I'm not privy to the background to this issue, but gather from the comments and the subject line that it relates to yet another scandal or piece of corruption in the long and sad litany of PNG's political woes.

I, too, agree with much of what Colin says about criticism needing to be balanced and constructive, but I also feel, and quite strongly so, that there is no practical solution to the whole sorry mess, certainly not in the short term.

You will recall how John Howard's attempt to intervene was challenged in the courts by a premier with vested interests and fizzled out like a sputtering candle. And if JH could not succeed with all the dollars and manpower at his disposal, then what can a few disaffected individuals do? Not very much.

Particular individuals might be able to make a temporary difference at a local level if they have sufficient clout, but this will be effective only as long as they can maintain that clout. Corruption is too widespread and endemic to be effectively countered by a disparate group of well-meaning individuals.

Perhaps I, too, am sounding a little defeatist. However, I do believe that there is a solution, but it will work only if it embraces the whole electorate and effects a change in their collective mindset. And here we are talking your game: education. Corruption grows and spreads best in a climate of relative ignorance. As the old saying goes, You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all of the time.

Unfortunately the capacity to fool many of the people in PNG is a little more robust than in some other countries because of the relatively poor education of a great proportion of her people. When the people are better educated and can see through the schemes and scams of the politicians, then they won't put up with all the crap that many (mos??) politicians serve up, and will run them out of town.

Education is the seedbed for all kinds of reform, whether political, institutional, social, economic, or in any other area of endeavour. Granted, the educational foundation in PNG is perhaps better than that in some other developing countries (such as those in much of Africa), but it seems to me that it is only a narrow band of the relatively elite who benefit most. Whether that benefit reaches into the heartland and hinterland of PNG, into the villages and valleys and beyond the tar-sealed (and now pot-holed) roads, is quite another matter.

When I was a kiap pounding through the bush of the Nomad Sub-district, education at the village level was a priority, and those remote schools, whether run by the Admin or the Missions, fared reasonably well and were well supported. With independence the major focus soon shifted from the bush to the towns and cities, and those remote schools withered on the vine. Quite literally.

An indigenous friend of mine, who became a patrol officer in post-independent PNG, conducted an election-patrol in the Nomad area some years ago, and when he went to sign the village books at each village he visited he discovered that my name was the last name recorded there. And that had been well over 10 years earlier. Extrapolate that lack of interest in the rural sector over the whole country, and you will understand why the towns and cities are bursting at the seams because of massive internal migration from the poorly resourced hinterland.

Major cities like Moresby and Lae have become fast-growing clutters of run-down older suburbs and cancerous squatter camps, with a few gated and manicured communities here and there where the privileged, White and Black, live in isolated comfort.