PHIL FITZPATRICK

I grow sweet potato as a ground cover in the shadier spots of my garden in Hervey Bay – places where the grass doesn’t grow - but I also dig it up to eat.

In Queensland and most Australian supermarkets and green grocers, an orange-skinned version is sold. It is very sweet and has the consistency of pumpkin when cooked.

Often they don’t call it sweet potato but kumara, which is a South Pacific Maori word.

Occasionally you can get a purple-skinned variety which has nice white flesh, is less sweet, pithier and similar to what I’m used to from Papua New Guinea. This is the main one I grow in my garden.

RAYMOND SIGIMET

Buai stained teeth
Enforcing her majesty’s laws
With the use of guns, whips, metal bars, boots and fists

Paramilitary issued camouflage
Enforcing her majesty’s laws
Indiscriminate use of weapon type, bullets and cartridge

Lus week traffic road check
Enforcing her majesty’s laws
Favours and bribery accepted as well as cashable cheques

High powered military weapons
Enforcing her majesty’s laws
Wanabe raskols, Lord help you if you’re chanced upon

JOHN CONROY | Dev Policy Blog

LATE in the period of preparation for independence, a genuine Papua New Guinean voice emerged in the colonial legislature when Michael Somare’s Pangu party took power on the eve of self-government in 1972.

A consultant team, the Faber Mission, was tasked to recommend policies for an independent PNG. Keith Hart, originator of the idea of the ‘urban informal sector’, was a member of the visiting team.

Hart observed that economic informality, while emergent in rural areas, was still very largely absent from PNG’s urban areas. The Faber Report placed informality at the heart of its strategies for development, later encapsulated in PNG’s ‘Eight Aims’.

RAYMOND SIGIMET

RECENTLY, aspiring political candidates, supporters and commentators have appeared on the street and in the media using a catchy word that caused me to pause and take notice.

You can almost taste the word on your tongue, it’s so in tune with the political turmoil and different emotions Papua New Guineans were experiencing prior to the last national election.

When you open a newspaper, it is guaranteed you will see the catchy word used in a news article, editorial or even a letter to the editor.

Browsing through social media on Papua New Guinea politics, you are going to encounter this word being used passionately.

The word is the noun ‘firebrand’ and it seems these days people are literally falling over themselves in their rush to use it.

ROY BURKE | Waikato Times

ALAN John Leadley QSM (1943-2015) was a missionary with dirty hands and muddy boots. And he was an environmentalist in the widest sense.

His mission was love (the essence of Christ's example) and his greater church was the world around us and the people in it.

He reached out to many faiths and encouraged his parishioners to seek answers. Parishioner and friend Jock Crawford nailed it: "He paid his congregation the compliment of allowing them to think for themselves and didn't expect them to hang their brains at the church door."

WARDLEY D I BARRY

An old man on the mountain, swinging axe;
A young man in suits and ties, writing out checks:
Where are we?

Sweat trickles down the old man's sunbaked skin, the tree groans and falls;
The ink seals the deal, the young man reclines beaming — the fact is false:
Where are we?

This old lone warrior, kisses the hearth, and sings to his tumbunas;
The young man clicks on the remote, and gobbles both donuts and bananas:
Where are we?

We are here,
But where is 'Here'?
Where are we?

PAUL WAUGLA WII

WE all reminisce and in our recollections relive what has happened in the past.

Before you really get into this story, can you recall for me one particularly unpleasant experience you’ve had in the not-too-distant past?

Some of you are going to scream at me, “Come on, man! I’m not going down that path. My past is dead and gone. I’m moving on.”

And I understand that. If your past has offered up one hell of a moment, you will surely remember it until the day you drop.

PNG TODAY

PAPUA New Guinea’s elder statesman, Sir Michael Somare, says the Ombudsman Commission must be adequately resourced with the right staff and finance to enable it to continue providing its mandated function without fear or favour.

The East Sepik Governor said this at the 40th anniversary celebrations of the Ombudsman Commission in Port Moresby on Friday.

Sir Michael said the Ombudsman Commission plays an important role in ensuring political leaders, do not abuse their position and power but perform for the greater good of the nation and people.

EDITH MAKULA

An entry in the 2015 Rivers Award
for Writing on Peace & Harmony

AS the day ceased and the night crept over us, it was storytelling time from grandma and grandpa.

Grandpa cleared the fireplace and started the fire to put on the kettle. The night was beautiful with the stars twinkling above us enjoying the natural light from the moon and stars. While waiting for the water to boil, grandma begins her story of the old days and how they’d enjoyed that life compared to todays.

I tuned in ready with interest. Before grandma could continue, grandpa broke in and said, “Grandchild, those days were the best.”

I wanted to hear how it was. Then grandma continued. Life was simple back then when, even though we didn’t have what you have, we enjoyed and had a great time.

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA - PNG Attitude first appeared (under the masthead ASOPA People) in February 2006 and its mission soon evolved to be the creation of a dialogue between Papua New Guineans and Australians who were interested in the well-being of Australia’s former colony.

Over its 10 years of publication it has not only presented news, information and commentary but offered insights into the colonial period and PNG's history and heritage; all of this material preserved in the archives of the National Library of Australia.

RADIO NEW ZEALAND INTERNATIONAL

FIFTY-TWO asylum seekers previously detained by Australia on Manus Island are now looking for employment, having agreed to settle in Papua New Guinea.

The PNG Loop news service reports that 178 people are still to decide whether to accept resettlement.

PNG's deputy chief migration officer, Esther Gaegaming, says that, under PNG’s refugee resettlement policy, refugees have to find employment elsewhere in the country before they can leave Manus.

FIDELIS SUKINA

An entry in the 2015 Rivers Award
for Writing on Peace & Harmony

Take a turn, a roundabout,
In circles, into a void,
An endless chase of cat and mouse
Chasing dreams ending in misfortune
A melee of disgust.

I was never this way,
I was told,
Never a lazy person,
Lazing and gazed at by society
As a man of failed hopes and dreams
But I tried, yes, I tried cried and died
Challenged to breaking point.

BENJAMIN HERIBERTH NOIBIO | Bougainville 24

THE Bougainville Crisis led to our people becoming nomadic, migrating continuously from place to place to escape conflict and violence.

My family went into the mountains of Kokousino and Keremona. I was very little and I did not fully comprehend the severity of the situation.

What I loved most at that time was playing around the houses and, with other children, chasing grasshoppers in the field.

The only days when mama would stop me playing was when a dead body, either a Bougainville Revolutionary Army solider or a civilian, was brought to our village hideaway for mourning.

PNG TODAY

THE Media Council of Papua New Guinea has expressed grave concerns at plans by the government to set up a Media Appeals Tribunal.

Communications Minister Jimmy Miringtoro (pictured) announced plans by the government to establish the tribunal to address what he described as “deliberate misinformation, spreading of falsities and malice” on social and mainstream media.

He said the proposed tribunal will be run by “professional and neutral” people and will report to the national parliament.

FIDELIS SUKINA

An entry in the 2015 Rivers Award
for Writing on Peace & Harmony

With eyes all red in rage
I was told to calm down,
to sit and cool down,
meditate and breathe,
I was told.

This rage and anger
reduced to calm,
watered down by good
words from an open heart.

KEITH JACKSON

IN a pointed reference to failures in service delivery in Papua New Guinea, the Australian High Commission has revealed the establishment of what it calls “a new and innovative public information program”.

The High Commission claims the program is “empowering communities to closely monitor government spending and ensure funds are delivering local services”.

Rod Hilton of the High Commission  marked International Anti-Corruption Day yesterday by saying the so-called ‘Service and Budget Charters’ program was developed over the last year and works with communities to look at budgets as allocated by the government and compare them against the actual delivery of services.

ROSS HOWARD

IN World War II, after fighting with the Americans on Guadalcanal and New Georgia, my father was sent to Bougainville.

I heard him comment a few times about how he liked the Bougainville people and found them to be good soldiers. In fact, he said of the Bougainvilleans: “They killed more Japanese than we did”.

He also mentioned troubles between redskins and locals. The redskins to whom he referred were soldiers from the mainland. He blamed a lot of these problems on the Army’s attitude of instilling into soldiers that, once they were properly trained, they were superior people.

GARY JUFFA | Facebook

MY dear friend John Pomoso. Bro, I chatted with you a couple of weeks ago; took your mobile number and promised to call and catch up. It was the last time we spoke.

I regret never making that effort earlier. I think somehow that day we were meant to catch up one final time. Bro John, I have always admired how you carried yourself as a man, husband to your beautiful wife Nancy, and loving father to your exceptionally intelligent son Jayden.

I always marvelled that, no matter what the situation, you always demonstrated patience, had a sharp wit and a profoundly intelligent mind that seemed to know so much.

Bro I can't believe you're gone.

KEITH JACKSON

Trickery at the Crocodile Pool and other children's stories from Papua New Guinea, edited by Benjamin Jackson, Crocodile Prize Organisation with assistance of Paga Hill Development Company, ISBN/EAN13: 1517578639 / 9781517578633, 94 pages, available from CreateSpace here for $US5.38 plus postage

THIS collection of 33 children’s stories originally entered in the Crocodile Prize was meant to have another title drawn from the award-winning story. 

But the winning story - in a contest so generously sponsored by Paga Hill Development Company (who also bankrolled the publication and distribution of this book) - is absent from this volume.

Without disclosure to the contest organisers, the author had entered into a contract with another entity for the story and its accompanying illustrations, and this precluded further publication in this book.

Very poor form indeed. But such are the vicissitudes of publishing.

RADIO NEW ZEALAND INTERNATIONAL

THE Papua New Guinea opposition has slammed the government for awarding a major road construction contract to a company it says is owned by cabinet ministers.

Global Construction has the contract for the upgrade of Taurama Road in Port Moresby and the opposition says this is corruption at the highest level. The project is set to cost US$33 million dollars.

Opposition leader Don Polye says this company has been awarded most of the road projects in the city.

The project was launched by Sports Minister Justin Tkatchenko (pictured) and Mr Polye asked why he was involved.

Mr Polye also asked why two key venues around the city, Sir John Guise Stadium and Sir Hubert Murray Stadium, are still under construction when Mr Tkatchenko and the prime minister promised they would be completed in time for the Pacific Games which finished five months ago.

ROWAN CALLICK | The Australian | Edited extracts

MORE than 60% of women and girls surveyed in the Pacific Islands have experienced violence by an intimate partner or family member, says a report released by Australia’s Minister for International Development and the Pacific Steven Ciobo.

Mr Ciobo (pictured) delivered a report on progress in the first three years of a program launched by then prime minister Julia Gillard to help improve the lives of women in the region.

The biggest challenge and the biggest investment of the 10-year, $320 million program had been “addressing violence against women”, Mr Ciobo said.

PHIL FITZPATRICK

Sweet Garaiina Apo by Baka Barakove Bina, Createspace, 2015, 238 pages, ISBN: 978-1499752106, available from Amazon Books, paperback US$18 plus postage, e-book (Kindle) US$8.79

FIRST of all I need to apologise to author Baka Bina. He sent me a PDF version of his second novel way back in June and I’ve only just got round to looking at it. An act prompted by a gentle reminder from Ed Brumby.

Keith Jackson did tell me that if I retired and started doing work for free I’d be inundated, and this has certainly been the case. Not that I mind; I’d rather be too busy than idle.

Secondly, I need to admonish myself for missing out on such a delectable slice of fiction for so long. I should have known better.

Baka won the Ok Tedi Mining Book of the Year Award in the 2015 Crocodile Prize with a stunning piece of original writing and I guess I’ve had in the back of my mind the fact that most writers’ second efforts are nearly always lesser creations than their first.

Anyway, let’s have a look at book number two.

PNG TODAY

THE interim council of the University of Goroka has dismissed three members of the university’s top management team - vice chancellor Dr Gairo Onagi (pictured) and his two deputies, Dr Michael Mel and Dr James Yoko.

Chancellor Joseph Sukwianomb said the decision was most difficult but, harsh as it was, it was meant to restore the fast-disappearing public confidence in public institutions.

Mr Sukwianomb referred especially to apparent failings in the duties and stewardship of public officials.

A recent report of an investigation committee set up by Higher Education Minister, Malaki Tabar, had made serious adverse findings against the three former administrators.

BEN JACKSON

THE Crocodile Prize and the Paga Hill Development Company (PNG) Ltd have collaborated to publish a book of children’s stories authored by Papua New Guineans.

The book, entitled Trickery at the Crocodile Pool and Other Children’s Stories from Papua New Guinea, includes 33 stories from local writers which have been published to encourage and inspire young readers with tales from their homeland.

Since 2011 the Crocodile Prize, Papua New Guinea’s national literary awards, has provided a platform for PNG writers and given PNG readers access to local stories, poems, essays, books and other literature.

MICHAEL DOM

Eat poems,
Drink them.
At first
You meet it
It is a high feeling
Your heart soars upon it
Your mind races towards it
Your hand reaches out for it
To catch a fleeting thought
To capture lightning bolts!
To clasp at fleeing breath?
Gasp! But no! Suck it in!
Swallow it to your belly
Let ferment, foment fully
Let the fleet feat stand still
Let lightning come to earth
Let words be your breath
Make it a deep feeling.
Then let it speak.

FABIAN HAKALITS | EMTV

VETERANS of the civil war in Bougainville, headed by former BRA leader Sam Kauona, have called on the Autonomous Bougainville Government to review the Bougainville Peace Agreement.

They are questioning the Agreement’s ability to carry Bougainville into a safe referendum before 2020.

Mr Kauona questioned why the powers required to hold the referendum are yet to be drawn down from the PNG national government.

RAYMOND SIGIMET

In solidarity with West Papua. I read the words of Gary Juffa and they prompted me to compose this poem in recognition of the West Papuan struggle for self-determination from Indonesia.

The Morning Star still shines
Across the colonial eastern lines
Her eyes still twinkle over decades
Moist glisten in her brown eyes
Uniqueness trampled by opposition
Passive indifference and atrocious oppression
Her people in sanctioned retreat
Her birthright taken by colonial deceit
I see you Morning Star of Papua
I see your tears spilling in Melanesia

DANIEL KUMBON

DO you by any chance remember Lobo and his song ‘My first time’? It was popular among young people in the 1970s.

I recall students at Lae Technical College playing it over and over in the cool evenings under the big rain trees there.

The song stuck with me. It reminds me of ‘first time’ experiences in my lifetime. Like when I attended my first tanim het courting session. Or when I saw my first elephant in 1972at the Mt Hagen Show.

Later I was to see more than an elephant. On a visit to a zoo in Cleveland, Ohio, I added to this lions, zebras, giraffes, bears, monkeys (including two gorillas), camels, tigers, hippopotamuses (hippopotami?), llamas, kangaroos and many more.

I also saw different species of birds, fish and plants - all for the first time.

To be honest, I was amazed I could see all this from around the world in the one place.

JANICE ISU

An entry in the 2015 Rivers Award
for Writing on Peace & Harmony

SOME people cross our lives briefly but their influence impacts us forever. Others remain in our lives like forever, but we won’t remember a single thing they said.

The former are in our hearts beyond their grave; the latter forgotten as soon as they are out of sight.

“Never Quit” became my mantra long after I had forgotten the poem Don’t Quit, which I will forever associate with my friend Doris.

Our paths crossed when I transferred to a remote school on the north-east coast of Nakanai, West New Britain Province, to complete Grade 7. Ms Gela paused as I entered the classroom one Monday morning and I slid into a back seat just in time for the first lesson.

“Class, this is Mary Boto our new student. Please make her feel welcome,” Ms Gela announced. I smiled shyly and sank lower into my seat as the class strained for a glimpse of me.

RASHMII BELL

FETES are my happy place.

Cake stalls brimming with cellophane-encased home baked delights. Chewy soft-centred Anzac biscuits and dainty squares of ginger slice.

All closely guarded by baking mums and their competitive-edged conversation.

And mountains of paperbacks atop weathered fold-out tables selling at a pittance of their retail price.

This the scenario to which I retreat when confronted with unpleasant feelings. My happy place.

Ironic then that my delving into escapism would conjure feelings of despair.

The instigator being a once-treasured copy of The Dressmaker, authored by the same Posie Graeme-Evans who created and produced the Australian television series so very loved by Papua New Guineans, McLeod’s Daughters.

AGNES RITA MAINEKE

An entry in the 2015 Rivers Award
for Writing on Peace & Harmony

Land, our most valuable resource,
is becoming scarce
With the population increase,
the boundary markers are scarce
So many have been destroyed
by those who wish to scare and claim.

Boundaries between traditional land titles
have been handed down as part of history
“This is what I was told!”
So say both claimants
in any Melanesian land issue today
One says, “I was told by my grandmother
that our land reaches the river mouth.”

URSULA KIN

An entry in the 2015 Rivers Award
for Writing on Peace & Harmony

I was told
By my grandfathers
Peace is no fighting
Peace is no violence
Peace is no quarrelling
Peace prevails when you are sorry.

I imagined the colour of peace then
There is fighting everywhere
There is violence everywhere
There is quarrelling everywhere
There is no peace when nobody is sorry

KEITH JACKSON

WHEN Bruce Davis left his post as director-general of AusAID in 2009, I noted in PNG Attitude that it was “a sudden departure” – sudden like Deborah Stokes’ unexpected exit as Australia's PNG High Commissioner back in July this year.

Now, after a five month gap in Waigani, Davis (pictured) is replacing Stokes, leaving his position as vice-president of the Asian Development Bank which, if memory serves me right, is the same job Stokes has just moved into.

Davis was 10 years as head of AusAID, which was abolished not long after he left. He was a career aid bureaucrat, having joined the then Australian Development Assistance Agency (ADAB) in 1975 aged 22.

LEONARD FONG ROKA

BLACKSKINS and Redskins are still clashing on Bougainville even as energetically advocate against racism so we can rebuild our land.

On Monday morning, a drunken Tolai man, just recently married here in Kieta, was stoned to death by two Bougainvilleans for telling a disabled man to sleep with his mother.

Over time, as more and more New Guineans and Papuans enter Bougainville in these post conflict times and feel the freedom here, they think Bougainville is a normal place where they can play around. They need to think twice.

Bougainvilleans have nothing observable in common with other Papua New Guineans. They have struggled long to be free from PNG and that continues. When other Papua New Guineans enter Bougainville, they need to behave. Bougainville has a history.

The Bougainville leadership is not thinking in the way the ordinary people on the streets and in the villages are thinking about recovery in their island home.

PAUL FLANAGAN | Edited extract

THE Papua New Guinea budget, rushed through Parliament early last month, could have been so much better.

Given PNG’s record deficit levels, fiscal consolidation was vital even before the fall in international commodity prices. However, the proposed expenditure cuts do not match the government’s stated priorities of protecting health, education and infrastructure.

And the cuts are excessive – more than even imposed on Greece as part of its structural adjustment program.

The budget also suffers from factual errors relating to GDP and the external accounts, a lack of revenue effort and inadequate transparency. A serious error in calculating PNG’s nominal GDP affects all the key ratios and messaging from the budget.

KELA KAPKORA SIL BOLKIN

IN the Papua New Guinea’s highlands province of Chimbu, a new wave of community misbehaviour is besieging the length and width of the region.

The tribal people, especially the lazy buggers who the educated call human canines, place a lot of economically irrational demands on working men and women.

The human canines cower on their bums as their main activity each day and seem to be convinced they have a right to a share of the earnings of educated Chimbus.

They come uninvited to wine and dine or arrogantly demand large sums of money for ‘compensation’, guns for warfare and other filthy behaviour cultivated for their own benefit.

AUGUST BERITA

An entry in the 2015 Rivers Award
for Writing on Peace & Harmony

I was told that I am a Papua New Guinean
I must live like a Papua New Guinean and die like a Papua New Guinean
I was told to maintain unity in diversity
but promote my identity through tribalism, regionalism, and nationalism.
The Papua New Guinean way.

Taught in school to think like a white man;
out of school demanded to behave like a Papua New Guinean.
I was taught to change my world but, when I came home,
my world changed me.
I’m an educated Papua New Guinean.

PHIL FITZPATRICK

Some people like to make a big deal about the political system that Australia bequeathed to Papua New Guinea on the eve of independence in 1975.SOME people lik

They argue that it is a western system that is incompatible with the so-called Melanesian Way of consensus and its emphasis on the community rather than the individual.

The system they object to is commonly referred to as Western Democracy.

Democracy is a Greek word that roughly translates as the ‘rule of the people’ and refers to a system of governance developed in Greece.

RAYMOND SIGIMET

An entry in the 2015 Rivers Award
for Writing on Peace & Harmony

HE had to admit it. His aggressive nature and iron man pasin fuelled by alcohol was causing more harm than good to him and his family.

This was … it was his fifth time now to be locked in the police cells. Freedom deprived because, in a drunken stupor, he decided to beat up a man who cat-whistled his small sister.

The cat-whistler had laid a complaint straight after the incident and he’d been arrested at the Saturday weekend market. That was two days ago.

Sitting and listening to the sounds of the world outside the high brick-walled police cell made him realise for the first time that freedom to move around and socialise without being confined in an enclosed space is at the essence of human experience.

Or, as he may have put it, ‘Dispela kalabus i passim mu nogut tru’.

I'm in transit back to Australia and, after some finagling around the central west of NSW, Noosa. There will be a few disruptions to the usual publication of articles and processing of comments over the next 48 hours. Stick with us.... - KJ

TESS GIZORIA

An entry in the 2015 Rivers Award
for Writing on Peace & Harmony

I went to sit and chat with him today,
He shouted at my quiet boldness,
And sent me on my way.
He had hoped I’d always remain pliant,

He’d sit me down and preach for hours,
Never thinking I could be defiant.
I’m stronger now learning to trust,
Making my way in this world,

As I must.
All I feel toward him,
Is neither hate, nor anger nor dis-regard,
But pity, deep flowing pity, flowing to the brim!

DANIEL KUMBON

THIS is a sad tale, In fact, it’s a complete nightmare. A family line ending with the death of its last surviving male.

This is the story of how young professionals in Enga Province and, indeed, all of Papua New Guinea, die as a result of lifestyle disease and cold blooded murder.

Rocky Neokuli was a well-known young businessman who died soon after admission to Port Moresby General Hospital. A relative said he had been nursing the wounds for three or four days at his home in the suburb of Morata, thinking it was minor.

Rocky had sustained the injuries during a fight at Nine Mile. He was taken too late to the hospital and died there as soon as he was admitted.