National museum is a national disgrace

KEITH JACKSON

1728613931296-bde1bfed-4ecd-484b-baa8-acae70bc56d9_1Front page Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, 26 September 2024

NOOSA – It’s one of those things I’ve come to expect as editor of PNG Attitude. A bit of the ‘does anyone know the whereabouts of good old so-and-so’ as a search for a pal missing since the 1960s is initiated.

A subsidiary category of Missing Persons are the two or three requests each year from readers who – during their time in Papua New Guinea – collected artefacts, paintings and other objects, including some of real value.

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Just how much should a hospital cost?

GOVERNOR ALLAN BIRD
| Academia Nomad

Boram Hospital
Boram General Hospital

WEWAK - First of all, let me acknowledge that the National Capital District, Gulf and Central Provinces need level 5 hospitals and they should get them.

This will take pressure off Port Moresby General, which is full of patients mostly from Central and Gulf provinces.

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Cruel detention of refugees in PNG

KEVIN SWEENEY
| Refugees Off PNG Working Group

C

FOOTSCRAY, VIC - The Australian Government needs to immediately reinstate basic support for refugees and asylum seekers that it sent to Papua New Guinea.

If it is not able to do this, it should bring them to Australia as a matter of urgency so they receive basic support and adequate medical care while awaiting resettlement.

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Marape must stop illegal logging

EDDIE TANAGO
| Act Now!

PORT MORESBY - Prime Minister James Marape spoke of the importance of preserving Papua New Guinea’s tropical rainforest in his address to the United Nations General Assembly last Friday

Yet  his government is doing nothing to stop widespread illegal logging, in particular the abuse of agricultural clearing licences.

Marape has described PNG’s rainforests as vital to PNG and to the global community.

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Unmet bottom line leads to PNG crime

PAUL OATES

Maslow (CNN)
Maslow's hierarchy of needs (CNN)


CLEVELAND - A few years ago, I read a report of some well-meaning people who tried to motivate youthful Papua New Guinean criminals, locally referred to as ‘raskols’, to change their ways and become more law-abiding.

The audience’s general response was, perhaps predictably, ‘So what’s in it for us?’

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Hundreds of millions of kina go missing

EDDIE TANAGO
| Act Now!

Map

PORT MORESBY - While the Papua New Guinea government has been dramatically increasing the amount of funding pumped directly into each District, there is an appalling lack of transparency about how those public funds are being used.

An analysis by community advocacy group Act Now reveals that just 24 of 96 Districts have lodged financial acquittals for 2022 or 2023 and none of those acquittals are publicly available.

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Our security gets worse, not better

PETER O’NEILL
| Academia Nomad

Extracts from a speech to the Australian Institute for Progress by former Papua
New Guinea prime minister Hon Peter O’Neill CMG MP on 16 September 2024

PNG flag raised 16 September 1975
The Papua New Guinean flag is raised for the first time on 16 September 1975 (PNG Association of Australia)

BRISBANE – Forty-nine years ago, the Australian flag was lowered and the Papua New Guinea flag was raised in Port Moresby. Independence had been granted, not fought for.

Many argue that independence was given too quickly but, given that it was, my country’s leaders at the time did an incredible job of setting the young country on its independent feet with help from Australia.

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Recent Notes 38: A special dictionary

 
Steven Gagau
Steven Gagau

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA - Last week I received a request from Steven Gagau via my good friend, and one of the best friends Papua New Guinea ever had, Andrea Williams.

Steven is a researcher, academic and president of the Sydney Wantok Association. Last year he assisted to curate the Bilas: Body Adornment of PNG exhibition at the Australian Museum in Sydney.

 

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Rattling a stick inside a swill bucket

BERNARD CORDEN

Corden  Road signs & billboards Brisbane
Traffic lights, road signs & billboards clutter drivers' vision at this  busy Brisbane road junction

 This is the full text of a letter from Bernard Corden which has just made its way to the desk of the Honourable Bart Mellish MP, Queensland Minister for Transport and Main Roads, and Minister for Digital Services.  I feel sure the Minister will never before have received a letter composed with Bernard’s awe-inspiring literary flourish and precise application of the English language - KJ

BRISBANE - The Queensland Government is currently promoting its Road Safety Week, which it officially launches on Monday 26 August 2024.

The state-wide campaign includes numerous warnings displayed on electronic signs installed over Brisbane’s busy inner-city bypass and implore motorists to keep their eyes on the road and hands on the steering wheel.

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The ethics that create a great school

BORANA BONNEY

Keith_and_A_School_Kundiawa
19-year old Keith Jackson and the complement of his Kundiawa Primary A School, 1964


WESTERN HIGHLANDS - Leading and operating educational institutions inevitability pose ethical dilemmas which represent a constant challenge for leaders because of the great variety of issues encountered daily.

It was stated by Mihelič (2010) that “values have a profound effect on a leader’s performance”.

Simply put, ethical leaders are guided by personal moral convictions that fuel their motivation and inspiration in decision-making.

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The Great Game: Pacific Islands Style

PAUL OATES

‘When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished.
Not before. Listen to me till the end’ - Rudyard Kipling

CLEVELAND – Are you one of the history buffs who still remember reading about the days when Rudyard Kipling held sway.

When the world map on the schoolroom wall contained innumerable blotches of red or pink to designate the colonies of the British Empire (“this vast empire on which the sun never sets” – George Macartney, 1773).

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The parliament of silly old buggers

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - On most mornings of the week, weather permitting, a parliament of silly old buggers convenes for coffee and to discuss the woes of the world at a picnic table under a shady canopy near the Tumby Bay jetty.

Of late, the prognostications have become darker and darker.

The resident biblical eschatologist is now talking about the end of days, and both history buffs are competing in their comparisons of the present to the 1930s and the bleak days prior to World War II.

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Honour not glory is memorial’s aim

PAUL OATES

CLEVELAND - It appears in the minds of a few detractors that the recognition of those who died in the service of Australia and Papua New Guinea has yet again been conflated with accusations of desire for personal aggrandisement.

The issues of recognition and aggrandisement or glory could not be clearer in my mind and they have always been separate.

At an event at the National Archives some years ago, we paid tribute to those many dedicated people who went before us and who continued to work to help Papua New Guinea progress into the modern world.

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Heavenly Visits: A elegy of love & loss

WEDFINE DAI

MADANG - If heaven had visiting hours, I would be the first one there waiting in line to visit you.

I would be the first person there waiting to see your beautiful smiling face again, to touch your hand, and to feel the warmth of your comforting hugs.

I would be waiting there in line with a heart full of love and longing. I would wait eagerly counting the moments until I could see you again - my better half, my beloved twin sister.

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People-watching in Port Moresby

GORDON PEAKE

| Inside Story | Extract
| Read the full article here

 

WASHINGTON DC - From Port Moresby’s founding early last century — when it was little more than a dozen corrugated iron shacks, a tennis court and McCrann’s tin-shed tavern — to the sprawling city it is today, Papua New Guinea’s capital has always been a place of intrigue and melodrama, its novelistic cast of characters drawn from near and far.

Nowadays, the largest city in the Pacific Islands is the setting for a much larger plotline, a new cold war tussle between China and the United States for presence, influence and the favour of a local political elite enjoying its moment in the sun.

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How Carolyn was smuggled from Wewak

SARAH KANOWSKI
| Australian Broadcasting Corporation

 

BRISBANE - It was when Carolyn Blacklock's passport was confiscated at Port Moresby International Airport that she realised how much trouble she was in.

Carolyn, who headed up the national power company in Papua New Guinea, had faced charges of corruption after a change in government.

Despite a court clearing her of all wrongdoing, she was detained in PNG.

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