ROWAN CALLICK | The Australian
AUSTRALIA’S $37 million a year deployment of 73 federal police to Papua New Guinea — hailed as a breakthrough last year when it began — is being reviewed by the PNG government, potentially to wind it down.
This is in part because of unrealistic “visible policing” expectations — with the AFP officers lacking legal powers to make arrests, conduct investigations or direct PNG counterparts.
A report published yesterday by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute argues the need to almost double Canberra’s input of cash and police.
The deployment was agreed between then prime minister Kevin Rudd and his PNG counterpart Peter O’Neill, in the context of a plan to send asylum-seekers to Manus Island.
But just nine months into the new deployment, PNG’s Police Minister, Robert Atiyafa, wants to review the AFP presence, potentially even to end it. He favours hiring Australian police to be sworn in to the PNG force, so they are subject to the country’s laws.
The report says “there are strong reasons to increase Australian investment” in a program that could advance both nations’ interests by stabilising the PNG force and building from there at a “fundable” rate.
The long-term need, it says, is “for large numbers of capable PNG police — not Aussie police”. The PNG force “faces deep, complex and systemic challenges”.
The report says the PNG force “now has a reputation for violence, corruption and occasionally extortion”, while police resources “are basic and poorly maintained”.
It urges that the bilateral review scheduled for next year be brought forward, in part “because Prime Minister Tony Abbott is known to be open to deploying more Australian police”.
Despite dedicated PNG police officers, the ASPI report authors, David Connery and Karl Claxton, question whether “they, operating alone, will be able to turn the PNG police into the force that its government expects and its people desire”.
The report’s proposals to increase annual support to $62m and to add up to 55 Australian officers, “would allow more resources for training support, including travelling teams to coach police at the provincial level”.