Despite all the government rhetoric about stopping illegal logging and concern about the environment, the truth is that this government entity, designed and created for the purpose of protecting PNG interests – PNG resources –  is failing miserably in its mandate and is assisting transnational criminal cartels steal our forest resources.

What is the point of an organisation we pay for with our taxes if it serevs transnational criminal cartels and sells us out?

Every month, shipments worth millions of kina leave our shores – forest resources obtained under pretext and fraud - leaving behind destroyed landscapes, polluted waterways and miserable landowners who have been fooled, contemptuously mistreated and intimidated by corrupt elements of the public service and police.

But we can stop it. Yes, you and I. But if we know about it and do nothing, we are complicit.

I’m doing something about it and I need you to stand with me and demand that PNGFA and its chairman, David Dotaona, and minister, Douglas Tomuriesa, and the entire department act to stop these crimes against Papua New Guinea and our people and protect our forest resources.

How? Immediately review all licences granted to logging and you will find:

-- They are illegally granted via fraudulent processes and corrupt public servants;

-- The so-called landowner companies don’t represent our landowners at all;

-- All machinery is unregistered – it can all be impounded;

-- All foreign workers are without permits – they can be immediately detained until deported with the cost being met by the company, and their companies fined and banned from doing business in PNG ever again;

-- Significant environmental damage to waterways and reefs and logging on gradients that are in contravention of the permit restrictions. Your sister agency, the conservation Environment Protection Authority, will be brought in to inspect the results, and fine and ban the company from any future agriculture or forest development projects;

-- That tax evasion and transfer pricing mechanisms have allowed the company to evade paying for decades. The IRC and Customs can carry out audits and raise assessments and commence recovery and prosecution action. They can use the double tax treaties to recoup any taxes due;

-- Significant evidence of corruption involving many public servants and landowners. This can be referred to the police fraud squad for arrests and prosecution;

-- Too many of our resources have been stolen and, as this is a crime, the principals of these companies can be charged and prosecuted when you lay the complaint. You can also seize property as proceeds of crime.

-- We can engage the army and the police to shut down all such operations and seize and auction all machinery. If they sue us, so what? They are running illegal operations of a transnational criminal nature and they will lose in court;

-- Finally, some of the proceeds can be used to compensate genuine landowners.

And if you can’t do this, ask me. I will do it. For free.

Just give me the resources and let me select a team of patriotic police and soldiers; labour, migration, IRC and customs officers; and state lawyers – and watch.

The mandate of the forests department, besides protecting PNG interests at all times, is to develop innovative strategies to use our forest resources in a sustainable manner.

There are options whereby the vast forest resources that provide such a rich life do not need to be destroyed. We don’t need to destroy our forests in order to progress.

At a time when the world is facing a climate change disaster, we can do our bit by preserving our forests and finding alternative means of income using forest products in a sustainable manner.

For 40 years we have silently and meekly allowed pirates to raid our shores and we’ve accepted a few measly kina in compensation.

For each shipment worth about K6 million, we get less than K100,000. Where is the common sense in this? For each forest cut down, thousands of species of flora and fauna are devastated and some never recover.

We are destroying our natural home so we can live in an unnatural home in pursuit of money and material goods so we can be “happy” because someone we thought was more educated and civilised told us so.

But we will never be happy in this endless pursuit of the unnatural - living in an unnatural world where unnatural leaders make unnatural decisions that cause us more misery – naturally. We are only chasing illusions of happiness.

Certainly if we continue to allow this, if we are thinking, intelligent patriots, as we so often like to tell one another, then we are truly failing ourselves, our nation and our future.

It can be done  – it just needs all of us to rise up and do it together.