Looking to Loloho and Rorovana from the ridge on Kieta Peninsula (Darryl Robbins)

BILL BROWN MBE

THE CHRONICLE CONTINUES - Despite continuous protests from the community, mining giant Conzinc Rio Tinto of Australia (CRA) remained intent on securing Pakia village and the surrounding land for its town.

The Pakia area had most of the things CRA wanted: gently sloping land, a pleasant aspect, cool nights and, most importantly, a short drive to what would be the mine.

Scott Morrison and James Marape. Morrison talks of PNG as “family” and the Pacific as “our patch” 

PATRICIA A O'BRIEN
| The Conversation

CANBERRA – Australian prime minister Scott Morrison is fond of describing Papua New Guinea as ‘family’. He did so recently when announcing Australia’s assistance with PNG’s Covid-19 outbreak.

The urgent support for PNG in the form of vaccines, testing kits, medical personnel and training was “in Australia’s interests”, Morrison said, because it threatens the health of Australians, “but equally our PNG family who are so dear to us”.

SCOTT WAIDE
| My Land, My Country

LAE - In 2020, we went to each of the 10 health centres in Lae City with forms on which the officers-in-charge stated what medicines were in short supply and for how long the problem had existed.

Each form was signed by the manager.

Gerard Ivalaoa with his book ‘70 Reminders of Academic Excellence’ (Ples Singsing)

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – Young author Gerard Ivalaoa struck it lucky after writing an 85,000 word book on his smartphone in the most difficult of circumstances.

After hearing of his achievement, Digicel PNG presented a new Dell laptop and a Samsung smartphone to Gerard, who is of Gulf parentage and lives on the outskirts of Port Moresby in a settlement with no electricity.

DANIEL KUMBON

FICTION – The ceremony over and the photographs taken, The Old Man and Delisa decided to skip the refreshments for the new nursing graduates and drive straight from Lae to Bumbu village where a big mumu was sizzling amidst hot stones.

The family trooped to the three vehicles. Delisa sat in the backseat while, as protocol dictated, her aunt’s husband sat in the front seat with The Old Man.

The four objectives of the national strategy on gender-based violence

JOHN KURI

PORT MORESBY - The gender-based violence (GBV) we struggle with in Papua New Guinea is a result of many activating circumstances.

The number of cases continues to increase. Just on Sunday, two women accused of witchcraft were tortured and burnt with hot irons for hours by 20 men in Port Moresby.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - The articles featured in the Anzac Day edition of PNG Attitude had a common theme related to the corrupted mythology of Australia’s leading commemorative event and its emergence as a caricature of reality.

The comments by various authors reflected on the inconvenient truths revealed in the articles or sought to defend some of the mythologies thought to be questionable.

RICHARD HAUSER

With skin like burnished copper parchment
this slim Eurasian lady seems in charge.
She emerges from the shadows of the shelves
and the pages of a spy yarn, now at large.

Her manner firm, attesting ownership,
insisting that I do it by the book
and sterilise my suspect Covid hands
lest I taint her tidy tomes as I look.

James Marape and justice minister Bryan Kramer. Marape has again demonstrated he is a political tactician of considerable acumen (Kalolaine Fainu The Guardian)

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – Prime minister James Marape last week adjourned Papua New Guinea’s parliament as once again he sought to slip away from a vote of no confidence.

With a worrying increase in the number of Covid cases in PNG, Marape explained his action as a move to fight the disease.

"It’s no time to play politics,” he said, before adjourning parliament until Tuesday 10 August.

Community feelings towards specific racial groups in Australia

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY – Let me start with a statement.

The most prevalent form of racism is based on colour and is manifested almost entirely by whites against people of colour.

And now a definition.

Racism is the belief that humans can be divided into separate and exclusive biological entities (races) and that there is a causal link between biological traits (such as colour) and intellect, personality, morality and other cultural and behavioural features.

DANIEL KUMBON

FICTION - Early on the morning of the graduation, The Old Man drove from Lae International Hotel to Bumbu village to finalise arrangements for the festivities.

He had asked Japheth to call Delisa to pass on the message that he and Japheth, together with her siblings, would come to the graduation.

Gary Juffa - "We have used our superior intelligence to pursue selfish gain in a shortsighted manner detrimental to our very existence"

GOVERNOR GARY JUFFA

ORO - Empathy is a great teacher. Only when you go through a situation experienced by others will you be able to truly empathise and understand what they have gone through.

Well we have a situation happening right now which, to humans and humanity is instructing us like never before.

DANIEL KUMBON

FICTION – When Delisa read the text message from The Old Man, she was stunned.

‘I have to come to your graduation as this is the fruit of my efforts and your own commitment to your studies,’ the crucial line had said. The Old Man would be there. He would come to her graduation.

Western Province is the largest and most remote in PNG

TABOI AWI YOTO

DARU – You may be aware of a Papua New Guinea government policy that every province and district should expect to receive K10 million a year to spend on local projects.

This scheme is known as PSIP/DSIP or ‘MP’s funds’ and is meant to disburse K10 million to each province and district, the funds being administered by committees chaired by district or provincial politicians.

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - Dr De Maria has certainly unleashed some caustic criticism of the Anzac tradition, much of it well deserved.

I would argue, for example, that Paul Keating was right to say that the Kokoda campaign of 1942 was much more deserving of recognition as a seminal military event in our history.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY – For the past month or so, the Returned Services League (RSL) has saturated us with television commercials drumming up interest in today’s Anzac Day celebrations (now cancelled in Perth because of Covid).

That Anzac Day has been turned into a lucrative money-making industry for many organisations, including the RSL, couldn’t be made any clearer.

This map shows more than 500 locations where colonial forces or individuals massacred Australia's Indigenous people. Australia has never come to terms with the Frontier Wars than continued for about 140 years

JOHN MENADUE
| Pearls & Irritations

SYDNEY - Conservatives and militarists want us to cling to a disastrous imperial war. They encourage us to focus on how our soldiers fought to avoid the central issue of why we fought.

We fought in World War I for Britain’s imperial interests not our own. The AIF was the ‘Australian Imperial Force’. It could not be clearer.

Paul Pavol warned his people of what would happen, but they did not listen

PAUL PAVOL

POMIO - The people of West Pomio in East New Britain Province lost most of their land and forest under the controversial, government-backed, Special Agriculture Business Lease (SABL) scheme.

Today, eight years after a Commission of Inquiry condemned the SABL program, there are still a number of active schemes in the West Pomio area with Malaysian logging conglomerate Rimbunan Hijau the major player in logging and promised oil palm.

The Morrison government’s approach to the Covid pandemic has too often opted for spin over substance and politics over science

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - Across the democratic world denial, blundering incompetence, confusion, wishful thinking and indifference have been the common hallmarks of the response to Covid-19.

The political class has, with very few exceptions, made a complete hash of managing the pandemic.

WILLIAM DE MARIA
| Pearls & Irritations

BRISBANE - Australia has never been the maker of its own history. So said the legendary Manning Clark, who spent a life mapping the heart of our nation.

From the utterly worthless Sudan campaign of 1885 to the most recent atrocity-ridden Afghanistan War, our people have been made to wade through blood in foreign lands to satisfy feckless sycophantic leadership at home and unfathomable geo-political intrigues festering far away.

Marina Amaral in her studio. An exceptional artist, 76,000 viewers can't be wrong

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA - On Monday, PNG Attitude published a famous World War II photograph, newly colourised by Brazilian artist Marina Amaral.

It proved to be an instant hit with many thousands of readers.

Some 76,000 people viewed the image and the accompanying story. Nearly 1,000 engaged actively with comments, likes and shares.

BINOY KAMPMARK
| Counterpunch

MELBOURNE - There was a time when it seemed Papua New Guinea had managed to dodge a bullet.

Instances of coronavirus were minimal, along with its disease, Covid-19. Through 2020, the country of nine million people recorded a mere 900 cases.

ROBERT FORSTER

NORTHUMBRIA - Here in the United Kingdom, one the world’s top ten economic powers, our government was wickedly slow to close our borders against incoming infection.

It then imposed public movement lockdowns after the virus was imported.

Lucy Maino and all Papua New Guinean women need to be treated with  respect, decency and morality. Papua New Guinean men have much to be ashamed of

KARA WEISENSTEIN
| Mic

NEW YORK - Lucy Maino was an accomplished role model before she became Miss Papua New Guinea.

The 25-year-old co-captained her country’s national football team, bringing home two gold medals from the 2019 Pacific Games in Samoa.

She also attended the University of Hawaii on a sports scholarship and earned a business degree.

BRENDAN CRABB & MIKE TOOLE
| The Canberra Times

MELBOURNE - The surge of new COVID-19 cases in Papua New Guinea is deeply worrying.

At the end of January, this country of nine million had reported just 866 cases and nine deaths. By 12 April, these numbers had increased to 8,442 cases and 68 deaths.

DANIEL KUMBON

FICTION - The Old Man was glad, the nursing college graduation was only two weeks away and the three new houses had been completed in record time.

The house built for Japheth had three bedrooms, and was fully furnished. It had power and water connected complete with Tuffa storage tanks.

MV Aveta ready for patrol, c 1970

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE – As a newly minted Assistant Patrol Officer in 1969, I was assigned to Kerema in Gulf Province, seen by new kiaps as a fate worse than death - perhaps exceeded only by a posting to Western Province.

Old hands confidently expected that junior kiaps posted to the Gulf would flee back to Australia, unable to cope with living in the estuarine delta, full of pukpuks and binatangs.

Lucy Maino - An innocent victim of deep-seated misogyny or offended Christianity? Or perhaps both

AVDOH D MEKI

PORT MORESBY - Lucy Maino is best known as a Papua New Guinean footballer and recently Miss Pacific and PNG 2019-20.

Because of Covid, her tenure was extended into 2021 but she was released from duties by the MPIP governing body earlier this month after a video she posted on TikTok triggered a social media storm.

Governor Peter Yama - off to the supreme court to try to stop people who want to receive Covid vaccines from getting them

BRYAN KRAMER MP
| Kramer Report

MADANG - Last week, Madang governor Peter Yama announced he would file a Supreme Court reference challenging the decision of the Marape-Basil government to provide vaccines to Papua New Guineans who wished to receive them.

Yama said that, after studying a recent US Supreme Court ruling overturning universal vaccination, he had instructed his lawyers to file the reference to stop the vaccine for being provided to ‘his’ people in Madang.

New chalkies hit the road near Wewak,  November 1963.  Yes, there were 10 of us aboard the Series 2 Land Rover. That was fortunate. It took all of us to get it out of a bog later in our journey (Keith Jackson)

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - When Prince Philip married Elizabeth, the future British queen, in November 1947 my mother was two months pregnant with me.

Like a lot of English women besotted with the handsome prince she decided to name me after him. My Irish father had little say in the matter.

Apart from that tenuous and rather embarrassing connection, Prince Philip has otherwise been entirely irrelevant in my life, as no doubt I have in his.

Boigu Anglican minister Rev Stanley Marama gets his vaccine last month (Brook Mitchell)

CHRISTOPHER KNAUS
| The Guardian | Extracts

SYDNEY - The Torres Strait is paying the price for Australia’s poor Covid-19 vaccination planning, experts say, and now faces significant risk from the outbreak in nearby Papua New Guinea.

The rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine to vulnerable populations in the Torres Strait was complicated significantly last week when the federal government warned against giving the vaccine to people under 50.

Isaac Salip and Komolong ensure the white copra undergoes correct sun drying

DAVID KASEI WAPAR
| Story & Pictures

MADANG - Mirap, a neglected community in the Sumkar District, is the first to host white copra production in Madang Province, thanks to the initiative of a local farmer.

Copra production along this stretch of the Madang–Bogia Highway has seen better days.

Petats village. "Arriving at Buka Passage on September 25th, 1929, I started work a few days later on the island of Petats, one of the string of coral islets fringing the west coast of Buka. There are no white residents on this island, and it seemed in many ways suitable for my purpose"

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA - Beatrice Mary Blackwood (1889–1975) was born into a wealthy family in England and attended Oxford University, gaining a degree in English and a distinction in Anthropology, a field in which she sought to excel and in which she continued to work at Oxford until a few days before her death.

Blackwood never married and conducted some exacting field trips. Her second, in 1929, was to Buka and Bougainville and she was the first woman anthropologist to travel to the region.

KEITH JACKSON & SOURCES

NOOSA – Marina Amaral is a self-taught Brazilian artist known for her colourisations of historical black and white photographs.

The process involves historical research to determine the colours of each object pictured with colourisation often taking more than a month to complete.

Andrew Peacock and Julius Chan, Sydney, 1980

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA - Andrew Peacock, who has died aged 82, as Australia’s Minister for External Territories was instrumental in gaining Australian acceptance for independence in Papua New Guinea.

In 1972, then Australian prime minister William McMahon made Peacock, then aged 32, Minister for External Territories, a position that gave him responsibility for bringing Australia's colonial possession, the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, to self-government.

Charles Monckton in 1907

BRADLEY GEWA
| Academia Nomad

Charles Monckton: Some Experiences of a New Guinea Resident Magistrate

PORT MORESBY –Charles Arthur Whitmore Monckton (1873-1936) first arrived in the protectorate of British New Guinea (later known as Papua) in 1895 having been recruited from New Zealand as a magistrate.

Upon Monckton’s arrival, Lieutenant-Governor Sir William MacGregor was unable to employ him.

DANIEL KUMBON

FICTION - The Old Man had never imagined his life would end up like this when he and Rosemary agreed to help Delisa.

But now he had decided to marry this young woman, just a girl to him, late in life when the sun was setting.

Peace-making in Oro culture (Photo from 'The Man Who Would Not Die')

CAROLINE EVARI
| Ples Singsing

PORT MORESBY – Early in the evening of Saturday30 January at around 7:30, my family hosted small peace-making ceremony here in Port Moresby.

Leading into the new year, there had been some misunderstanding amongst my older siblings’ daughters that resulted in dispute and disharmony between several family members.

Philip Kai Morre - committed to his God, his church and his people

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – Philip Kai Morre – a regular contributor to our Comments section from Kundiawa in Papua New Guinea - graduated from St Fidelis College in Alexishafen in 1980.

He then completed a preparatory spiritual year in the Catholic Church at Erave in 1981 before progressing to the Holy Spirit Seminary in Bomana near Port Moresby.

ANNA DZIEDZIC & CHERYL SAUNDERS

Abridged and edited from a research report, Institution Building in Post-Referendum Bougainville, by Professor Cheryl Saunders and Dr Anna Dziedzic for the National Research Institute. You can link here to the full report

PORT MORESBY - There will be four key questions facing decision-makers in Bougainville’s post-referendum consultations.

While the primary focus of the consultations will be the future relationship between Bougainville and Papua New Guinea, there are other questions necessarily linked to this relationship.

Dr Fiona Hukula (centre) at her farewell

MEDIA RELEASE
| PNG National Research Institute

PORT MORESBY - The Papua New Guinea National Research Institute (NRI) has farewelled Dr Fiona Hukula, long-serving researcher and advocate against gender-based violence,.

Dr Hukula joined the NRI in 1998 as a project officer and was a senior research fellow and program leader when she left the think tank earlier this month.

Richard Hauser - amongst many other attributes, an urban hunter

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA - It is only recently that I have been introduced to the poetry of Richard Hauser; it's poetry that I admire a great deal.

So much so that I felt compelled to share his writing, especially with those many poets of Papua New Guinea who frequently appear in these columns.

Lucy Maino - "The people of PNG should grow to be more accepting of one another" (Daniel Wala)

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA - A week ago, media in Papua New Guinea and Australia reported that Lucy Maino, 25, Miss Papua New Guinea, had been stripped of her crown after posting a video of herself twerking on TikTok.

The video had been shared on numerous social media platforms whereupon thousands of people verbally attacked Ms Maino.

The late David Wall makes a cameo appearance in ACT Marke's latest Temlett Conibeer book

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

Marooned on Pitcairn by A C T Marke. Frogmouth Press, Low Head, Tasmania. 419 pages. ISBN 9780645029611. $25 plus $5 postage from the author at [email protected]

TUMBY BAY - This is the sixth book in Andrew Marke’s series featuring his repressed hero, Temlett Conibeer, negotiating the world with his strange Victorian era sensibilities.

I suspect that it might be the last in the series because it traces the history of the hapless Temlett from his childhood in Somerset, England, right through to his final days in a retirement village in Tasmania.

Michelle Rooney - "Women are the target of police and municipal authorities who often resort to violence" 

MICHELLE NAYAHAMUI ROONEY
| Centre for International Private Enterprise

An abridged extract from ‘Papua New Guinea: Centering the ‘People’s Economy’ in Covid-19 Recovery’. You can link here to the full paper

WASHINGTON DC – Papua New Guinean women are the backbone of the PNG ‘people’s economy’, but they face cultural and social challenges that undermine their resilience and ability to sustain their engage in the economy.

They are the primary caregivers for the country’s burgeoning young population.

MICHAEL KABUNI
| Academia Nomad

Ted Wolfers: Race Relations and Colonial Rule in Papua New Guinea
Link here for details of how you can buy the book

PORT MORESBY - Ted Wolfers’ groundbreaking book, Race Relations and Colonial Rule in Papua New Guinea, was republished in 2016, 40 years after the first edition appeared in 1975.

Ted Wolfers wrote the substance of much of this book whilst he was in PNG between 1961 and 1971.

Latasha Akane - "Never stop doing what you’re passionate about. Use your gift to inspire others"

LATASHA LALAAH AKANE
| Ples Singsing

PORT MORESBY - Writing is a hobby of mine and I am passionate about it, although people who know me realise how I can never keep anything short.

But they also know that I willingly compile group assignments, edit people’s work and proofread because I find pleasure in writing.

DANIEL KUMBON

FICTION - Delisa was convinced the Old Man would accept her into his now empty life if he knew the real story behind her father.

Her father was not dead, as had been her original invention. She felt it was time to tell the whole truth.

She wanted to avoid disharmony and embarrassment later when they lived together. For Delisa it was ‘when’, not ‘if’.

Sil Bolkin

KELA KAPKORA SIL BOLKIN

DARU - Daru Island has its own honourable and gallant history dating back to the arrival of Portuguese explorer, Luis Vaez de Torres, in the 1600s.

But today it is withering away in misery under the independent state of Papua New Guinea.

Daru is one of the Torres Strait islands in PNG’s Western Province. The town is the provincial capital and is home to the vast majority of the island's population of some 25,000 people.