STEPHEN CHARTERIS

CAIRNS – I was particularly struck by the recent observations of Dr Chris McCall and author Nick Brown (in Phil Fitzpatrick’s review of his latest book).

Their observations of discovering some of life's grim realities provided by salient insights into the shallow ignorance of what former US president Donald Trump contemptuously referred to as “shithole countries”.

Scott Morrison feels vulnerable - a national election is due and a majority of Australia's population of 17 million is unhappy. Greater power accrues to the people when politicians become exposed

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - The many and obvious failings of various Western democracies have been on vivid display over the last two years.

Whilst it is fair to criticise our political elites for their incompetence, misjudgement and venality, we who vote for them might take pause to consider the extent to which we are also culpable.

When PNG became a nation in 1975, it had high hopes of building a better society and Michael Somare seemed to be the right leader to do it

KELA KAPKORA SIL BOLKIN

PORT MORESBY – I want to talk about the kind of people who aspire to be national leaders and what might make them good leaders or not.

Leaders shape our local level governments, districts, provinces and ultimately our entire nation.

But the poor results on the ground are evidence that many of them, perhaps most of them, have not served our people well.

'David Gulpilil Two Worlds' by Craig Ruddy, Winner 2004 Archibald Prize (NSW Art Gallery)

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - We in the West tend to judge people of other cultures in terms of our own values. We do this because we are conceited and assume that our values are superior to theirs.

This conceit was a fundamental ingredient in Australia’s past colonial experience and still informs how we relate to nations like China and India.

NEWS DESK
| ACT NOW

PORT MORESBY - Research into prosecutions for corruption in Papua New Guinea reveals that, despite the enormous extent of the misappropriation of public funds, only a tiny number of officials have ever been charged and almost none has been convicted or imprisoned.

This failure is likely one reason PNG shows no signs of overcoming its unenviable reputation as one of the most corrupt nations in the world, and why allegations remain rife of corruption involving political leaders, the powerful and the wealthy.

A study of three PNG companies revealed that gender-based violence cost them about K7.3 million a year

EVONNE KENNEDY & SHABNAM HAMEED
| DevPolicy Blog | Edited extracts

PORT MORESBY - Evidence has emerged that the private sector in Papua New Guinea can play a key role in responding to gender-based violence, and that doing so makes good business sense.

Research by the International Finance Corporation, in partnership with the Business Coalition for Women, has found that a gender-balanced workforce, and appropriate workplace responses to family and sexual violence, can provide benefits to businesses and their employees.

LUKE PEARSON
| IndigenousX

SYDNEY - I run a media, training and consultancy company called IndigenousX. It is 100% Indigenous owned and staffed.

We work on local, regional, national, and international projects; we run training workshops on anti-racism, digital strategies, and media training.

Fiame Naomi Mataafa (UN Women,  Ellie van Baaren)

KERRYN BAKER
| ANU Reporter

CANBERRA - In April, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa caused the political equivalent of an earthquake for Samoa.

The long-serving and immensely popular politician had taken on a political powerhouse in the country’s national election – and won.

MICHAEL DOM

LAE - How do we return Papua Niugini to a culture of Melanesian cooperation and how can the common people make those in power behave responsibly?

According to the evolutionary perspective, the birthplace of democracy was the tribe. Indeed, tribalism is sometimes referred to as ‘primitive democracy’.

The unfinished K200 million Boroko casino. Arguments continue on a project that went bust in 2011 (TIPNG)

KEITH JACKSON

PORT MORESBY - National Gaming Control Board (NGCB) chairman Clemence Kanau says the regulator never had aspirations to run Port Moresby’s casino.

Kanau also dismissed claims by failed Boroko Casino developer, South Korean company CMSS PNG, that it had met all the requirements to establish the casino.

James Marape - "“For the first 10 or 15 years we want overseas commissioners and not Papua New Guineans"

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA - There had been indications from Papua New Guinea’s prime minister last year of this stunning change of heart, but now the idea has expanded and shared with Australia.

In a recent meeting with Australian High Commissioner Jon Philp,  James Marape disclosed that he favoured a foreign official heading the much-awaited Independent Commission Against Corruption.

"Narratives evoking a sense of chaos in PNG, particularly by Australians, are not new"

KYLIE MCKENNA, SENALA MORONA & COONIEBHERT SAMGAY
| Divine Word University | DevPolicy Blog

MADANG - Covid-19 appears the latest instalment in outsider narratives of Papua New Guinea as a ‘failed’, ‘weak’ or ‘fragile’ state.

In April 2020, for example, with only eight cases of Covid-19 in the country, Australian journalists capitalised on the opportunity to put PNG on the failed-state precipice.

The Kundal family in happy times

DANIEL KUMBON

PORT MORESBY - When his daughter-in-law Annie ran away from her family for the fourth time, Johannes Kundal felt that was enough.

He just wanted Annie to be free. He did not know that Archie, his grandson, had also urged his mother to go and not return.

Port Moresby blackout (PNG Loop)

MICHAEL KABUNI
| Academia Nomad

WAIGANI - For three consecutive weeks, electricity in Papua New Guinea’s capital has blacked out in the evenings.

But this is not unusual for Port Moresby, a city dubbed ‘one of the least livable cities in the world’ by The Economist intelligence unit’s Global Liveability Index in the same week.

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA - The Australian government has been in real disarray recently as it struggles with the case of asylum seekers Priya and Nades Murugappan and their two Australian-born daughters, Kopika and Tharnicaa, whose plight again became a matter of great public concern.

The latest drama involving this family occurred when four-year old Tharnicaa became seriously ill and, accompanied by her mother, was flown to Perth after pneumonia turned into sepsis and there were fears she might otherwise die.

Annie at Vision City - “Archie was only 12 and still needed me, but he gave me the courage to escape from my abusive husband”

DANIEL KUMBON

PORT MORESBY – Archie Iso Kundal loves his mother very much but, as a small child, was frequently distressed to see his abusive father, Ismael, habitually beat her.

The two small boys would often see their mother lock herself in a room and cry while nursing her wounds.

So one day Archie told his mother to escape, return to her people at Kerema and not come back to Wabag until he and his brother Victor were old enough to defend her.

The hills of Port Moresby - waiting to be fought over

AG SATORI

PORT MORESBY – Two thousand people from Portion 695 of the ATS settlement are seeing their homes and gardens destroyed even as lawyers seek to determine whether further legal action may be possible.

It is not clear if the Papua New Guinea courts will allow an inquiry into how the ATS settlement titles were obtained in the first place.

The destruction of ATS Portion 695 (@nayahamui)

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – A stark report has revealed a humanitarian crisis developing at the ATS settlement in Port Moresby as long-standing residents are evicted.

A Twitter string from from Nayahamui Supowes (@nayahamui) estimates that 2,000 people have been displaced from Portion 695 of the settlement.

SCOTT WAIDE
| My Land, My Country

LAE - Opening a large casino in Port Moresby is a dangerous and destructive move. The harm it will cause will be greater on our country will be more than the good it will supposedly bring.

We don’t need that kind of development. There is a time for it, but now is not that time.

The Coral Sea Resort Casino in Honiara

PHILIP KAI MORRE
| Social Worker & Addiction Counsellor

PORT MORESBY - Gambling is a disease of addiction that can have every family member suffering from its effects.

Casinos are highly organised gambling. Gambling for corporate profit.

ANALOGY BY THE AVISAK N'GEGOS

The chiefs of 49 villages along the Avisak [Sepik River] together with Save the Sepik have organised 408 clans and 51 n’gegos [haus tambaran] into a united nation working to reject the proposed PanAust Frieda River mine

SEPIK RIVER - The Frieda River gold and copper mine can be likened to a vehicle.

When it first started, and was in the exploration stage, we the people of Avisak would see helicopters buzzing and whooshing across the sky almost every day, back and forth across the project site.

Censored image. The photo of Uiaku schoolgirls was taken by PJ Money in 1908 (Australian Museum)

MOSTAFA RACHWANI
| Guardian Australia

SYDNEY - Facebook has been accused of “discriminatory and racist” behaviour after it deleted historical photos from a group that publishes archival photos of men and women from Papua New Guinea.

The group, which boasts over 55,000 members, claims photos showing traditional dress or ceremonies were deleted for allegedly containing nudity – but photos showing nudity among white people were not.

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA - In early May, Papua New Guinea prime minister James Marape seemed to move with lightning speed to stop a developer evicting residents and destroying homes at Port Moresby’s ATS settlement.

It was an illusion. The bulldozers moved in this morning.

BARBARA ANGORO
| Duresi’s Odyssey

AUCKLAND - I am a Papua New Guinean woman. I am mum to a beautiful young girl child, next generation PNG woman.

Each time I read about heinous crimes committed against PNG women and girls either by people known to them or strangers, it makes my mouth go dry with fear.

MIRANDA FORSYTH
| The Guardian

CANBERRA - News broke last week about the horrific attack on two women in Port Moresby after they were accused of sorcery.

Senior leaders and police in Papua New Guinea expressed outrage that such violence was occurring in the nation’s capital.

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.

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.

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.

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.

REPORT
| National Democratic Institute | Extract

Link here to the full report

The National Democratic Institute (NDI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, nongovernmental organisation that since its founding in 1983 has worked with local partners to support and strengthen democratic institutions and practices and promote citizen participation in government

WASHINGTON - Women are historically underrepresented in politics in the Pacific Islands; Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands are no exception.

At the same time, women in all three countries experience shocking levels of violence, in the home and in public.

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.