The Class of '68: Cadet patrol officers induction course at Kwikila (Bob Welsh)

ANDREW LESLIE PHILLIPS

From Assignment Papua New Guinea: 1968-75
Link to more writing in Andrew’s Note Books

NEW YORK - Advertising was not my first career choice. I’d wanted to be a traveller and a journalist. But I couldn’t get a job in journalism because I didn’t have a university degree.

Advertising was my next choice - it was creative and better paid than journalism but I never got to the “better paid” part.

Theonila Matbob - "Our work will continue until Rio Tinto has fully dealt with the disaster it left behind”

NEWS DESK
| Human Rights Law Centre

SYDNEY – Bougainville’s education minister Theonila Roka Matbob MP has won an important award for her outstanding work to hold Rio Tinto to account for the devastating effects of its mining in the island’s Panguna region.

Theonila, a traditional landowner and community leader from Makosi, downstream from the mine, received the Gwynne Skinner Human Rights Award.

JUDITH WHITE

Country: Future Fire, Future Farming by Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe, First Knowledges vol 3, Margo Neale (ed), published by Thames & Hudson Aust, 26 October 2021, 224 pages. ISBN-10 ‏1760761559

TWEED COAST, NSW - Worried about the prospects for life on earth? Well, we have just been given a message of hope born out of profound historical knowledge.

On the eve of the COP26 summit in Glasgow, where leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations will spin their climate inaction into a web of words, the newly-released book Country: Future Fire, Future Farming points to a better way of living, drawing on Australian indigenous practices developed over millennia.

TERRY SLEVIN
| Pearls & Irritations | Edited extracts

SYDNEY - While Australia embarks on third booster shots, the vaccination rate in Papua New Guinea is less than two percent.

What does that say about being a good neighbour?

Well, look at these quotes:

Neoliberalism as it is perceived by China - a wild American ram (or buffalo if you’re an editor) about to plunge a terrorised planet into the abyss

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - Bernard Corden has written a fine polemic in ‘There’s a man going ’round taking names’.

Idealism, unfiltered through the lens of reflective thought, is a dangerous thing.

Very few proponents of ‘pure’ neoliberalism – the ideology that markets can run the planet better than governments - appear to devote little if any time to reflection.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - As Paul Oates has frequently pointed out in his comments on PNG Attitude, before you can solve a problem you have to clearly identify its root causes.

Once you’ve done that, you can devise strategies to eliminate or overcome those causes and solve the problem.

MARCUS REUBENSTEIN
| APAC News 

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has received frequent mentions in PNG Attitude because of what we perceive as its entrenched right wing, militaristic and neoliberal biases, especially on foreign affairs. Its coverage of Papua New Guinea issues also often suffers from a surfeit of opinion over factual analysis. Marcus Rubenstein’s shines a helpful light on ASPI, which often says aloud what the Morrison government chooses not to - KJ

“The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice” - Mark Twain

SYDNEY - The Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s claims of fearless independence ring hollow as foreign governments and corporate entities shower it with money.

Winston Churchill, whose once mighty British empire still casts a significant shadow across Australia, reportedly once said, “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”

The late Benson Kavia Garui and Governor Gary Juffa - "a hard-working, honest and genuine leader" 

GARY JUFFA MP

ORO - It is with great sadness that I convey news of the passing on 19 October of Hon Benson Kavia Garui, an Oro leader and member of the Afore local level government.

Benson died in Popondetta General Hospital after a short illness at the age of 65.

The Parers of Aitape. PNG-born Rob, seen here with his family, for decades was an influential business figure and great contributor to the community and economy of the West  Sepik

ROB PARER CMG MBE

BRISBANE – Many years ago at Aitape in pre-independence Papua New Guinea, when the newly established Siau Council was in charge of the Aitape Sub-District, we were amazed at how most things operated - right down to each village having a village water pump.

The bigman in the region was Brere Awol, the first Council president, who, when he became a member of the second House of Assembly in 1968, representing West Sepik.

BERNARD CORDEN

‘Artists are the gatekeepers of truth’ - Paul Robeson

BRISBANE – Covid or not, the blend of politics and economics that is neoliberalism continues to transfer control of the economy from government to private hands.

In doing so it continues to place limits on government spending, government regulation and government ownership.

DESIRĖ VÉRITÉ

CANBERRA – Papua New Guineans have woken up to Australia’s climate change propaganda.

They not only resent its blatant dishonesty, they’re angry Australia is trying to play them for fools.

And they are tuning out from sugar-coated Australian government climate change propaganda that aims to mislead ahead of next week’s COP26 climate conference in Glasgow.

A 1967 Moke - 'moke' is British slang for donkey

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - I had my first prang in a Mini Moke, and I can’t quite remember how it happened.

I was coming around a bend on a slippery orange clay road just out Mount Hagen in 1968 and somehow slid into the barat (ditch) that ran alongside it.

Off to Glasgow at Australia's expense - handy front row of Juffa, Mori and Parkop

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – It seems the Australian federal government has finally agreed to set zero carbon emissions by 2050 as the nation’s climate goal.

This is the result of eight years of lethargy and two weeks of frenzy after which the Liberal Party bribed (with taxpayers’ money) its junior coalition partner, the National Party, to gain acceptance for a meaningless outcome.

Cartoon by Moir

ISHAAN THAROOR
| Washington Post | Extracts

WASHINGTON, DC - The major COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, is less than a week away.

The roughly 25,000 delegates — including top-level officials from more than 100 countries — expected to attend the United Nations-convened sessions and side events have their work cut out for them.

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – Last week’s meeting of Pacific Island foreign ministers with China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, saw China commit to increase activity in addressing Covid, poverty reduction and climate action.

Wang chaired the meeting which included Soroi Eoe of Papua New Guinea, senior ministers from Kiribati, Fiji, Tonga, Niue, Vanuatu, Micronesia, Solomon Islands and Henry Puna, secretary general of the Pacific Islands Forum.

Atthe meeting China announced three Pacific Island initiatives: the establishment of a reserve of emergency Covid supplies, a poverty reduction and development cooperation centre and a climate action cooperation centre.

Bob Carr, Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull at a function honouring former  Singapore foreign minister George Yeo

KATE LYONS
| The Guardian | Extracts

SYDNEY - Former Australian prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, and former foreign affairs minister Bob Carr, have accused the Morrison government of “cynical indifference” and “empty rhetoric” when it comes to climate action.

They said the commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 was the “bare minimum” that needed to be done.

Les Murray - 'The gentle itan of Australian letters' (Adam Hollingworth)

FIONA CAPP
| Australian Book Review

For the April 1985 issue of Australian Book Review, the 22-year old Fiona Capp, then a cadet journalist, interviewed one of Australia’s most eminent poets, Les Murray (1938-2019)  Fiona wrote a gentle and insightful piece on Murray, the self-styled ‘Poet Lorikeet’ of Australian poetry and regarded by his peers as the leading poet of his generation. I hope poets will see some fragments of their own thinking in her profile of a man known as 'the gentle titan of Australian letters'. More on Fiona Capp at the end of this essay - KJ

MELBOURNE - Les Murray describes his poetry as “a celebration of life; a contemplation of life in ways that interest and delight people and make them reflective”. Poetry, he says, is “primarily not to be studied, it is to be read”.

Few people could disagree with Murray that the most desirable response to poetry is for it to be read out of love rather than out of a sense of obligation.

COMPILED & EDITED BY KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – Papua New Guinea’s health system, precarious at the best of times, has began to buckle under the remorseless impact of Covid.

And PNG Attitude's coverage both here on the blog and on Twitter has been viewed by thousands of people and received hundreds of comments and observations from readers.

I've managed to read most of these and have curated just a few, which I hope will give the flavour of this past, dreadful week, for Papua New Guineans and their many friends in Australia and around the world.

Medical staff work in haste to treat a Covid patient in Port Moresby General Hospital

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – As Papua New Guinea’s Covid crisis deepens, it has been revealed that the Port Moresby General Hospital (PMGH) morgue is so overwhelmed a mass burial of 200 bodies is being arranged.

The PMGH official Facebook page announced this morning that the hospital “is reaching a crisis point, with services teetering on collapse unless we are immediately given more support.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - I noticed when I first went to Papua New Guinea in the 1960s that the people tended to be guarded in their interactions with expatriates, but among themselves were quite open and not afraid to display their emotions.

Of course, this was a general observation. Judging people in such a way has its limitations because, at the end of the day, we’re all individuals.

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – I’m under the weather this morning, as I have been for some time, but not so much that I wasn’t shocked by the Covid reports coming out of Papua New Guinea over the last 24 hours.

I’ve received a long-awaited communication from my good friend, the author and journalist Daniel Kumbon in Wabag, who wrote words that both confirmed my suspicions and relieved me greatly.

Washouts on the Highlands Highway are common. Bridge at Ukarumpa,  Eastern Highlands, 2016

KEITH JACKSON

AUCKLAND – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a $325 million (K1.1 billion) to the Papua New Guinea government to upgrade 430 kilometres of the Highlands Highway.

The massive project, which will be a boon to three million people living in the Highlands, was signed by the ADB's Pacific director general, Leah Gutierrez, and PNG treasurer, Ian Ling-Stuckey

Naomi, a support staff member at World Vision in Papua New Guinea (Nelson Kairi Kurukuru)

DANE MOORES & JONATHON GURRY
| Devpolicy Blog

MELBOURNE - The socio-economic impacts of Covid-19 are devastating communities in the Pacific and Timor-Leste as much as the virus itself, and sometimes to an even greater extent.

In late 2020, World Vision surveyed 752 households (with an average of six people per household) in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste and Vanuatu.

Rupert Murdoch - "In the cold-blooded world of profit above everything, Murdoch has no intention of foregoing precious dollars"

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - In case you hadn’t noticed, the Murdoch press in Australia has embarked on an unexpected campaign urging action to combat climate change.

To most Australians this appeared to be outrageous hypocrisy given News Corp’s dreadful track record of climate change denial, disinformation and derision.

NEIL SUMMERS
| Bowhunter Magazine

WAHPETON, ND, USA - Famed conservationist J Michael Fay once said of the jungle in the Congo, "We see no human trails in this forest, because there are no resident humans, few visitors and no destinations."

This is what I was thinking about as we boated up the Fly River in Papua New Guinea.

STEPHEN CHARTERIS

CAIRNS - What is unfolding in Papua New Guinea is nothing short of a human tragedy on a significant scale.

Superficially the nation’s woes appear to be the result of corruption. But they are more complex than that.

This is not the first time we have witnessed failures of the state and the inevitable outcomes.

Sarah Kaut-Nasengom (Western Michigan University)

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – The talented Papua New Guinean researcher and poet Sarah Kaut-Nasengom has been awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to further her studies into women in politics.

The scholarship will enable Sarah to study for a Master of Arts in political science, focusing on women in politics, at Western Michigan University in the USA.

Roadside buai seller,  Enga Province - PNG showed complacency, avoidance and denial when it needed to be getting ready for Covid's onslaught (gailhampshire, Flickr)

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - While the Covid-19 pandemic wreaks havoc, misery and death across the world, it is also serving to highlight major shortcomings in governance almost everywhere.

This is nowhere more prominent than in nations that have chosen the path of neoliberalism, with its emphasis on economic growth and the market and belief that government should keep out of the way and let society look after itself.

Rowan Callick at Griffith University - "Covid's impact is exacerbated in PNG by the failings of its government, corroded by corruption and by corruption's cousin, disinterest"

ROWAN CALLICK

MELBOURNE - The anguish of our closest neighbours is palpable as the Delta strain of Covid runs riot in Papua New Guinea.

As so often before, the plight of the nine million Papua New Guineans may derive from an ‘act of God’ – a natural disaster or, as now, a pandemic – but its impact is exacerbated by the failings of its government, corroded by corruption and by corruption's cousin, disinterest.

Neil Leahy & Rick Giddings, 1987 (Bill Gammage)

SONYA & LARA GIDDINGS

Rick Giddings was buried at Pontville in Tasmania on Tuesday and his family has kindly approved sharing this edited eulogy with his friends from his time in Papua New Guinea - PF

PONTVILLE - Richard James Giddings MBE OAM, our dad, was a good man. He was kind, generous, funny, intelligent and wise. He was a storyteller and a poet.

He lived his 84 years with love, devotion, passion and integrity, whether that be for his family, friends, community, or his work. He was a dear friend and mentor to many.

Keith has lost some wind from his sails, which will slow down PNG Attitude for a few days.
That said, your comments and other contributions are welcome and will be published.

Health workers move body bags at the Goroka Hospital morgue (EMTV)

JOHNNY BLADES
| Radio New Zealand Pacific

AUCKLAND - The Covid-19 crisis in Papua New Guinea is deepening as the country's main hospitals are increasingly swamped by cases.

When the government earlier this year decided the country must learn to live with the virus, health authorities scaled back testing and reporting.

Livae Nanjikana and Junior Qoloni now have to get the paperwork out of the way after 29 days lost at sea (Photo - Denyse Ealedona)

JARED KOLI
| Solomon Islands broadcasting Corporation

PORT MORESBY - Two Solomon Islands' men missing for 29 days until rescued off the coast of East New Britain 10 days ago are now in Port Moresby awaiting repatriation.

Mary Walenenea, second secretary with the Solomon Islands high commission in Papua New Guinea, said the men, Livae Nanjikana and Junior Qoloni, are staying at the embassy.

David Inau - "Only birds can fly. But having a man in the machine was fascinating"

SCOTT WAIDE

Captain David Inau, CEO of Sunbird Aviation in Vanimo and a pioneering Papua New Guinean Army aviator, died in Port Moresby on Sunday after being medically evacuated from Boram. He was in the second group of Papua New Guineans to train as PNG Defence Force pilots in Australia in the mid-1970s and in 1979 became the first Papua New Guinean to fly solo in a Machi jet. Journalist Liam Fox has commented on how, in his later career with the PNG Accident Investigation Commission, he “transformed it into a competent, professional outfit”. The article that follows was written by Scott Waide in September 2017 for the Inspirational Papua New Guineans website – KJ

LAE - As a six-year-old, David Inau, watched the legendary American flying Bishop, Leo Arkfeld,   transport supplies and other cargo into some of the most remote parts of East Sepik.

At that tender age, the young David decided he wanted to fly planes.

William Shakespeare Redux - “Some are born leaders, some achieve leadership, some have leadership thrust upon them and some do purchase it”

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY – A much quoted aphorism on the internet comes from William Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night. “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them,” the bard wrote.

What Shakespeare was writing about in 1601 was inherited leadership, such as that of the aristocracy, and the play is, appropriately for our times, framed in a context of a dying society crumbling into decay.

Logs stacked for export in Vanimo (Ed Davey,  Global Witness)

DESMOND BUTLER
| The Washington Post

WASHINGTON - The police drove into the Papua New Guinean village of Watwat in SUVs during a rainstorm.

It was late on a July night in 2019, and they’d come through the rainforest, armed with guns and metal bars.

Men and teenage boys were dragged out of bed, beaten and thrown into the mud.

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE – Much of yesterday’s fine polemic by Bernard Corden and Keith Jackson, Our impure Ozocracy is beginning to buckle, rang all too true for me, as did Barry Jones’ Citizens must rescue Australia’s wobbly democracy.

Jones is right, only we as citizens can change anything.

Barbara Angoro is in the home run of a PhD in pharmacology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand

BARBARA ANGORO
| Duressi’s Odyssey

AUCKLAND - In October last year the term ‘drug repurposing’ became known in Papua New Guinea after a company, Niugini Biomed Ltd, stated it was developing its own Covid-19 drug.

As a person with a keen and professional interest in drug development and clinical studies, I’m eager to find out what happened to this proposal by my fellow Papua New Guineans.

NEWS DESK
| K92 Mining

KAINANTU - K92 Mining has donated K100,000 to Femili PNG to support its work in eradicating family and sexual violence in Papua New Guinea.

‘’We have been in operation for four years and, for us as a new company, we want to be able to support social issues and agendas,” said K92 vice-president Philip Samar.

Brigadier General Jack D Ripper (Sterling Hayden) in 'Dr Strangelove', a black comedy directed, produced, and co-written by Stanley Kubrick (1964)

BERNARD CORDEN & KEITH JACKSON

“It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil” - Anthony Burgess

“Your Commie has no regard for human life. Not even his own” – Brigadier General Jack D Ripper (Dr Strangelove)

“Mr President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks” - General 'Buck' Turgidson (Dr Strangelove)

Australia's House of Representatives. Barry Jones was science minister from 1983-90

BARRY JONES
| John Menadue’s Pearls & Irritations
| Edited extracts

MELBOURNE - Only an active citizenry can prevent Australia sliding towards authoritarianism or populist democracy.

Democracy faces its greatest existential crisis since the 1930s. Hitler used democratic forms to come to power in Germany but rejected the democratic ethos.

Filmmakers Alexandre Berman and Olivier Pollet - "Ophir is an evocative re-telling of the Bougainville conflict and its legacy over the past two decades"

CATHERINE WILSON
| Pacific Journalism Review

Ophir: Decolonize. Revolutionize, directed by Alexandre Berman and Olivier Pollet. Arsam International/Fourth World Films/Ulster University. 2020. 97 minutes. Link here to read and see more about 'Ophir'

CANBERRA - In Ophir, a feature length documentary film about the Bougainville civil war of 1989-1998, French filmmakers Alexandre Berman and Olivier Pollet analyse the devastating conflict and under-reported repercussions which continue to reverberate in the region today.

Ophir in the Old Testament (Genesis 10; 1 Kings 10:22) is a land of great mineral wealth exploited by King Solomon.

In eastern Papua New Guinea, the people of Bougainville also claim Ophir to be the original name of their remote islands.

Sir Robert Woods served in the PNG judicial system for 30 years and held pivotal roles in PNG and regional scouting

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA - Sir Robert Kynnersley Woods CBE (1939-2021), a former national and supreme court judge in Papua New Guinea, died in Wellington, NSW, on 23 September aged 81 after a short illness.

Sir Robert had a distinguished career in the PNG judicial system for 30 years from 1970-2000, including as a judge from 1982-99, and in 2001 was appointed a judge of the district court of NSW.

The Manus detention centre in October 2017 ahead of its closure

STEFAN ARMBRUSTER
| SBS News | Extract

BRISBANE - The end to eight years of Australia's detention of asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea has raised concerns for the United Nations' refugee agency and the Australian Human Rights Commission.

The AHRC has questioned whether the Australian government is able to relinquish full responsibility for more than 120 detainees who remain in PNG while still adhering to rights and refugee treaty obligations.

YAMIN KOGOYA

CANBERRA – Two Melanesian leaders recently addressed the 76th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York: Papua New Guinea's prime minister James Marape and Vanuatu's prime minister Bob Loughman.

Both expressed concern about human rights issues in West Papua. In Marape’s case this took only 30 seconds of a 42-minute address while Loughman spent several minutes taking a more assertive approach.

Lost on their boat in the Solomon Sea for 29 days, Livae & Junior were rescued by a lone fisherman

JARED KOLI
| Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation

HONIARA - Livae Nanjikana and Junior Qoloni have beaten big odds in surviving 29 days lost at sea on a 400 km drift from Solomon Islands until their rescue off the coast of West New Britain last Saturday.

The intended trip already had its risks, a 200 km sea journey in a 24-foot open raebo (ray boat) driven  by a single 60 horsepower Yamaha outboard.

KEITH JACKSON

AUCKLAND – ‘Pacific Journalism Review: Te Koakoa’, a peer-reviewed journal examining media issues and communication in the South Pacific, Asia-Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, has made a welcome return to publication after an enforced absence.

Founded by academic and journalist Dr David Robie in 1994 at the University of Papua New Guinea, it was later published at the University of the South Pacific and from 2007-2020 by the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology.

Win Nicholas - "The number of deaths is unprecedented. We haven’t seen deaths like this before"

WIN NICHOLAS
| DevPolicy Blog

“Unbelievably too many unprecedented deaths of the loved ones. My heartfelt condolences to the grieving family in this time of sorrow” - recent Facebook post by one of Win’s friends

“Prominent public servants that have spent countless years serving this beautiful province, Enga, are dying.… Over the last one week, we have lost six people that have dedicated their entire life, with kids growing up as Engans. God have mercy on us” - recent Facebook post by one of Win’s friends

PORT MORESBY – Many people aren’t tested, but I personally suspect we are seeing Covid-induced deaths.

Some we definitely know are Covid-19 – one of my colleagues was tested, had Covid and died.

Some of the controversial and much unused Maseratis. It's said spare parts may be a problem in PNG but those street mechanics will turn their hands to that

ASIA NEWS DESK
| British Broadcasting Corporation

LONDON - Papua New Guinea has admitted making a ‘terrible mistake’ after struggling to sell a £4.2m (K20 million) fleet of luxury cars bought to impress politicians during a meeting of regional leaders.

The then-O’Neill government boasted the Maseratis would be snapped up after being used for the 2018 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference.

Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park in South Australia. Phil Fitzpatrick found this country more to his liking than a city teeming with consultants

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - After leaving Papua New Guinea I went to work for the South Australian Museum in a new unit responsible for Aboriginal heritage legislation.

There were less than a dozen of us and shortly after I arrived we were shifted from the museum to a warehouse with attached offices out in the suburbs.

It was a decidedly casual arrangement and on most days when I wasn’t doing fieldwork I turned up at the office in shorts and tee shirt.