What on earth is happening at the Australian embassy in Moscow - the embassy that also handles all visa formalities for PNG?

Embassy staff – who should be facilitating travellers and tourists who wish to visit PNG, not to mention Australia  – seem hell bent on preventing them.

Twice in two days PNG Attitude has had cases referred to it that attest to the difficulty of getting a visa from Australian consular officials in Moscow.

In the first case, a group of Russian adventurers want to visit PNG and climb Mt Wilhelm and then trek to Ramu through Bundi.

After three months of trying, the group leader Nikolay Nosov notes plaintively: “We have problems with entry permit to Papua. I visited more than 40 countries in the world - no any problem with visas. I can not understand why it is so difficult to take entry permit for tourists?”

And Bernard Oberleuter reports the disturbing case of his friend, Marat Shagiahmedov, who has been denied a tourist visa for Australia in the most dismissive way.

The so-called ‘official reason’ offered by Senior Migration officer in Moscow, a Ms Munro, was in fact no more than an assertion that she was “not satisfied that (Mr Shagiahmedov) genuinely intend[ed] to visit Australia temporarily”.

Ms Munro may have a suspicious mind, but what she offered was definitely not a reason. It was doublespeak.

Bernard comments: “It appears the Australian embassy in Moscow is stifling would be tourists. [We] spend millions of dollars advertising for tourists, but fail to provide the necessary visa for these visitors to our shores.”

I repeat the question: What on earth is going on at our Moscow embassy?