PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - Life on our planet is made up of complex synergies and symbiotic relationships built up over countless millennia.

Removing particular species or environmental elements from an ecological base can be catastrophic, as can adding new species or environmental elements.

Papua New Guinea is the most corrupt country in its region - a distinction nobody can be proud of (Corruption Perceptions Index)

EDDIE TANAGO
| ACT PNG!

PORT MORESBY - Papua New Guinea’s international corruption rating has slipped a further one-point, from 28 to 27, in the latest figures released by Transparency International.

This is bad news for the economy and a sad reflection on the state of our democracy.

MAHOLOPA LAVEIL
| DevPolicy Blog | Edited

PORT MORESBY - Papua New Guinea plans to conduct its fifth national census in July this year.

The last census in 2011 was considered a failure.

This means that, if this census goes ahead, the 2021 census will be the country’s first chance in more than 20 years to gather complete socio-demographic information from across the country.

James Marape

JAMES MARAPE MP
| Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea

PORT MORESBY – In the future the world will look for these five products: food (organic food from the land and fresh marine and river food); clean water; fresh air; new plant based medicines; and cleaner and cheaper energy.

These are everyday needs that everybody needs. And we have them all in total abundance here in Papua New Guinea.

HAZEL KUTKUE
| Sipikriva Girl

BRAUN - I walk past men almost wherever I go. They sit on large rocks that somehow end up on the roadside. They lean against power poles, rusted in the winds of time.

Whenever I walk past men, I have to be decent. If I am ‘not decent’, I will be the subject of stares directed at my ‘indecency’.

Shipments of many books to PNG, including some of great importance, are being delayed because of thefts from the postal service

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - Amazon in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom and Amazon’s other international outlets say they won't ship to Papua New Guinea because too many orders go missing.

PNG is among a number of countries that Amazon won't ship to because of this problem.

Publicly Amazon says this is related to Covid-19, but when you question the company about individual shipments it admits the real problem is the loss or theft of shipments.

Deborah Ruth Telek says right thinking Papua New Guineans would say no to the BioMed Covid drug proposal

DEBORAH RUTH TELEK
| My Land, My Country

PORT MORESBY - We cannot even get National Agriculture Quarantine and Inspection Authority accredited laboratories up and running around Papua New Guinea for testing.

These labs are used for testing water supply and processed food samples for public safety.

SCOTT WAIDE
| My Land, My Country

LAE - If you don't like the state of the country, commit yourself to changing it.

You don't have to be in politics to do it. If there is trash outside your fence, pick it up.

White supremacists  empty-headedly claim ethnic diversity is equivalent to white genocide

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - Just like Australia, the USA is a migrant nation. In both cases the racial and cultural diversity of both populations has contributed to both the wealth and vibrancy of their societies.

While Australia is home to the world's oldest continuous culture dating back at least 65,000 years it is now also home to a people who identify with more than 270 different ancestries.

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - Those of us who went to Papua New Guinea, especially in the 30 years after World War II, were motivated by many things.

For me and many others who became kiaps or didimen or tisa or mastamak,* it was a sense of adventure combined with curiosity about what was then, and remains today, a culture quite unlike our own.

The murdered Tari student and his grieving schoolmates

SHILA YUKULI PAIA

ADELAIDE – We have joined in grief with students of Tari Secondary School to mourn the loss of a young man, inspired to be educated and become a leader, whose life was cut short - slaughtered in the name of tribal revenge.

Hela proudly became a separate province of Papua New Guinea in May 2012 and we hold in the highest respect the founding fathers for giving back to our generation the true Hela identity.

Robert Hughes

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - Robert Hughes (1938-2012) was a famed Australian art critic and historian.

Perhaps his two greatest contributions to history were a book (and related television series) in 1991 on the history of art in the late 19th and 20th centuries (from which the title of this article is taken) and a history of Australia’s convict system, ‘The Fatal Shore’ (1987).

NEWSDESK
| Pacific Media Watch

AUCKLAND - Hostile media environments in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and West Papua pose growing challenges to the Melanesian region’s democracies, says Pacific Journalism Review in its latest edition.

The New Zealand-based research journal warns that laws and cultural restrictions are providing barriers to open information and are silencing journalists.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - As an old white man who has worked with and enjoyed long standing friendships with people of colour I’ve been following the development of the Black Lives Matter phenomenon for a while now and wondering what has brought it to what appears to be a crucial point in history.

It cannot be avoided acknowledging that the issue of race is incredibly complicated. Or at least appears to be so.

A billboard advertising Justin Parker's company, Golden Valley (Australian Financial Review)

ANGUS GRIGG
| National Affairs Correspondent | The Australian Financial Review

SYDNEY - The lockdown has been good to gold. Since early February it has rallied more than 10% as investors predictably sought shelter in the precious metal during these uncertain economic times.

But some of that sheen has come off this rally in recent days after The Australian Financial Review revealed industry standards around ethical sourcing, or ‘conflict gold’, were hollow at best.

Chris Overland - "Entrenched ideas about the world die very hard"

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - Racism originates from one of the most deep seated aspects of all human cultures, which is an almost instinctive ‘fear of the other’.

I have written previously (see my comment on this article) about this phenomenon and why it made sense in the distant past and, in relation to Papua New Guinea, the not so recent past.

Black Lives Matter protest in front of the White House in Washington DC

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - The United States of America was the largest and most successful economic nation in the world by the time World War II began.

There is compelling evidence to suggest that this success was built on the back of slavery.

During the middle of the 1800s, cotton became the world’s largest commodity. The cheapest and best cotton came from the southern United States.

Agriculture Minister John Simon - swine fever was suspected in February when 336 pigs in died in Mendi

NEWS DESK
| PNG Today

PORT MORESBY - The multi-million pork industry in PNG is under threat with the African swine fever now in the country.

The swine fever is a virus which causes a hemorrhagic fever with high mortality rates in domestic pigs, killing pigs in large numbers as quickly as a week after infection.

NEWS DESK
| Transparency International

BERLIN - A regional average of 45, after many consecutive years of an average score of 44, illustrates general corruption performance stagnation across the Asia Pacific.

Despite the presence of high performers like New Zealand (87), Singapore (85), Australia (77), Hong Kong (76) and Japan (73), the Asia Pacific region hasn’t witnessed substantial progress in anti-corruption efforts or results.

Iranian refugee Hamid Kehazaei died in 2014 after contracting a leg infection in Manus that eventually left him brain dead

SIOBHÁN O'GRADY
| Washington Post

WASHINGTON DC - For the past 10 months, asylum seekers held in Australia’s controversial offshore processing centres in the Pacific islands have been able to seek transfers to Australia for urgent medical treatment.

Australian home affairs minister Peter Dutton claims the policy has helped people migrate into Australia “through the back door.” Physicians and refugee advocates say it has saved sick asylum seekers’ lives.

In the National Housing Corporation corruption is rife. The stench from those who feed off the misery of evicted  Papua New Guinean families is sickening 

SCOTT WAIDE

LAE - All the systems we put in place must serve the people.

We can pull our people out from the quagmire of poor health and low literacy. We can educate more women, reduce violence, build great infrastructure, strengthen our internal and external security.

We can be a learning hub for our Pacific neighbours with world class university campuses that use the research and the skills to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Phil Fitzpatrick - "In PNG rural communities still operate as consensus driven entities ruled by the common good"

PHIL FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - In the 1987 film, Wall Street, the central character, Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, famously says: “… greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works.”

The 1980s was the era of the ‘yuppies’ (young, upwardly-mobile professionals) during Ronald Reagan’s conservative presidency and the reign of his British equivalent, the ‘Iron Lady’, Maggie Thatcher.

In PNG there is no reliable system to provide official information to the public and this can result in turmoil, caused by citizens reacting to fake news

NEWS DESK
| Transparency International

BERLIN – ‘ORGAN HARVESTERS APPREHENDED.’ This horrifying headline reached citizens of Papua New Guinea as a viral WhatsApp alert one morning in 2019.

The alert pointed to social media posts and reported that police had detained several kidnappers.

It said the kidnappers had been abducting and murdering women and children in the capital city of Port Moresby in order to harvest and sell their organs.

Adam Smith did not envisage a world dominated by huge, impersonal corporations but understood the economic and social dangers they posed

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - Like Phil Fitzpatrick (‘Is moral capitalism even possible?’), I have been thinking about whether capitalism can ever be conducted in a moral and ethical way.

And like him, I can remember another time and place where the absence of great corporations meant capitalism worked along the lines foreseen by Adam Smith when he wrote ‘Wealth of Nations’.

PHIL FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - Leonard Fong Roka has suggested that rather than being exploited by domestic and international forces an independent Bougainville needs a form of moral capitalism to succeed and achieve its destiny.

Is such a thing as moral capitalism possible or is it too late in the day to create the conditions where such a thing might exist?

Scott Waide (standing) addresses James Marape (far right) - "Issues that we have raised and continue to raise. Blockages that need to be addressed"

SCOTT WAIDE
| My Land, My Country

On Friday morning, prime minister James Marape called members of the media and public relations practitioners to a breakfast meeting in Port Moresby. It was the first time the media was able to interact with the prime minister directly outside usual operations

PORT MORESBY - Prime minister, thank you for this opportunity to talk to you directly.

I want to raise a few issues that we have raised and continue to raise. I want to also points out blockages that need to be addressed.

Fr Giorgio Licini - "“Arrogance and a refusal to listen will isolate the big south island, leaving the smaller ones in the vast ocean with no choice but to turn to Asia"

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – A prominent Catholic priest in Papua New Guinea says Australia, as the region’s richest and biggest nation, should “lead through kindness” in the south-west Pacific and show “solidarity and inclusiveness”.

Writing in the PNG Catholic Reporter, Fr Giorgio Licini said the PNG government and civil society also have a responsibility because of their “central position among the family of nations in the Pacific [to] raise their voice regarding the current most pressing issues”.

Fr Giorgio enumerated these as Australia’s attitudes to offshore detention, refusing to acknowledge the negative environmental impact of coal burning and making “access and work difficult for other members of the Pacific family”.

President Trump tweeted, alongside pictures distributed by the Australian government, “These flyers depict Australia’s policy on illegal immigration. Much can be learned!”

ASHLEY PARK | Organisation for World Peace | Edited extracts

HOUSTON, USA - On 26 June, US president Donald Trump tweeted, along with pictures distributed by the Australian government, “These flyers depict Australia’s policy on illegal immigration. Much can be learned!”

The flyers had foreboding statements such as, “You will not make Australia home”, “You won’t be settled in Australia”, or simply, “No way.”

Australia’s immigration policy is just as, if not more, controversial than Trump’s hard-line immigration policy for the United States.

Despair and hopelessness run high on Australia’s offshore detention centres on the islands of Manus and Nauru, and many people on these islands have little hope of leaving.

Recently, Australia deliberately increased the hardship experienced by detainees, resulting in increased rates of suicide and self-harm.

Maritime drug trafficking poses huge policing challenges for South Pacific countries, monitoring ocean making up one-third of the world’s surface.

KATE LYONS | Guardian Australia

SYDNEY - It’s been dubbed the ‘crystal road’: cocaine and methamphetamines are packed into the hulls of sailing boats in the US and Latin America and transported, in increasing amounts and with increasing frequency, to Australia via Pacific countries.

As part of Guardian Australia’s international reporting team, I investigated what was causing this explosion in the use of this maritime drug highway and what impact the trade was having on the local communities the drugs passed through, for the Guardian's High Seas series.

What I found was that the trade is being driven by Australia and New Zealand's growing and very lucrative appetite for drugs - people in the two countries were consuming more cocaine per capita and paying more per gram for the drug than anywhere in the world.

The use of this drug route has led to some wild stories.

PAWA KENNY AMBAISI

PORT MORESBY – During his time in office now ousted prime minister Peter O’Neill sign off on some controversial issues like the $1.2 billion UBS loan and dismantling Task Force Sweep but he wouldn’t sign the Prostitution Act, which was a blessing for the people of Papua New Guinea.

“I commend the O’Neill government’s decision not to legalise prostitution in Papua New Guinea,” Deborah Kai of Mt Hagen wrote a letter published in The National newspaper The government, in its power and wisdom, has saved Papua New Guinea from definite destruction.

“Through not allowing prostitution, the daughters of this country have been saved from degradation. PNG has been saved from turning to prostitution and the floodgate of wickedness has been prevented from being opened.”

MEDIA STATEMENT | MEAA | Pacific Media Watch

SYDNEY - MEAA, the union for Australia’s journalists, today joined with other media organisations in calling for urgent legal changes to protect press freedom and the public’s right to know.

As a member of Australia’s Right to Know Coalition, MEAA said in a statement it welcomed the united stance taken by media organisations following the Australian Federal Police raids on the ABC and the home of a News Corporation journalist earlier this month.

MEAA chief executive Paul Murphy said the raids had solidified concerns about the impact of national security laws by seeking to stifle public interest journalism.

“The raids by the AFP earlier this month have highlighted just how vulnerable press freedom is in Australia,” Murphy said.

Could James Marape be the harbinger of PNG’s age of enlightenment, with a genuine belief in truth, justice and fairness for all

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - When I first arrived in Papua New Guinea in 1969 I was in search of excitement and adventure which, as it turned out, was not hard to find.

To the extent that I understood my primary role as a brand new liklik kiap [junior patrol officer], it was to help bring to the people of PNG peace, good government and what I unquestioningly believed to be the benefits of western civilisation.

As a single man with no money, I carried very little physical baggage with me. With the benefit of hindsight, I was carrying more than a little intellectual and philosophical baggage, which I had mostly unknowingly acquired during both my formal and informal education.

In the late 1950s and 1960s I was taught by mostly young teachers who, predominantly, were born either during or immediately after World War II.

They were the first of the so-called ‘baby boomers’ and collectively were heavily influenced by ideas about the world that had first arisen during the Enlightenment, which is usually said to have commenced around the year 1500.

The ideas they impressed upon me and my fellow students included a belief in the primacy of science as a means of acquiring real knowledge and, just as importantly, of eradicating the superstitions, fears and ignorance that had for so long afflicted humankind.

ROSA KOIAN

PORT MORESBY - We all want change and we want that change to happen quickly.

Many of us feel deprived of certain opportunities and privileges and therefore miss or forget that we are rich already.

As a country we didn’t have to struggle to become an independent democratic nation.

Beyond that we are rich with our good Papua New Guinean ways, cultures and traditions.

Our people have in them skills and talents that often are given freely.

In Port Moresby what appears to be a big salary is ripped to shreds by the reality of big city life

SCOTT WAIDE | My Land, My Country | Edited

LAE - Anyone living in Port Moresby without institutional housing, or support from relatives or parents, knows it’s an absolute nightmare.

Port Moresby is the most expensive city in the Pacific.

The rental price structure is like that in Australia and yet the wages employers’ pay don’t match the cost of living and housing is skewed towards the high end market.

Real estate companies charge a minimum K1,000 - K5,000 a week in rental. The vast majority of Papua New Guineans don’t see that kind of money in a fortnight or even six months. 

A salary of between K35,000 and K50,000 is next to impossible to live on if you have a family.

PAWA KENNY AMBIASI

PORT MORESBY - Family relationships is a hot topic. It bothers me. In the workplace and at home, I frequently think and talk about marriage and family life.

Even at public bus stops and shopping centres or while travelling, I’m always bothered. Honestly, I’m suppressed by thinking too hard on this issue.

This dilemma started after I got married in 2008. In my young life, I did not experience this phenomenon.

All I thought about, talked about and did was dream, wishing I could find out what best the world could offer me.

Sometimes I’d dream I was in a graduation hall receiving double degrees. At other times that I was a mechanical engineer or aircraft engineer. Or maybe in the hangar fixing aircraft engines.

Women police and Bryan Kramer: "I'll make it my business to stamp out gender bias and sexual harassment in the RPNGC"

BRYAN KRAMER MP | Kramer Report | Edited

MADANG – On Thursday I had the privilege to accompany prime minister James Marape and fellow ministers to inspect progress on the Australian government-funded Angau Hospital redevelopment project in Lae.

During the event, members of the Royal PNG Constabulary asked me if it was OK to take to a picture with them.

Under the leadership of Marape-Steven government, and in my capacity as police minister, our women will play a greater role in policing throughout the country.

While all members of the force face challenges in serving our country, our women in blue face unspeakable difficulties, not because of their lack of ability or performance but because of discrimination for being a woman.

Daniel and Keith with copy of Survivor and traditional Enga caps

DANIEL KUMBON

PORT MORESBY – We had quite a lunch at the Grand Papua on Friday.

By ‘we’ I mean Keith Jackson AM, who wrote the Foreword to my latest book ‘Survivor’, his lovely wife Cr Ingrid Jackson, a councillor in the shire of Noosa on Australia’s Sunshine Coast, and their son Ben, a communications specialist working with the Australian aid program in Papua New Guinea.

After we finished, the Jackson family met Hon Wera Mori, commerce minister and member for Chuave in Simbu, where Keith had come as an 18-year old to teach - and has remained a friend of PNG ever since.

Wera and Keith exchanged contact details and spoke for many minutes.

(As it happened Wera had been a student at a school at which Keith’s close friend Murray Bladwell had been principal and Keith was able to put them in touch after 50 years.)

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - I think that the article, ‘UBS loan to PNG government may have breached 15 laws’ attracted no comment from PNG Attitude readers, speaks volumes for the state of mind of ordinary Papua New Guineans.

They are now so used to hearing about the skulduggery, corruption and malfeasance of their political leaders that they no longer react to evidence of even the most egregious bad faith, self-interest or outright criminality.

I have recently read Nigel Tranter's lively book, ‘The Story of Scotland’, in which he relates in a non-academic and accessible way the centuries of chicanery, deviousness, vengeance seeking, theft and murder that are a feature of that country's historic heritage.

SCOTT WAIDE | My Land, My Country

LAE - The reason why politicians are afraid of Facebook is because it has done more in the last 10 years to hold them to account than mainstream media outlets.

Facebook has become the most important tool that provides the verification for so called infrastructure projects that MPs claim have been completed but have not.

Facebook has been used to hold the former Health Minister Puka Temu to account for the medicine shortages in the country.

KEITH JACKSON

PORT MORESBY – The final report of the PNG Ombudsman Commission into allegations of improper borrowing of a $1.239 billion loan from the Union Bank of Switzerland to purchase nearly 150 million shares in Oil Search Limited has been provided to PNG Attitude.

In its principal findings the Commission strongly criticises the conduct of prime minister Peter O’Neill, his main rival for leadership James Marape and other prominent leaders and concludes that they be investigated under the Leadership Code of the PNG constitution.

The Ombudsman Commission states the conduct of O’Neill was wrong and improper in a number of serious respects, including that he committed the government to purchase shares without the prior approval of the National Executive Council, he failed to present the loan to parliament for debate and approval and he misled the National Executive Council.

Julie Palakai - "Dressed in crisp police blues and wielding a large silver sword, she proudly marches judges, superior officers and other dignitaries - almost always male - up and down guard of honour lines"

NEWS DESK – France 24 / AFP

KOKOPO - In a nation where sexual violence is endemic, women are still targeted and attacked for witchcraft, and female representation in parliament is non-existent, police chief Julie Palakai is blazing a trail for change

The 43-year-old inspector, a domestic abuse survivor and 18-year veteran of the force, is one of the most senior female police officers in Papua New Guinea -- and is calling on the nation's women to take a stand against sexism with her.

"Women must strive and rise up against any discrimination, abuse and sexual harassment in the workplace," she tells AFP.

"For young girls who are still struggling: Do not give up but strive for the best to achieve your goals and to find a better and happy life. Nothing is impossible," she insists.

Human Rights Watch named Papua New Guinea "one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman" in a report which estimated 70% of women would be raped or assaulted in their lifetime.

Digicel tower at Barikas,  Madang Province (Amanda Watson)

TADIASI ASI

PORT MORESBY – This is my seventh month of complaining about the failure of the Digicel PNG Ltd telecommunications company to pay the rent money it owes to the landowners of its digital tower locations.

Some Digicel employees feel sorry for us and have said the people in charge of payments will ignore us and never try to help.

The clauses of the agreement we made with Digicel are clear. No such thing should happen to any of us landowners. But because landowners are simple people and can easily be tricked, they continue to ignore us and cheat us.

Only a few landowners who have help from their families and clansmen are now seeking legal advice while the one hope of the rest of us is to continue to complain at the Digicel office. But we cannot break through by complaining and therefore are losing hope.

So what we think best is to use the media to expose what is going on. Not all the people in the Digicel office are bad. Perhaps some good people there will see this and try to find out what is going on.

When everyone in Digicel knows about the problems we face, perhaps they can talk for us. When that happens, we feel our problem can be solved and the corruption and cheating will be stopped.

Eddie Tanago

EDDIE TANAGO | Act Now! campaign manager

PORT MORESBY – Our community advocacy group Act Now! is again calling on the Papua New Guinea government to publicly release the draft ICAC law it has promised will shortly be debated by Parliament.

There have been so many delays over the establishment of an Independent Commission Against Corruption that the government cannot be trusted not to have watered down its powers meaning that it may end up as just another toothless tiger.

The government has totally failed to live up to its promises in both the 2012 and 2017 Alotau Accords that it would establish an ICAC.

We have also seen this government starve the ombudsman commission, the fraud squad, the auditor general and the financial analysis and supervision unit of vital funds so their capacity to tackle corruption has been undermined.

LUCY PAPACHRISTOU | Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project

SARAJEVO - A newly-published discussion paper on corruption in Papua New Guinea’s public sector has found that low-level officials are often poorly informed about laws and regulations.

They are also under intense pressure to grant favours to businesses, politicians and clan affiliates, contributing to existing patterns of corrupt behaviour in the developing country.

The paper, ‘Governance and Corruption in PNG’s Public Service: Insights From Four Subnational Administrations’, was published this month by the Development Policy Centre, an aid and development policy think tank based out of the Australian National University in Canberra.

Its author, Dr Grant Walton, drew on interviews with 136 public servants across four provinces in PNG in an effort to fill the empirical data gap on why public officials may support or resist corruption and poor governance.

PNG tends to take a “top-down, one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to corruption,” Walton told OCCRP by phone.

TANIA NUGENT | Facebook

PORT MORESBY – Papua New Guinea, when are we going to start raising our boys right?

The truth is, incidents involving PNG males abroad happen way more often than what ends up making it into news reports and it has been happening for years and years.

Many perpetrators are dumbfounded when called in by authorities, not thinking that what they did was wrong or a big deal. “I was drunk”, “I didn’t do anything, I only touched her”, “I was only taking pictures”….

The disproportionately high number of these type of incidents abroad makes me wonder just what our males are getting away with back here in PNG.

ANGGIA ANGGRAINI BURCHILL | Development and Cooperation

PORT MORESBY - In Papua New Guinea, women and girls face high security risks. Particularly in tribal wars, they are subject to violence and displacement.

On the other hand, women play an important role in resolving conflicts and in peace-building.

PNG is a vast archipelago burdened by poverty although very rich in natural resources. In the highlands, tribal conflicts occur frequently. Women and children are particularly threatened by violence.

Traditionally, fights between tribes erupt over land disputes, the bride price of women or the possession of pigs.

Respecters of the people's land - a young Bill Brown on patrol in Papua New Guinea in the 1950s

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE – The Australian colonial administration in Papua New Guinea understood right from the outset of its rule that the concept of individual ownership of land didn't apply.

In part, this was based upon the British colonial experience elsewhere in the Pacific, like Fiji, where land was also a communally held and managed asset.

The Administration, as it was known, therefore pursued a policy of tightly controlling how land issues were managed and, in particular, demonstrated a strong general bias against acquiring land.

Given that a feature of the late European colonial era was the rapacious and violent seizure by colonists of traditional lands, it puzzled me that the Pacific colonies tended to be treated differently.

In 2013, angry people massed in their thousands at Porgera, forcing the gold and silver mine to curtail operations. One man was killed (Jethro Tulin)

PHIL FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - One of the inherent problems of western-based disciplines like anthropology, sociology, politics and history is that they tend to interpret concepts and practises in terms of their own societies and experiences.

Further than this, they have become the dominant arbiter when it comes to such interpretations.  Even non-western practitioners seem to default to western concepts as a matter of course.

And when a serious attempt is made to interpret something in a neutral way, western ideas interfere and inevitably colour the result.

If you add the western proclivity to render as much as possible into black and white rather than hues of grey the result gets even worse.

There is an argument that, because of the academic strength and reach of its canon, a western interpretation is the best way outsiders can understand what happens in non-western societies.

Blending of culture: Londari and Besini when small children, in the arms of their dad Peter Mision at Gordons Estate in Port Moresby

DANIEL KUMBON

WABAG – A message about Bougainville posted by me on my timeline and responses from my dear relatives, Gayle Tatsi and Peter Mision.

Daniel’ message

It is my personal wish that, in their referendum, the people of Bougainville do not vote to break away from the rest of Papua New Guinea.

It is better for us to remain united, especially from a family point of view.

This thought came to my mind when Londari Mision Yaki whose mother, Galye Tatsi is from the Autonomous Region of Bougainville (AROB), celebrated his 22nd birthday a few days ago.

His dad, Peter Mision Yaki, is my Aimbarep tribesman from Kondo village in Kandep, Enga Province.

All of us uncles, cousins, bubus and wantoks on both sides celebrated the occasion.

But how will this be if the majority of the Bougainville people vote for independence?

It is hard for me to imagine Londari and his sister Besini getting a passport to visit their maternal relatives.

Port Moresby squatter settlement

PHIL FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - I saw my first squatter settlement in 1967 in Mount Hagen.

The settlements around Mount Hagen in those days were nothing like the ones that came later.

Unlike their counterparts in the big towns like Port Moresby and Lae, where squatters came from other districts, they were mainly occupied by local landowners. The town was not yet big enough to have created an underclass of dispossessed landowners.

The settlers around Mount Hagen were generally made up of people who had moved in closer to the town to take advantage of its attractions and to sell the vegetables they produced in their nearby gardens.

They were, nevertheless, a hodgepodge of ramshackle buildings constructed with no thought of order.