CATHY TUKNE
| Information Coordinator | Act Now!

Papua New Guinea (PNG) stands at a crossroads. For decades, its development narrative has been dominated by resource extraction gold, copper, oil, gas, timber, and palm oil, promising prosperity but delivering inequality.

While foreign corporations profit, most Papua New Guineans remain marginalized, their environments scarred, and their futures uncertain.

BERNARD CORDEN

Where there is shouting there is no true knowledge - Leonardo da Vinci

BRISBANE - Another insufferable and irascible cabinet minister was an instantly abhorrent loudmouth senator for Western Australia. The Subiaco Xanthippe must use the same hairdresser as Donald Trump and has a unique, but rather endearing, ability of making her face disappear when she opens her gob.

At most of her media conferences, the harridan senator appears to be following the bouncing ball on an autocue or karaoke machine. The ensuing stentorian racket could be used much more productively as a foghorn on the Manly ferries or for scaring ibises from the runways at Sydney’s international airport.

PAUL FRENCH

LONDON, UK - Papua New Guinea, or simply PNG, sandwiched between Indonesia and Australia. A confection of over 800 languages and dialects.

The capital, Port Moresby (Pom City) is generally regarded as a tough town, a hardship posting for diplomats and foreign correspondents, a potentially dangerous place for business executives.

JOSEPH GUENZLER
| First Nations Writers Festival

Daniel Kumbon

FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND - Pacific authors have been honoured in Townsville for their stories of culture, conflict and resilience.

Winners of the 2025 First Nations Writers Festival have been announced, celebrating authors from Papua New Guinea, Bougainville and the broader Pacific who are using literature to share vital cultural and personal narratives.

Daniel Kumbon, from Enga Province in Papua New Guinea, received a book award for 'They Chose Peace', a deeply personal reflection on tribal conflict, national identity and healing.

EDITED BY KEITH JACKSON

51-YEAR RELATIONSHIP
| John Gordon-Kirkby

Author Daniel Kumbon and I first met in 1974 when I, as a kiap, was on a pre independence educational patrol. He was at home from high school. We corresponded for a while till I “went finish”. Fifty years later, with the internet, we linked up again to renew the friendship , now stronger than ever.

BERNARD CORDEN

Never seen so many men ask you if you wanted to dance - Chris de Burgh

BRISBANE - The Fly-In-Fly-Out (FIFO) regime of working at parliament house in Canberra would be better described as Fit-In-Or-Fcuk-Off and underpinned by the traditionally masculine aphorism…. What happens in Canberra, stays in Canberra.

Under Malcolm Turnbull’s administration back in 2017, the human services minister Alan Tudge and his media adviser, Rachelle Miller, were involved in a clandestine but consensual extra-marital relationship.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY  BAY - Humans didn’t start killing each other on a large scale until after they discovered agriculture and became sedentary about 10,000 years ago.

That was when land and its possession first became an integral part of human life. The further conglomeration of land into nation states turned that possession into something positively evil. 

That evil has dogged humanity ever since.

EDDIE TANAGO
| Campaign Manager | Act Now!

PORT MORESBY - Recent news story about communities in Morobe using profits from cocoa farming to pay for solar powered street lights in their villages is encouraging and positive.

Such initiatives drive economic independence, a sense of community and self-reliance.

LUKE HAMER
| Chief Pilot, Samaritan Aviation

WEWAK - At Samaritan Aviation, our mission to bring the hope of the Gospel to remote hospitals begins long before we reach a patient’s bedside. Serving the people along Papua New Guinea’s Sepik River takes preparation.

In our Aviation Department, we need both a plane and a pilot ready. One without the other, and we’re grounded.

Pamela Cowley Virtue
| PNG Association of Australia

SYDNEY - I was one of the two European survivors from Higaturu at the eruption of Mt Lamington. The full details are in our book, The Volcano’s Wife (from which I take no proceeds at all). I’d just like to clear up a few points.

Mt Lamington had not started to erupt ‘some week or so previously’. The local people and government officials were not at all upset at that time.

KEITH JACKSON

The Cricketer (illustration by Harry Lake, Kundiawa News 1964)

NOOSA - The dateline tells you we're back in Noosa after one of those nightmare trips you'd want to forget except for the fund of future yarns it will yield.

I was discharged from the France-Vietnam Hospital in Saigon on Monday after a week in situ with sepsis, which triggered a bunch of other unpleasantness around the body.

Some of the details even made my GP, usually so composed, appear bemused.

But now's the time for apologies and a promise to make up time when the opportunity arises over the next week or so.

Meanwhile the weather in  Noosa is sublime. As am I.

MARIAN FAA
| Extracts

Complete story here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-06/australians-from-icac-png-embroiled-in-chaos-police-complaints/105381984

PORT MORESBY - Papua New Guinea's peak anti-corruption body is on the brink of implosion as its three commissioners from Australia and New Zealand level criminal allegations at each other.

The country's Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) began operating in 2023 but has been hamstrung by feverish leadership tensions.

EDDIE TANAGO
| Campaign Manager, Act Now!

PORT MORESBY - Community advocacy organisation Act Now is calling on prime minister Marape and regulatory agencies to take urgent action to address huge discrepancies in log export values revealed in a recent report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The findings are based on log export monitoring reports and Chinese customs data and show foreign owned logging companies could be defrauding the PNG government and resource owners out of billions of kina in revenues.

BERNARD CORDEN

It just didn’t happen - Christian Porter

BRISBANE - Unchristian Porter, a Frank Spencer doppelganger, was the son of Charles Michael (Chilla) Porter, former Olympian and general secretary of the Liberal Party of Australia. The favourable bloodline included his grandfather, the late Charles Robert Porter, a member for the redneck electorate of Toowong in deep north Queensland, who served as a minister under that imperious dullard, Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen.

This pedigree of perceived privilege enabled a brisk ascent through state and federal politics and generated egotistical aspirations of becoming prime minister. During a tenure as social services minister, the power trip involved implementation of the federal government’s callous Centrelink Robodebt recovery scheme and the inhumane cashless welfare card, amidst sinister recommendations covering mandatory drug testing of welfare recipients.

JOHN MENADUE

On almost every measure, Australia has gone backwards on engaging with our region, and particularly with China, and it is time to do something about it.

As a settler society we cling to our history with the UK, Europe and now the US. We are fearful of our geography. We have failed so far to reconcile our history and geography.

KEITH JACKSON

MV REGATTA, EN ROUTE TO SHANGHAI – I never bloody learn. Never. My travelling days should be over. Don’t have the back for them. Nor the neck, nor the hips. Can’t feel my feet. Knees OK.

But, even though I rarely leave the ship, I enjoy travelling with Ingrid. Who brings me tales from ashore. The markets. The price of kimonos in Nagoya. The street dramas. The drum orchestras. Purchasing shoes in a foreign language.

NEWSROOM
Radio New Zealand

 “Back to square one in PNG by the look of it. Finally they have understood
why all those DIES District stations on shortwave were so successful in
nation building and information sharing” – Martin Hadlow

AUCKLAND - Papua New Guinea's National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) is aiming to reintroduce shortwave radio to achieve the government's goal of 100 percent broadcast coverage by 2030.

This week, the state owned broadcaster hosted a workshop on the reintroduction of shortwave radio transmission, bringing together key government agencies and other stakeholders.

EDITED BY KEITH JACKSON

SMART TRAVELLER ADVICE FOR PNG
| Foreign Affairs Department Australia

CANBERRA - We continue to advise exercise a high degree of caution in Papua New Guinea due to high levels of crime, tribal violence and civil unrest. Higher levels apply in some areas.

Local level elections will take place across the country between May and August 2025. Be alert to the possibility of tensions and violence during elections.

BERNARD CORDEN

I have never seen a situation so dismal that a
 policeman couldn't make it worse - Brendan Behan

BRISBANE – In my estimation, one of the most repugnant rednecks in the Morrison ministry was the federal member for Dickson who eventually took the poisoned chalice and became leader of the opposition.

The socially awkward malapert was a former walloper with the Queensland Police Service and reached the dizzy heights of detective senior constable.

BERNARD CORDEN

I don’t hold a hose mate - Scott Morrison

BRISBANE - Every nation gets the government it deserves and the appointment of the so-called Liar from the Shire as Australia’s 30th prime minister must have been a belated payback from Papua New Guinea following its hastily granted independence back in 1975.

If you search the internet for kakistocracy, it would more than likely generate an irritating mugshot of a smirking sanctimonious mooncalf.

PRISILLA MANOVE
| Prisilla's Notes

HIGHLANDS - Isau and Iningeh are a father and daughter team. They lost their wife and mother when Iningeh was an infant, and since then it has just been the two of them.

In Marawaka and along the coffee belt, most of the labour for subsistence agriculture and coffee production is done by women.

DOUGLAS PATIKEN BARARA

PORT MORESBY - On the eve of Papua New Guinea’s fiftieth anniversary, the identity of our country is slowly being erased by Western influences.

But none of us cares about it, let alone wants to stop it. Cheerfully we rejoice in the destruction of our motherland.