meat and fish were easy but everything else was tricky because Tony relied entirely on the pictures on the packaging.

Sometimes he arrived home with things he didn’t want.

We progressed slowly and I got to know him better. He had led a fascinating life. He once walked all the way from Sydney to Melbourne, for instance. That’s over 700 kilometres.

He didn’t hitchhike or get lifts. He walked. After a couple of weeks in Melbourne he walked back again.

“When I got home I was waiting for someone to ask me where I had been, but no one had even missed me!” he said.

It was stories like that that got me thinking and I suggested he write them as a way of learning.

We would write each story slowly, spending lots of time on each word and sentence and then he would read them back.

When we’d covered his personal stories, we tackled other things that interested him.

Towards the end we had about 50 pages and I put it altogether in booklet form and printed it. He took it to his sister and mother and read the stories to them. You can link to Tony's booklet here.

Download My Stories by Tony Heffernan

Eventually the Abbott government withdrew the funding for the program and Tony and the other students had to leave.

Tony at least had the rudiments of reading and writing under his belt and I like to think it made his life a little bit easier.

He died of cancer a few years later.

At his funeral I met his elderly mother and she thanked me for helping him. I was flattered because I didn’t think it was such a big deal.

I was searching for something on my computer the other day when I came across Tony’s booklet and read it again.

It was only then that I realised what a remarkable man he had been and how poorly life and the system had treated him.

There must be millions of people like Tony in the world who deserve not so much our sympathy but our attention.

It was only a tiny piece out of my life but I’m forever grateful for having experienced it.

I would recommend doing something similar to anyone with a bit of spare time.

Marlena and Michael Jeffery

MAX UECHTRITZ
| President, Papua New Guinea Association of Australia

SYDNEY –A great Australian, former governor-general, Major-General Michael Jeffery AC GCL CVO MC, died on Friday at the age of 83.

General Jeffery had a close association with Papua New Guinea as the last Australian commanding officer of 2 PIR and as co-patron of the Papua New Guinea Association of Australia (PNGAA) since 2003.

He had two stints with the Pacific Islands Regiment, from 1966-69 and 1974-75, and was present at Independence.

Mr Jeffery was Australia’s 24th governor-general, serving between August 2003 and September 2008.

Supported by his wife Marlena, he was prominent in his support of Canberrans in the wake of the 2003 bushfires. The couple more than made their mark on Canberra.

The Jefferys, regarded as a strong team, were in high spirits and close to tears when they were farewelled from Government House in September 2008, walking through a throng of school children, staff and other supporters.

During that farewell, a committee member of the Children’s Medical Research Institute’s Canberra committee, Elly Cox, described the Jefferys as the “most natural, approachable people”.

The incumbent Governor-General, General David Hurley, praised the service of Major-General Jeffery in a statement:

“After graduating from the Royal Military College in 1958, he served on operations in Malaya, Borneo, Papua New Guinea and Vietnam, where he was awarded the Military Cross.

He held numerous commands, including of the Special Air Service Regiment, before retiring from the military in 1993.

His distinguished military career was just one chapter in his lifetime of service. He became governor of Western Australia in 1993 and, in 2003, Australia’s 24th governor-general. After his term in office he became Australia’s first National Advocate for Soil Health.

Throughout his career – in its many iterations – he worked tirelessly, put others ahead of himself and brought immense intellect, work ethic and commitment to everything he did. Unfailingly polite, he was, quite simply, a gentleman.

He was also a husband, father and grandfather. Our thoughts – as we give thanks and acknowledge a lifetime of service – are with his loved ones.”

Michael Jeffery and Michael Pissa

Few stories better illustrate the powerful and poignant connection between Australia and Papua New Guinea than the special bond between the Australian Governor-General and the Papua New Guinean army band piper.

Lance Corporal Michael Pissa of the Pacific Islands Regiment had piped the bride down the aisle in 1967 when Michael and Marlena Jeffery were married at Haus Lotu at Taurama Barracks in Port Moresby.

Forty-one years he was with them again – this time at Government House, Yarralumla, Canberra - reprising the wedding piece in surely the most emotional farewell ever given for an Australian Governor-General.

The moment was recorded beautifully by then Fairfax writer Tony Wright:

“As Major-General Michael Jeffery and his wife Marlena strolled from Government House, Yarralumla, a small man in the crowd of perhaps 500 well-wishers lining their path pumped his bagpipes and blew into the chill Canberra air the strains of that most haunting of farewells, Now is the Hour.

He primed his pipes again, and that other great tune of endings and beginnings, Auld Lang Syne, floated into the afternoon.

As the Governor-General and his wife finally forged their way through the crowd, the little man – clearly a long way from home – stepped into their path and led them to their waiting limousine, this time playing the lilting Mairi’s Wedding.

It was the very tune he had played 41 years previously when Michael and Marlena Jeffery were married in a military barracks in Port Moresby.

The piper then was simply a 19-year-old Papua New Guinean (attached to the Pacific Island Regiment, where Michael Jeffery was a 30-year-old officer.

Now that same piper, Sergeant-Major Michael Pissa, 60, is musical director of the PNG Defence Force.

He was spending a couple of weeks on holiday in Queensland when he heard that his old commander was about to retire as Governor-General. He felt it would be his duty and his pleasure to attend the farewell.

He paid his own way to Canberra, taking his pipes with him, and notified General Jeffery only at the last minute.

He was treated to morning tea at Government House and then strode through the gates of the vice-regal estate, waiting alone in the crowd to deliver his tribute.“

There has never been a farewell quite like it for an Australian Governor-General.”

At a function in 2005, General Jeffery spoke warmly of Sergeant Major Michael Pissa:

“Some of you may be aware that Marlena and I were married in the Haus Lotu at Taurama Barracks over forty years ago, when I was posted here from 1966-69 with the 1st Battalion, the Pacific Islands Regiment,” he said.

Indeed the battalion piper Michael Pissa, who piped Marlena down the aisle of the Taurama Chapel some 41 years earlier, walked from his village for several days, bringing with him his pipes and old green juniper uniform and played the wedding march at a reception held in our honour, evoking many tears of happiness.”

General Jeffery had two stints in Papua New Guinea. He served as company commander of 1 Pacific Islands Regiment from 1966-69 and then was the last Australian commanding officer of 2 PIR in Wewak in 1974-75.

General Jeffery spoke of this time:

“I returned to command 700 very fine soldiers of the Second Battalion in Wewak, and as a result was privileged to be here at Independence on 16 September 1975.

In those days we conducted border security operations on the PNG - Irian Jaya border as a battalion and I can say to all of you present here that I would have been honoured to take that battalion to any operational theatre in the world.

We were a happy, well trained, highly disciplined family with our wives and children living and growing up together in a beautiful barracks environment.

Last year, I was greatly honoured to be invested as a Grand Companion of the Order of the Logohu by Sir Michael Somare when he visited Australia for the APEC leaders meeting.

I have renamed my small fishing boat ‘Logohu’ as a permanent reminder of my association with a country for whom I hold such great affection.”

Sergeant Major (retd) Michael Pissa today

General Jeffery also spoke warmly of Papua New Guinea’s Independence in 1975:

“Independence in Wewak was a very special occasion, with, in the words of Sir John Guise, the Australian flag being lowered rather than torn down for the last time and the beautiful Papua New Guinea flag being raised in its stead.

It was deeply touching to be personally farewelled at Wewak airport afterwards by Prime Minister Somare, with the pipes and drums of the Regimental Band and a large crowd in attendance.

The most impressive aspect of Independence was the positive and joyful spirit in which it occurred.

I believe the positive spirit displayed then between our two nations, provided a solid foundation for the multifaceted relationship, based on mutual respect, shared experiences and geo-strategic realities that remain to this day.”

As current president of the Papua New Guinea Association of Australia and on behalf of the PNGAA family, I pass on the association’s deep condolences to the Jeffery family.

The pipes will never be silent.

JIMMY AWAGL

Shut down
Lock down

Hold on for dear life
Got to live this life

Shut down the operation
Government needs cooperation

No more public utilities
We closed all the facilities

Life is worth something more
Death can wait outside the door

Clean offices closed
Covid offices hosed

Healthy life promoted
Gymnasiums demoted

Street vendors told ‘go home’
Businesses left alone

Economy’s taken quite a blow
Life continues along so-so

Covid’s really a total disaster
Something people didn’t ask for

Causing the world to lock down
Triggering anxiety all around

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - As 2020 staggers towards its dismal end, the trail of upheaval and disasters left in its wake will continue to reverberate around the world for many years to come.

When historians of the future are considering the impact of Covid-19 on the world, they will be presented with a smorgasbord of issues to contemplate.

In the USA they will be struggling to understand how the world’s largest and most successful republic became so seriously and corrosively divided along so many fracture lines.

So divided, in fact, that its very existence as a viable democracy has been called into question.

Our future historians will especially be trying to figure out how an obvious narcissistic sociopath, a person conspicuously lacking in any sort of moral or ethical compass, could only be so narrowly defeated in a presidential election.

How could 70 million Americans possibly think that Donald Trump and his Republican Party enablers actually represented their interests in the face of all evidence to the contrary?

Similarly, events in the UK and Europe will call into question the underlying competence of various national governments, most of which have conspicuously failed to effectively manage the response to the pandemic, with an ensuing massive loss of life and a severe economic recession.

Meanwhile, the apparent success of the Chinese government in suppressing the disease and minimising its economic impact may lead some historians to wonder if an authoritarian model of government may be preferable to democracy when it comes to dealing with national crisis.

Certainly, there are more than a few contemporary thinkers openly contemplating this question.

Some of them regard the events of 2020 as clear evidence that democracy is no longer about achieving the greatest good for the greatest number but more about preserving the wealth and interests of the richest and most powerful segment of the population.

Historians will study events in countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Australia in an effort to understand why and how they succeeded in managing the pandemic and its economic consequences so much better than most of the rest of the democratic world. What did they know or do that the others did not?

From a contemporary viewpoint, the simple answer seems to be that the governments of these countries, notwithstanding significant cultural differences, followed the advice of the medical, scientific and economic experts and their respective populations had sufficient self discipline to comply with that advice.

In an Australian context, it seems we collectively are more willing to put our trust in governments at a time of crisis than people in, say, the USA or UK or France. This is despite our supposedly ingrained anti-authoritarianism and ‘she’ll be right’ attitude.

For Papua New Guinea, it is hard to fathom just what the government thought that it could or should do to protect the people from the impact of the pandemic.

It seems it eventually opted to do nothing and rely upon blind luck to avoid disaster. Future historians may be hampered by the lack of data upon which the PNG government based its conclusions.

It seems to me that this absence of coherent policy is further evidence, if any was needed, that PNG politics is less about governing and more about the struggle between different loosely affiliated groups of mostly self-interested individuals to acquire wealth, power and influence.

So governing in the public interest has become a subsidiary activity which is routinely disrupted or ignored due to the interminable political machinations of the type vividly on display in the last few weeks of 2020.

The evidence of history is that pandemics have impacts that are felt for a very long time after the disease has vanished or otherwise ceased to be a major problem.

An extreme example of this was first outbreak of the Black Plague (1347–50) which ushered in the end of medieval feudalism in Britain and much of Europe and simultaneously created the circumstances in which a wealthy mercantile class could rise to prominence.

This, in turn, eventually spawned the economic revolution which largely created our modern world.

Less extreme examples include the Plague of Justinian (541-549), which brought to an end the last attempts to restore the Roman Empire and so ushered in the so-called Dark Ages.

History might have taken a very different course, in Europe at least, if Justinian had succeeded in restoring the empire to its former glory.

In each of these cases, the long term effects of the pandemic were impossible to predict. This seems likely to be the case for the current pandemic, even assuming that the roll-out of vaccines is able to bring it under control.

The human and economic toll of 77 million cases and a reported 1.7 million deaths has already been significant for the world.

The geo-political impacts are also substantial, notably the emergence of China as a major power with an appetite for political and economic dominance in its self defined sphere of influence.

The weakened and divided democratic world has, so far at least, looked on in helpless impotence.

Under the malignant influence of Donald Trump and his enablers, the USA has chosen to effectively abandon its international leadership role and so far no power or group of powers has shown an ability or will to step into that role.

A Biden administration will find it very hard work to restore the confidence and trust that once allowed the USA to speak for the democratic world.

Re-creating badly fractured relations, especially with Europe, is likely to be a labour of years, not months.

For Papua New Guinea, as a small and essentially powerless country, the next few years look destined to be very difficult indeed.

PNG will find itself between the proverbial rock and a hard place as China seeks to increase influence and democratic countries like Australia seek to prevent it from doing so.

With deft diplomacy PNG may even succeed in benefiting from this competition, but it is going to take a level of judgement and sophistication in international affairs so far not much in evidence, at least at a political level.

PNG also will have to confront significant internal problems, notably Bougainville’s expressed desire for independence.

To refuse Bougainville’s demands seems likely to provoke serious unrest if not the resumption of civil war. To acquiesce may well stimulate similar demands for autonomy from other disgruntled provinces.

Whoever is in power, there is no easy answer to this problem. The preferred policy until now has been prevarication, obfuscation and delay.

It seems that the new Bougainville president, Ishmael Toroama, is determined to push the issue harder than his predecessor John Momis.

Eventually a decision may be forced by circumstances beyond political control. This is usually the way things work with intractable political problems.

So, as we all bid adieu to a dismal 2020, the future seems more likely than not to be fraught with further difficulties even as Covid-19 fades (we hope) into the background as just another infectious disease.

Sir Mekere Morauta - "Your People Mourn"

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – The Rt Hon Mekere Morauta KCMG (popularly known as Sir Mek), Papua New Guinea’s prime minister from 1999-2002 and regarded as one of its greatest constitutional and economic reformers, has died from cancer in Brisbane aged 74.

His wife, Lady Roslyn Mekere, released a brief statement saying, “It is with the deepest sadness that Roslyn and James Morauta announce that their much loved husband and father, Sir Mekere Morauta KCMG, died peacefully in Brisbane on Saturday 19 December”.

He was born in 1946 at Kukipi village in Gulf Province, his father Councillor Morauta Hasu a leader of the Toaripi people and deacon of the London Missionary Society (later the United Church).

In 1970 Sir Mekere was the first economics graduate from the University of Papua New Guinea and by  1975 had become the first Papua New Guinean head of the finance department of finance, a position he held for seven years.

Lady Ros and Sir Mek,  Goroka,  September 2010

He became managing director of the PNG Banking Corporation (1983–92) then governor of the Bank of PNG, the country’s central bank. 

He retired in 1994 to become a successful businessman, handing over the businesses to his wife, Roslyn to run for and win the seat of Moresby North-West in national parliament. He held the seat across the 23 years from 1997-2012 and 2017-20.

After becoming prime minister in 1999, Sir Mekere embarked on an urgent and ambitious period of reform.

At the time the PNG economy was on the brink of collapse, with government finances in disarray and a spiralling currency.

He devised and led a rescue package which stabilised the economy and the budget, strengthened state institutions and introduced major reforms to the financial sector, especially in banking and superannuation, and to the public sector.

Constitutional changes were introduced which brought political stability and laid the foundation for the orderly development of political parties.

His death has sparked much grief amongst people in PNG and abroad.

“Much of what we have today in PNG government institutions was from Sir Mek. He was our reformist leader and we will surely miss his leadership,” said Gibson Holemba. “What a leader!”

Rebecca Kuku said he will be “remembered for undertaking many legislative reforms and policy outcomes.”

Australian research scientist and director of the Burnet Institute, Professor Brendan Crabb AC, wrote: “This is terribly sad. Deepest sympathies to you, Lady Ros, from your Pacific family.

“I have known Sir Mekere for most of my life. He was a great and exceptionally smart leader, a great Papua New Guinean and a kind and gentle person. He will be missed deeply by millions.”

Noted PNG commentator Martyn Namorong  said Sir Mekere was “one of the greatest Papua New Guinean statesmen, reformers and nation builders. Thank you for your service to this nation.”

While Bethanie Harriman said simply, “Your people mourn.”

__________

Funeral and haus krai arrangements for Sir Mekere

Lady Roslyn Morauta and James Morauta have advised that a funeral service for their late husband and father, Rt Hon Sir Mekere Morauta, will be held in Brisbane at St Mary’s Anglican Church, Kangaroo Point, on Wednesday 23 December at 2pm.

It will be live-streamed on www.facebook.com/saintmaryskpt, for family and friends in Papua New Guinea.

Owing to Covid-19, it is not possible to arrange an official haus krai at this time.

However arrangements are being made for a memorial service in Port Moresby once travel circumstances permit and family matters are completed in Australia. The service will take place early next year.

Should there be an unofficial haus krai, Lady Roslyn and James ask that no donations be made.

JIMMY AWAGL

The tropical rainforest
Stretching up the slope
Tree tops shrouded in cloud
Offering a misty canopy
Drifting through the leaves

The sun’s descending rays
Spreading their radiant fingers
Touching the hovering vapour
Flaring before us in a golden spray
Blinding our eyes in a rainbow spectrum

The sweet melody of dawn birds
Cascades as they sit atop the branches
In quest of fresh dew hanging on the leaves
To satiate these heavenly creatures
Of the forest, their natural home

Forest frogs croaking 
Jungle cicadas shrieking
While nocturnal creatures
Have retired in a hollow to dream
Cassowaries kiss the dew of earth

Yet all the rays fail to penetrate
The wind does not spear through
Dew remains for all day long
Mist hovering overhead for hours
What a splendid mountain forest

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - As 2020 draws to a close, confusion and trepidation seem to be the major emotions people the world over are feeling.

The confusion stems from uncertainty about how to interpret what appear to be existential threats in 2021 and beyond.

They include the coronavirus pandemic.

Covid-19 appears to be mutating and becoming more contagious, although scientists tell us it will be susceptible to the new vaccines.

The stealth and cunning with which Covid progresses will also ensure it remains a deadly spectre through 2021 at least.

Also on people’s minds is climate change, which is rapidly accelerating and creating disastrous consequences that present a danger to the world.

The US president-elect, Joe Biden, has vowed to tackle climate change as a matter of urgency but it will be an uphill battle for many years.

In contrast to most other countries, Australia’s federal government refuses to take the matter seriously.

Added to these dangers are the economic and geopolitical threats posed by a newly assertive China, threats that could end in very unpleasant global confrontations.

The China situation confuses everyone because nobody knows where it is going; it is an inscrutable problem.

All of these potentially catastrophic developments are likely to play out at a time when our leaders are either overwhelmed by events or in denial; either muddling along ineffectively or without a real clue about what to do.

At best we are going to stumble into 2021 looking like people caught in the glare of the spotlight of an oncoming train.

Any sense of optimism will be extremely difficult to sustain if effective steps are not taken to tackle these threats.

The pessimism and the feelings of despair that usually accompany such times can be detrimental to stability and a significant drag on positive progress.

Despite the statistics, good and bad, most people make judgements based on their lived experience, sometimes known as the ‘felt economy’.

Consider, for instance, the 70 million plus confused and ill-informed people in the USA who recently voted for the narcissistic and chaotic Donald Trump.

If they continue to live in ignorance and anger, their numbers are likely to swell rather than diminish and they may elect an even worse president four years from now.

A similar thing could happen in Australia if the rednecks in central and northern Queensland cannot be convinced that their future lies elsewhere than fossil fuels.

They need to be able to see the viable alternatives and know that the government is backing them in making the transition.

Australia’s current opportunistic and populist prime minister unfortunately seems to be enamoured of the right wing redneck view and this doesn’t inspire confidence there will be any meaningful change.

With Scott Morrison’s opposite number Anthony Albanese paddling in his wake, the signs do not bode well for Australia in 2021.

In Papua New Guinea, apart from issues related to coronavirus and climate change, there is real danger it will become a pawn in the spat between Australia and China.

This is particularly pertinent because of prime minister James Marape’s stated desire to control resource development – to “take back” PNG.

China now requires its trade partners to ‘respect’ the way it does business. Australia, seeing this as obsequiousness and an assault on sovereignty, is pushing back.

China may well think that moving into Papua New Guinea, right on Australia’s doorstep, could be a means of extending its sphere of influence as well as further goading Australia.

PNG, already home of much assistance from China, may see this greatly enhanced - another sting in the tail for Australia.

Of course PNG will need to carefully consider such offers, particularly as they may impact on the relationship with Australia as their biggest aid donor as well as drawing PNG more into what seems to be China’s imperial ambition.

Perhaps one of the most significant things 2020 has taught us is that neo-capitalism is incompatible with the welfare of the people and democracy in general.

It vastly favours the rich and drives the poor deeper into poverty.

It is most disconcerting that the coronavirus has revealed how cheaply life is considered by many people in positions of power or influence.

The speed with which the Australian and other sensible governments temporarily abandoned free market ideology as the coronavirus hit was salutary, and ample evidence that belief in the efficacy of free markets was false except insofar as it benefitted wealthy friends and donors.

Elsewhere, particularly in the USA, corporations used the pandemic to increase their profits, some to obscene levels. Since the start of the pandemic, for example, 651 American billionaires have gained a stunning trillion dollars’ worth of new wealth.

The signs are there that the Australian government plans to revert back to type just as soon as it can.

But it wasn’t looking all that smart before the coronavirus arrived, so whether any government can survive by going back to business as usual will be interesting to see.

The Torres Strait people are skilled navigators with detailed knowledge of the sea, reefs and islands

SARI-ELLA THAIDAY

Sari-Ella Thaiday, just completing a law degree in Brisbane, has initiated a petition to Australia’s foreign affairs minister asking that the government protect the rights of Torres Strait Islands’ people against any Chinese incursion into Australian waters - KJ

BRISBANE - China has just signed a memorandum of understanding with Papua New Guinea to build a $200 million fishing facility on Daru Island.

It is imperative that Torres Strait Islands’ leaders discuss this issue with Australian foreign affairs minister Marise Payne to review the Torres Strait Treaty, which allows Papua New Guinean nationals to fish in Australian waters.

Daru Island is the closest PNG island to Australia and on the doorstep of the Torres Strait.

Torres Strait Islanders hold grave concerns and are anxious for their jobs, livelihoods, families, communities and culture.

They believe the $200 million Chinese facility will ‘vacuum’ the seafood, destroy their fisheries industry and run dry environmental resources.

“We have to stand up and voice our concerns about it, because it will be on our doorstep,” said Torres Shire mayor Vonda Malone.

“It will affect our communities, our people, our families, our resources.

“We are dealing with a country that does not have the same values as us,” Ms Malone said.

There are concerns as to why China is investing so much money into a fisheries facility located in an area that has few fish.

Many people are not convinced this facility will be used entirely for its said purpose.

How will small fisheries compare to a multi-million dollar facility?

It will not be sustainable, and it is highly likely China will take advantage of the Torres Strait Treaty to fish within Australian waters.

The renegotiation of the treaty must happen now.

The Australian federal government must listen to Torres Strait leaders, giving them authority and providing protection so a Chinese facility cannot gain access to Australian waters.

Link here to our earlier story on the Chinese fisheries project