PNG's problematic rush to independence
06 February 2025
PAUL OATES
CLEVELAND - Fifty or so years ago, many of us who worked in Papua New Guinea and were acquainted with its new leaders had mixed feelings about what seemed to be a rush to independence.
In 1975, there was certainly hope for the future and good wishes for our Papua New Guinean friends. But there was also a feeling that what was offered to PNG was a sugar coated pill that contained a more bitter reality.
This especially applied to us who worked with people in rural and remote areas. We feared that the rapid handover of power had been sold to the small Indigenous elite as a relief from the claimed tyranny of colonialism.
Most of the then three million population had never experienced what independence was like, although political education was an important part of the role of many expatriate personnel.
But none of us could escape the truth that the reins of power were being handed to a set of virtually unsuspecting young players. It was a scenario that made many of us apprehensive.
We were happy to see our friends offered a future they had some control over but we were also aware of the traps and pitfalls of power and the nature of human frailty.
Fifty years ago, many of the young leaders of PNG had a starting point from which to move forward but they had not been given the opportunity of much practical experience in governance. The reins of power had been mostly untouched.
No person should claim moral ascendancy when it comes to effective government. Current world examples abound.
As Busa Jeremiah Wenogo wrote recently, George Santayana got it right when he noted that those who turned their back on history were doomed to repeat it.
The people who had forced PNG’s young leaders to accept independence in 1975 were blind to anything but their own selfish desires and turned their face away from hundreds of years of acquired history.
The nature of the law and governance of the new nation was distant from PNG’s collective history and experience.
That said, it is a magnificent achievement that PNG has remained a democracy over those 50 years, albeit with some notable wobbles. This record of stability says a lot for the future.
PNG’s leaders have with some success have played catch-up over a relatively very short space of time.
So congratulations Papua New Guinea on your impending fiftieth birthday.
I'm with Will on this issue, which. as most readers will know, has been subjected to interminable debate for more than 50 years (and which well may continue even when we who were there are well out of the way).
Australia was threading a fine needle in PNG when Whitlam proposed the 1975 date to Somare. The Highlands people (and people in remote communities everywhere in the two territories) did need more time for Australian expertise to remain in place. But in Papua (with Papua Besena) and particularly on the Gazelle Peninsula (Mataungan Association) and in central and south Bougainville (Napidakoe Navitu), the demand for early independence (or secession) was already generating serious civil strife even as Whitlam and Somare's conversation was overheard by security personnel at the Sepik Motel.
A large chunk of Australia-funded expatriate expertise in PNG departed with unseemly haste in the couple of years around September 1975. A more thoughtful, more mature and better informed approach would have kept the date of Independence but retained expert personnel in the new country for a longer period until mutually agreed development goals were achieved.
Wiser heads were required to temper the impetuous enthusiasm of Somare and Whitlam.
Posted by: Keith Jackson | 17 February 2025 at 04:03 PM
It is certainly true to say that on the whole PNG was not ready to be independent in 1975.
Apart from a handful of Indigenous leaders, there was very little demand for cutting the colonial cord, least of all in the Highlands which had the bulk of the population.
The move for independence was first mooted by Gough Whitlam in 1970, the date recorded in a speech he gave in Port Moresby at the Independence Day ceremony when commenting (to Michael Somare) on the security arrangements:
"In fact, I haven't felt so well protected since our first meeting five and a half years ago, January 1970, in the lounge of the Sepik Motel in Wewak.
"The Australian security eavesdropped on our subversive talk and well they might, for we were talking about early self-government and early independence for Papua New Guinea.
"We brought great criticism, even ridicule and contempt, upon us in those far off days a whole five and a half years ago when together we first stated that the independence of Papua New Guinea was imminent and inevitable."
In essence, the real motive for independence was that it was considered to be in Australia's best interests to no longer be categorised as a 'colonist' by the international community.
I have long felt that Australia's biggest mistake in planning PNG for independence was its failure to negotiate a long term transitional treaty whereby Australia would continue to provide practical 'on-the-ground' support in the key areas of health, education, law and order, communications and economic development.
This could have included retaining experienced Australian public servants, paid by Canberra but subservient to PNG departmental heads, which would have given more time for local officers at intermediate and senior levels to carry out their responsibilities.
The 'Kiap System' served PNG extremely well until self-government, but in my view was not a practical or appropriate system post-independence and should have been subjected to intense scrutiny by the Constitutional Planning Committee, set up in 1973.
For governance at local levels, the CPC recommended the establishment of provincial governments, which in turn presided over local level governments.
By 1973 the traditional functionality of kiaps was largely diminished: no longer required in urban centres and really only useful on outstations in the lesser developed rural parts of the country.
Unlike their expatriate colleagues, local kiaps often experienced difficulties from pressures placed on them due to the 'wantok' system, which bedevils public servants and politicians at all levels to this very day, and has been a major factor in the curse of endemic corruption that has led to the breakdown of government services to the people.
It is hard to say if things might have turned out differently if Australia had not made that headlong rush to grant independence to PNG in 1975, hindsight is a wonderful thing.
But there's no doubt in my mind that, in contrast to the great achievements in its overall administration of PNG prior to 1973, it certainly failed PNG badly in the transition phase to independence.
Posted by: Will Muskens | 17 February 2025 at 02:20 PM
Obligation “…will cause the most problems if overlooked – KJ."
Oh yes, and no matter how you slice it that is not going to change – from the prime minister’s office to the remotest village. Never did, never will.
And, as you have all alluded, the sugar-coated pill transferred at independence tastes no less bitter today than it did fifty years ago.
In the words of the wise men who now struggle to remain relevant to the youth in the villages - so how?
I have long preached that 'development,' such an arrogant hand grenade of a concept, is a two-way street that starts and finishes at the remotest community.
In my opinion we will continue to fail those who have not benefited from five decades of lost opportunities by continuing to treat it as a one-way highway - too often to hell.
Posted by: Stephen Charteris | 07 February 2025 at 11:44 AM
Optimism, opportunity, obligation. Which rates first?
______
Each is worthy but the last will cause the most problems if overlooked - KJ
Posted by: Lindsay F Bond | 06 February 2025 at 01:40 PM