Warime Guti - "Let us work together to create a sustainable future that values the protection of our natural resources and respects the rights and well-being of its people"

WARIME GUTI

LAE - The Papua New Guinea Environmental Alliance (PNGEA), a representative of civil society organisations, is deeply concerned about the national government’s push to establish special economic zones throughout the country.

We’re concerned about the impact of the Special Economic Zone Authority Act of 2019, legislated to identify environmentally important areas and consider the well-being of communities within and near planned zones.

Dr Bal Kama (ANU College of Law)

BAL KAMA *
| Academia Nomad

CANBERRA – The Papua New Guinea and United States governments are said to be ready (possibly this week) to sign an unprecedented security agreement enabling US forces to operate in PNG.

A draft of the agreement was leaked last week and its substance has not been denied by either government.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - The South Australian government has just finished building a new double-circuit 132kV transmission line to Port Lincoln on the Eyre Peninsula near to where I live in Tumby Bay.

The former transmission line was more than 50 years old and prone to regular breakdowns.

A few years ago the line was knocked out by a storm and people were without power for several weeks.

The Eagle and the Bear (Microsoft Bing Image Creator)

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - Along with many other people I have spent the last year or so trying to get my head around the sabre rattling that has been occurring between China and the USA, with various nervous acolytes, including Australia, standing off to the side.

Both behemoths have unsavoury human rights records and a propensity to strut their military might whenever it pleases them.

The Think Tank (Microsoft Bing Image Creator)

SIMON MASUGU

PORT MORESBY - It seems that his current troubles, serious though they are, are not bothersome enough to prevent Papua New Guinea’s foreign minister Justin Tkatchenko from attending Monday’s meeting of the Forum for India-Pacific Islands Cooperation in Port Moresby.

This will be the third summit of the grouping of India and 14 Pacific Island countries, and it is held as PNG prepares to sign a controversial Defence Cooperation Agreement with the USA.

Michael Kabuni - "We hope this case sets a precedent, so citizens can continue to hold their leaders accountable"

MICHAEL KABUNI
| Academia Nomad

PORT MORESBY – It seems that the Papua New Guinea Ombudsman Commission has received “an avalanche of complaints from the public” in relation to the Justin ‘Primitive Animals’ Tkatchenko issue and that it intends “to treat each complaint accordingly”.

This case, this saga, is different from any I’ve observed since I became interested in PNG politics. It has set itself apart from the rise of internet, and its temperamental grandchild social media, in making issues go viral.

World in Chaos (Bing Image Creator)

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - The final scene in Sean O’Casey’s 1924 Dublin play, ‘Juno and the Paycock’, ends with a drunken character dropping his last sixpence on the floor and declaring "the whole world is in a terrible state o' chassis" before passing out.

‘Chassis’ was a malapropism for ‘chaos’ and ‘paycock’ was an Irish rendering of the word ‘peacock’, which Juno liked to use to describe her layabout husband, Jack.

Jacksons International AIrport Port Moresby (peace-on-earth.org)

JOHN MENADUE
| Pearls & Irritations

SYDNEY - And the anti-China media beat-ups continue, this time over possible Chinese naval bases in the South Pacific.

The anti-China campaign never stops: Hong Kong; Xinjiang; debt traps; the tennis player Peng Shuai, who was ‘disappeared’; Covid policies that were too strict and then too permissive; a property collapse; a shrinking economy now growing too fast; and renewed beat ups about Chinese military bases in the South Pacific.

USS Oakland is on duty in waters around PNG and the Pacific Islands as AUKUS steps up activities in the region

ANDERSON TALAO

PORT MORESBY - United States president Joe Biden and Papua New Guinea’s prime minister James Marape are slated to sign a defence cooperation agreement next Monday which will give nuclear submarines and other military assets freedom of entry to PNG and the Pacific Islands.

The signing of the US-PNG Defence Cooperation Agreement will drag PNG into a military alliance with the US and Australia and give the US and its allies the right to utilise Lombrum naval base in Manus Province.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - If you speak to any of the diminishing band of old kiaps they will probably tell you that Papua New Guinea changed their lives.

In most cases they will put a positive spin on the nature of the change and tell you that being there opened their eyes to a whole new concept of society and what it meant.

However, not all could see what they were looking at.

Foreign minister Justin Tkatchenko’s response to public criticism has led to a serious question about the character of PNG's parliament - is it a chamber of mendicants controlled by kleptocratic leadership?

MICHAEL KUBANI
| Academia Nomad

PORT MORESBY – Papua New Guinea’s MPs have refrained from engaging in the debate around foreign minister Justin Tkatchenko’s “primitive animals” slur.

Many Papua New Guineans are wondering why their MPs, with few exceptions, have remained silent on the saga.

As Justin Tkatchenko clings to office, can James Marape afford to cut loose this powerful figure?

MICHAEL KUBANI
| Academia Nomad

Supplementary information by Keith Jackson

PORT MORESBY – Following his 'primitive animals' abuse of social media critics, demands are growing for Papua New Guinea’s foreign minister Justin Tkatchenko to quit his ministry or even resign from parliament.

Other people are calling for his passport to be revoked and then have him deported.

Port Moresby university students protest against foreign minister Tkatchenko, who called social media critics of his daughter “primitive animals” (Michael Tamty Pais |  Benar News)

MICHAEL KABUNI
| Academia Nomad

PORT MORESBY - Justin Tkatchenko has stepped aside as foreign affairs minister after sustained calls for him to resign.

This comes after he branded Papua New Guineans “primitive animals” for criticising his daughter’s TikTok videos showing a lavish trip to the United Kingdom funded by taxpayers’ money.

‘Sack him!’ - how the PNG Post-Courier reported the furore (screenshot by Asia Pacific Report)

CALEB FOTHERINGHAM
| RNZ Pacific | Updated

This article was republished by Cafe Pacific under a community partnership agreement with Radio New Zealand

AUCKLAND - Papua New Guinea’s foreign minister Justin Tkatchenko has  stepped aside from his position after calling critics of  his daughter, ‘primitive animals’ and ‘useless individuals’.

Savannah Tkatchenko posted a video on TikTok after attending the Coronation of King Charles III in London last week.

Microsoft Bing image creation

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY – Having reached an age well past the Biblical allotment of threescore years and 10, I’ve noticed in the scriptures there could be more – although it comes with a menace.

‘The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away’ – Psalm 90:10

Pacific Islands representation at the Coronation of King Charles III.  PNG really knows how to waste money (What's Good PNG)

MICHAEL KABUNI
| Academia Nomad

PORT MORESBY – The Papua New Guinea government has just spent K6 million on events to mark King Charles III’s Coronation at London’s Westminster Abbey.

PNG is one of a diminishing number of Commonwealth countries that have the King of England as their head of state.

We are one of the poorer countries and this waste of money needs a response.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY – When I first arrived in Papua New Guinea in the 1960s, the system of local government was not widespread, especially in remote areas.

Government reached the people in the form of interaction between Administration officers and clan leaders, officially appointed as luluais and tultuls in New Guinea and as village constables (mamusi) in Papua.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY – The cynics among us have always known that political ethics and personal ethics are not similar or indeed compatible.

It has been naively said that political ethics comes from the head while personal ethics comes from the heart.

By that is meant that political ethics are based on what seems practical while personal ethics are based on what is fair and right.

'Blackbirding' in Melanesia in the late 19th century was an approved way of stealing people's liberty to profit business. Later governments became smarfter and sold the people's property instead (State Library of Queensland)

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY, SA – In the world over, for many years now, both conservative and progressive governments have been privatising public services.

The argument runs that services like health, water, electricity, gas, transport and telecommunications can be operated much more efficiently, effectively and cheaply by business than government.

That this is a capitalist fallacy is now readily apparent.

James Marape and Joseph Lelang at the debate: Soft questioning failed to call the two leaders to account

MICHAEL KABUNI
| Academia Nomad | Edited

PORT MORESBY - Was it a debate? Maybe a panel discussion? Or perhaps a church gathering?

Whatever it was, the debate between Papua New Guinea’s prime minister James Marape and opposition leader Joseph Lelang was promoted with a massive fanfare and ended in a storm of criticism.

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - I have spent many decades studying the wise, wonderful, astonishing, strange and all too often terrible and cruel behaviours of human beings as, collectively, we have created what we call history.

One thing is obvious. History does not follow a predictable and linear trajectory by which we collectively reach progressively higher levels of economic success and enlightened civilisation.

In fact, a feature of history is how good we are at engineering the collapse of elaborate, successful and productive civilisations.

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - The last 30 years or so have been dominated by the idea that the market is the infallible distributor of goods and services, with government's essentially reduced to the role of bystanders.

An entire generation of politicians has grown up with this idea firmly in their minds, especially amongst the conservatives.

Caricature portrait of Paul Keating c 1984 by John Spooner (National Library of Australia)

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - Despite my increasing aversion to the 24 hour news cycle, and after the resultant negative pile-on by what passes for the media in Australia, I couldn’t help but be lured to view an interview with Paul Keating at the National Press Club on Wednesday.

Keating has an impressive intellect and an acerbic wit, which was fine-tuned even in his first days as a young Labor Party MP in the late 1960s and had become well-honed when he became Australia’s prime minister in 1991.

He also has always had his finger very firmly on the pulse of Australian and international politics.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - A lot of my friends, most of whom are elderly, tell me they’ve given up watching, listening to or reading the news.

So too have some of my younger acquaintances, including my son and daughter in their early forties.

The general consensus is that it’s all too depressing.

SIMON DAVIDSON

PORT MORESBY  - Great leaders have vision. They dream of a better future.

An Engan leader who had a great vision was the later Malipu Balakau. He has a grand vision to change Enga Province.

His vision of change was embedded in his captivating  political speeches. He is said to have uttered his spellbinding speeches during his numerous campaigns.

“Poh mende ailyah lo epesamo ongo, namabame poh lo ono lo pena laro.” The wind that is blowing upwards, I will make the wind blow backwards.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - Michael Dom and Paul Oates took issue with a comment I made about ethics and religion following an article by Chris Overland about the inexorable rise of stupidity in the 21st century, ‘The inexorable rise of the 21st century stupid’.

In my comment I wrote that you don’t “necessarily need religions to decide on what is right and what is wrong. All you need is a functioning brain."

Karl Marx and the title page from the first edition of Capital, 1867: "Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks"

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE – As Phil Fitzpatrick has written (‘Has the internet brought out the worst in us?’), the internet has indeed held up a mirror to us all.

It is hard to like much of what we see.

Greed, exploitation, lies and stupidity abound.

Neo-liberal capitalism is a system lurching into crisis.

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - I am sure Phil Fitzpatrick is correct when he writes that Australia could have been a better coloniser.

That said though, I am sure that Australia was very far from the worst colonial power in history.

In my estimation, Australia's colonial model was perhaps the most fundamentally benign version devised during the European imperial era.

Asian Cup football final at Stadium Australia, 2015 - sport is a great comforter for Australians who feel the world has gone awry (Austadiums)

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - Even though any objective survey of modern Australian politics leads to despondency, we should bear in mind that the two biggest spending political parties performed rather badly at the last election.

Also, perhaps we should bear in mind that spending by our political parties is dwarfed by the colossal sums spent in the USA, where money doesn't just talk, it positively shrieks.

Photo by Towfiqu Barbhuiya on Unsplash

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - My next door neighbours are quite elderly, more so than me even, and I occasionally help them with stuff that goes wrong in their house, leaking taps and suchlike.

A recent endeavour involved unblocking the drain beneath their kitchen sink.

Papua New Guinea's prime minister James Marape greets his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese (PNG Business News)

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – It’s always good to see Rowan Callick’s byline in The Australian or anywhere else, and the other day it was a delight to read the commentary that followed.

Callick’s an excellent journalist - a former Australian Journalist of the Year with a couple of Walkley Awards and three books to his credit.

Winnie Kiap CBE, PNG’s ambassador to the United Kingdom from 2011-22, and nominee for Governor-General

KELA KAPKORA SIL BOLKIN

PORT MORESBY - The position of Governor General in Papua New Guinea becomes vacant in February as Grand Chief Bob Dadae’s six-year tenure comes to an end.

In the history books, Sir Bob will be remembered as the only PNG Governor-General who served under the reign of both Queen Elizabeth ꓲꓲ and King Charles ꓲꓲꓲ.

And on Thursday his successor will be elected by the PNG parliament.

There has been much discussion in PNG recently about which women would qualify to be the first to hold this high office. Winnie Kiap is a leading contender.

KEITH JACKSON

“It’s almost like there’s a political will for Covid to go away, and it hasn’t gone away. So we’re just not going to really talk about it anymore” - Independent federal MP, Rebekha Sharkie

NOOSA - The pandemic has to be getting worse. It has to be getting worse because there are no serious public health steps being taken to halt its progress.

On the contrary, public health measures have been diminished. 'You Do You' is the new, trite, slogan of how our leaders see Australians' health being managed.

Even the much vaunted vaccines are waning in their ability to protect. If you can get them in the first place. The federal government seems to have lost interest.

PHILIP KAI MORRE

KUNDIAWA - Youth in Papua New Guinea is a time bomb that our country is adding in its drift towards anarchy.

Even as far back as the 2011 national census, 60% of PNG’s estimated population of 7.3 million was aged under 25.

It is clear that if the PNG government does not focus on the youth population now, the future prospects of the whole country will be saturated by failure.

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - Across many parts of the world people are enjoying - or enduring - the Christmas season.

This Christian celebration has long been stripped of its religious meaning in most of the capitalist Western world.

At best, it is a time for people to get together and enjoy the company of their family and friends.

But mostly it is a time too often devoted to over indulgence and conspicuous consumption.

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - We ought not to regard China as a direct military threat. It makes no strategic or practical sense to do so. After all, we willingly sell them the resources they need from us.

They have long ago worked out that, in our neo-liberal capitalist system, money speaks much more loudly than ethics, morality or patriotism.

I also agree that we should avoid being dragged into ugly regional wars, especially those premised upon the idea that democracy can be successfully exported.

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA –In an explosive article, a prominent Australian journalist has said the seven-month old Albanese Labor government is already “letting its moral mandate wither away”.

Jack Waterford, a much admired former editor of The Canberra Times, now a regular contributor to the Pearls and Irritations website, says Albanese has been excessively slow in building momentum for change and seems oblivious of the urgent need for it.

Waterford observes that “administrative reform is in the doldrums and focused on rhetorical fluff” and “there is no talk about accountability, individual and collective responsibility, or about moral cowardice”.

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - Dennis Argall, Australia’s former ambassador to Beijing and Washington, has written recently on the breakdown of USA's power as the defining feature of our strategic environment. 

I agree with a great deal of what he has written, however, I think that has not demonstrated that China is not bent upon becoming the world’s most dominant and influential power.

He does not pay sufficient regard to the rhetoric coming from within the Chinese Communist Party about China’s destiny to resume its natural place as the world’s foremost power.

YAMIN KOGOYA

“We are part of them and they are part of us,” declared politician Augustine Rapa, founder and president of Papua New Guinea’s Liberal Democratic Party.

Rapa was speaking in Port Moresby on 1 December at the 61st anniversary of the struggle for independence in West Papua.

Rapa’s statement was in response to PNG police who arrived at the anniversary celebration and attempted to prevent Papuans from the other side of the colonial border from commemorating this significant national day.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - In the late 4th or early 5th century AD, in the dying days of the Roman Empire, some Irish raiders captured a young bloke called Patrick from his home in Britain and took him to Ireland as a slave.

It turned out to be a big mistake.

After six years as a slave, Patrick escaped and returned to Britain where he trained to be a Christian cleric.

JOHN KURI

PORT MORESBY - If Julie Bishop was from Papua New Guinea I reckon she would have started her opening address with, “Stay where you are, you have a lot going for you but you don’t seem to know it.”

But fortunately and unfortunately she did not.

Fortunately because the grand occasion of the investment conference at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney was probably geared to hear her telling PNG the truth. (Although a version of her comments which seems to be untrue went viral in PNG.)

MICHAEL DOM

"Those who cling to perceptions and views wander the world offending people" - Siddhartha Gautama, The Buddha (c 563-483 BCE)

"These ideals include the belief that security derives from respect for universal human rights, that wealth means well-being, that individual health corresponds to a healthy environment, that mental health is affected by experience of citizen interdependence and solidarity. Democracy depends on security derived from human rights-based policies to promote equality" – Stuart Rees in John Menadue Pearls & Irritations, quoted by Philip Fitzpatrick

LAE - Nope. Poor ideals to me.

Regardless of democracy I don't think life works that way in reality, and it's likely that Costa Rica would not work without the CIA and Uncle Sam up north.

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - It was Lord Palmerston who first said, in a speech to the British House of Commons on 1 March 1848, that Britain had ‘no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.’

This axiom ought to be the guiding principle for Australian diplomacy and, in fact, I think it has been since 14 March 1942, when prime minister John Curtin stated that Australia turned to America for support and advice in confronting the Japanese peril in the Pacific.

Our relationship with the US has endured since that time and, as Phil Fitzpatrick has rightly pointed out, we have usually acted loyally if sometimes unwisely to support our ‘great and powerful friend’.

MATHIAS KIN
| Facebook

KUNDIAWA - There was some doubt in the sixties about how a country of 800 different tribes speaking 800 languages would come together under one united government.

These feelings were expressed freely by Australians as well as New Guineans.

Many expressed that New Guineans themselves were not developed and that the economy and infrastructure were not ready for self-rule.

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE – It seems indisputable that the ruling and business elites have given up on climate change.

By their calculus, the potential cure (massive decarbonisation and an associated massive restructuring of the economy) is much worse than the disease because it will necessarily restrict their ability to make a great deal of money.

Also, to be brutally honest, citizens in the developed world are not going to accept a conscious decision to embrace a life in which there is much less ‘stuff’.

BILL BROWN MBE

SYDNEY - I read ‘The Forgotten Australian Patrol Officers’ by Luke Gosling OAM MP and wondered who had misled him and who determined that the majority of kiaps supported a memorial for kiaps.

I am one of the former kiaps who think the memorial concept is a nonsense.

Distinguished former kiaps like Harry West and Fred Kaad have departed, but they did not support the push for either a medal or a memorial.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - There are vast numbers of volunteers out there in the community. They are all doing good work and most will derive a lot of personal satisfaction from this.

Very few of them expect monetary recompense for what they do. Or even recognition.

These factors distinguish them from what we normally regard as the impulse that drives philanthropy.

PAUL OATES

CLEVELAND – It’s very clear that Australia’s political system is fractured and no one has any idea how to fix it.

We’ve been watching the watering down of a new Integrity Commission. Both sides of politics – Labor and Liberal National – conspired to do that. What have they got to hide?

A huge credibility gap seems to have silently snuck up on us old timers.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY – This may surprise you, but it’s a statement of truth: Many countries we term ‘developing’ don’t need development to create democracy.

And this is because traditional societies in countries like Papua New Guinea were always democratic, possibly more so than countries like Australia and the USA which boast about their democracies.

What these former colonised countries now need are governments that uphold the democracies they once knew.

Whilst I hold Australia rather than China most responsible for the tension, our media has played a big part in promoting hostility. It has been a shameful performance from many ‘senior’ journalists and I don’t exclude ABC journalists with their attack dog style

JOHN MENADUE
| Pearls & Irritations

SYDNEY - The meeting between president Xi Jinping and prime minister Anthony Albanese could result in an overdue improvement in relations between China and Australia.

Real improvements will take time and a lot of goodwill. (But will deputy prime minister Richard Marles be a stumbling block?)