CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - The tide of history is sweeping us all along and, as usual, our predictions about where we will all end up will be mostly wrong.

In an Australian context, what used to be the Liberal Party is no longer speaking to or for what was once its base, being middle class Australians.

Instead, it is now a party composed of the more reactionary and extreme neo-liberal elements of our community.

Michael Kabuni reveals the PNG government wasted half a billion kina over five years on just some of its ‘ghost employees’ 

MICHAEL KABUNI
| Academia Nomad

PORT MORESBY - A few years back, it was revealed that a teacher at Oro Province’s rural Bareji High School had no qualifications for the job.

This year, the tireless efforts of Sunday Bulletin journalist Simon Eroro exposed that a consultant hired by the Oro Provincial Government possessed no qualifications for the job he was doing.

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA - I worked twice for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in my 22-year media career.

The first time was in Papua New Guinea between 1966 and 1970, when I wrote and produced schools broadcasts from the ABC’s studios at Boroko, which are there still, tired by age as I am.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - Over a 40 year career in public service I saw many attempts to reform the organisations that provide it.

All such efforts were aimed in increasing efficiency and productivity and usually required major reorganisations, with changes made according to the ideas or prejudices of the people driving the supposed reforms.

Michael Pascoe, Gladys Berejiklian and Darryl Maguire - "Political corruption has evolved to the extent of politicians claiming it doesn’t matter and voters expect it"

MICHAEL PASCOE
| The New Daily

SYDNEY - Evolution happens. Sometimes it’s fast, turbo-charged by an asteroid; sometimes it’s at the speed of dripping water wearing a channel through rock, but it happens.

Right now we are witnessing a high-speed evolution of political integrity in Australia.

In fairly short order, we’ve gone from a premier grabbing bags of cash and selling knighthoods, to a premier resigning over what might be a matter of diving into the pork barrel to do a mate a favour.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - This is an interesting question when you consider that Australia will be going to an election fairly soon.

The current Morrison government is irrelevant when it comes to tackling climate change.

The world is moving forward, as are our state governments and corporations, but the federal government is still pathetically twiddling its thumbs.

Dr Joe Ketan - "The failed government systems have set PNG back many years – this time back to the stone age" (DWU)

JOE KETAN
| My Land, My Country

KUK - Public sector reform is an alien concept to the people of Papua New Guinea.

The idea has been brought into countries like PNG by fly-by-night consultants, whose knowledge seems based almost exclusively on trendy paperbacks purchased at airport bookshops on their way to their new jobs in Third World capitals.

Peter Aitsi speaks at the Open Government Partnership conference

MEDIA ROOM
| Transparency International PNG

PORT MORESBY – The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is Papua New Guinea’s biggest multi-stakeholder initiative promoting good governance and a people-focused democracy.

Last week’s OGP national good governance conference in partnership with the European Union formally opened a conversation on these important issues.

Scott 'Beefy' Morrison attacking a dog's eye (aka maggot bag or rat's coffin)

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE – While I fully agree with Keith Jackson's comments, ‘The pandemic in Oz: Time for a reckoning’, I am pessimistic that the Morrison government will be ejected from office based upon the grievous failures Keith described so eloquently.

Basically, Scott Morrison can and will exploit the apathy, ignorance, credulity and fear of far too many Australians who will vote to ensure that government remains in what he will characterise as his 'safe hands'.

PAUL OATES

CLEVELAND – I don't disagree about recent observations in PNG Attitude about the political blunders made in Australia’s response to the Covid threat.

But I believe the core problem lies within our system of selecting political leaders.

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - Throughout history, civilisations have risen and fallen regularly. There are many reasons but the process of decay often starts within.

The first clear indicator that all is not well emerges, somewhat perversely, at the very height of the civilisation’s power and influence.

The ancient Greeks coined a term for this malady: hubris.

Scott Morrison - "pious Christian hypocrisies"

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - After an initial desperate foray into Keynesian economics at the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak in Australia, the federal government is under increasing pressure from big corporations to revert to business as usual.

This is despite the rapid escalation in recent weeks of the crisis created by the Delta variant.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - The first hint that everything was not well at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) came when the seven o’clock evening television news began to include reports about car crashes and house fires in its line-up.

Not long after that stories about football began to appear in the main bulletin. Suddenly the impact of Covid-19 on the sport, and where the finals would be held, seemed of significant import.

Carolyn Blacklock - senior woman adviser engaged on an Australian government funded program finds herself in hot water

KEITH JACKSON

PORT MORESBY – Carolyn Blacklock, former acting managing director of PNG Power, has been arrested by a police criminal investigation team and charged with conspiracy, forgery, false pretence and misappropriation.

The forensic team had been established by police commissioner David Manning to investigate high level financial crimes.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

Bureaucracy and Democracy: A Political Dilemma by Eva Etzioni-Halevy, Routledge, 278 pages. ISBN-13: 978-0415555371. Paperback, $64.71. Available from Amazon - link here

TUMBY BAY - The only textbook I ever kept from my rather eclectic university studies was Eva Etzioni-Halevy’s ‘Bureaucracy and Democracy: A Political Dilemma’.

I came across it recently while rummaging through my bookshelves for something else and decided to dip into it again.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY – It happened when we were still absorbing dire warnings in the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and reeling from the latest Covid-19 outbreaks in NSW and Victoria.

That’s when the Taliban strolled into Kabul and took Afghanistan back after 20 years of occupation by the Americans and their allies, including Australia.

A western NSW vaccination clinic in Dubbo. Indigenous communities are pleading for vaccine, the supply of which the Morrison government constantly lies about (Photo - Ben Wilkins)

NOOSA - It was the slightest of deceits, as unnecessary as it was sly, but nothing out of the ordinary from a person whose honour is tarnished and competency unaccounted for.

I write of the premier of New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian, who bears much responsibility, together with her soulmate the prime minister of Australia, Scott Morrison, for steering an entire nation into a position of great danger.

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - The recent report of the Constitutional Law Reform Commission recommended changes to Papua New Guinea’s Constitution to officially make it a Christian country.

Such a move, should parliament endorse it as seems likely despite some strong opposition, has many intriguing possibilities.

Belden Namah - "We have seen the bulldozing of laws. This is bad law making. Bad laws will result"

BELDEN NAMAH
| Leader of the Opposition | Media Statement

PORT MORESBY – The Marape government has postponed parliamentary sittings so often it is now rushing laws through parliament.

During the current sitting, we have before the house a large number of proposed Constitutional laws.

Amendment to the Constitution must undergo certain processes and allow sufficient time for proper parliamentary scrutiny.

Peter Aitsi - Over a period of years 90% of government agencies have failed to report on how they have spent billions of kina in public funds

MEDIA ROOM
| Transparency International PNG

PORT MORESBY – On Tuesday, as Papua New Guinea’s parliament reconvened on Tuesday following a six-month break, Transparency International PNG took the opportunity to highlight multiple failures in accountability by government agencies.

Transparency’s has made public an ‘Accountability Scorecard’ that reveals that the majority of public bodies in PNG had not submitted annual financial statements required by law under the Public Finance Act, with many not reporting for multiple years.

Auditor General Gordon Kega's report on APEC Summit spending is being held back by the Marape government

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – Papua New Guinea’s energetic community advocacy group Act Now has told the Marape government it must immediately make public the Auditor General’s report on 2018 APEC Summit spending.

The International Monetary Fund has estimated the Summit cost PNG over K3 billion despite being budgeted at what was already an extraordinary K800 million.

Members of PNG Women in Politics at Nahau Rooney's haus krai (Michelle Nayahamui Rooney)

DOROTHY TEKWIE &
MICHELLE NAYAHAMUI ROONEY
| DevPolicy Blog

CANBERRA - Papua New Guinea’s national elections are coming up in 2022, and the national women’s political empowerment movement is gaining momentum again.

PNG women leaders will drive the direction and pace of these debates.

When Australia's politicians don't want to and public servants aren't up to, in comes the military - Lieutenant-General John ‘JJ’ Frewen, Vice-Admiral Ray Griggs, Commodore Eric Young (AAP)

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - I think that several causes lie behind the farcical situation described in ‘The man who was told he wasn’t Australian’.

Firstly, I think that the current federal government has repeatedly expressed its hostility to 'illegals' and this sentiment (however false) has now firmly gripped the minds of the immigration bureaucracy.

Cartoon by Alan Moir

PHILIP FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - It is remarkable how Australia, in less than 10 years, has become a repressed, uncaring, corrupt and stupid country.

This is despite the existence among its citizens of many caring and enlightened individuals.

But in the many others is observable a disturbing degree of compliance, indifference or capitulation.

The Daily Mirror (Sydney) 11 March 1954.  The White Australia Policy officially ended in 1958

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – To augment and provide some formal legal underpinnings for Stefan Armbruster’s fine article on the sad case of Troyrone (Troy) Zen Lee, I am publishing two extracts from longer commentaries by legal experts.

For those readers who wish to better understand the arguments involved, and the somewhat confusing (not to mention slender) basis on which Parliament’s sometimes make their laws, I believe these extracts will be useful as they advert to Lee's and other like cases.

Lady Hannah and Sir Bob Dadae. Sir Bob might be well-advised to stick to the praising, predictabilities and platitudes that are stock-in-trade for vice regal figures around the world

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE – Sir Bob Dadae (Dadae fears PNG disintegration may be ‘inevitable’) is pointing to what, elsewhere in PNG Attitude, I have described as a “truly wicked” policy problem.

The wickedness arises because there is not an obvious solution to pro-autonomy tendencies which can appease both determined separatists and those people equally determined to maintain Papua New Guinea’s current constitutional arrangements.

Sir Bob Dadae

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA - Papua New Guinea’s governor-general Sir Bob Dadae says the country’s disintegration is ‘inevitable’ if Bougainville continues to press for secession and other provinces seek autonomy.

Dadae called on the Marape government not to entertain requests from provinces to break away and seek independence.

CHARLIE LYNN
| Adventure Kokoda

SYDNEY - A 1,400% increase in the number of Australians trekking Kokoda after the opening of the Isurava Memorial in 2002 would normally be hailed an outstanding result for Papua New Guinean tourism and our shared wartime heritage.

But for Canberra based envirocrats, lurking within the corridors of the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and Arts (DEWHA), it had all the hallmarks of an environmental Armageddon.

Haus Tambaran, Palambei, Middle Sepik. Duncan Gavin argues that PNG’s Parliament House should not be called a Haus Tambaran

DUNCAN GABI
| Aunamelo Independent Blog

MADANG – Papua New Guinea’s parliament house is one of the world’s most fascinating examples of public architecture.

The building incorporates various structural features found in PNG but the design that dominates is the architectural style of Maprik in East Sepik Province.

Highlands road at Oiyarip looking toward Mendi

FR GARRETT ROCHE SVD

MAYNOOTH, IRELAND - My initial response to Jim Moore’s item, ‘Thoughts of Then, Now & Cultural Variance’, was to try to figure out which road Jim was referring to and what clans were involved.

Then Jim continued to discuss the appropriateness of the Western parliamentary system for an independent Papua New Guinea. So will I.

Between Mt Hagen and Togoba there are at least two roads heading towards Bukapena.

Westminster system spared Papua New Guinea nothing, not even the Speaker 's wig

PAUL OATES

CLEVELAND – It has taken me a long time to reach an understanding of what the problem was leading up to Papua New Guinea’s independence.

At the time, in the 1970s, the thought process was that the Westminster system works for us in Australia, this we can impose this obviously working system as a unifying force for a people and their many hundreds of cultures.

STEPHEN CHARTERIS

CAIRNS – Michael Dom is right (Two questions long struggled with) in asking how can Papua New Guinea return to cooperation and how can the common people hold power to account and keep it responsible?

No one doubts the absolute necessity for a strong well-governed and administered political centre.

A modern nation state does not exist without it.

Sir Julius Chan, EITI secretariat head Lucas Alkan and New Ireland provincial administrator Lamiller Pawut

SONIA BECKS
| PNG Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative

KAVIENG - New Ireland governor Sir Julius Chan says a proposed law to promote transparency and accountability in mining and petroleum will keep everyone honest in the long run.

Chan made this remark when he opened the Extractive Industries Transparency Commission Bill consultation for the New Guinea Island Region.

Sweet potato farming in the Southern Highlands - communal sharing for mutual benefit is the Melanesian Way

MICHAEL DOM

LAE – Power, power, power. Yeah, sure.

In Papua New Guinea subsistence agriculture is a basic mode of living, resources are communally shared and political power is gained and maintained by the assurance of mutual benefit for all.

It can be challenging to understand that the infant national character (that which emerged through parliamentary democracy) doesn't know what to do about the vast wealth made available to it.

STEPHEN CHARTERIS

CAIRNS - Patrick Angrai’s article, Death of a Teacher, hit me hard too. Firstly sadness, then anger.

Death in childbirth, through lack of timely referral or resources, is so horribly common in rural settings and often goes unreported.

As Arthur Williams has said, how can this happen in such a resource rich country?

President Toroama addresses people at Buka's Bel Park after the Wabag leaders' meeting

KEITH JACKSON

BUKA – Discussions were “tough”, Bougainville president Ishmael Toroama has revealed after last week’s top level talks in Wabag with Papua New Guinea prime minister James Marape.

Describing the leaders’ meeting in Wabag as “tough”, Toroama told a public meeting in Buka that Bougainville’s independence must be settled so the autonomous province can move forward.

Jerolyn Arimbandai

PATRICK ANGRAI
| My Land, My Country | Edited

JOSEPHSTAAL - Jerolyn Arimbandai was the only female teacher at the newly-established Catholic high school at Josephstaal in the Madang Province.

She was married to Steven Arimbandai, a Josephstaal man and also a teacher at the school. They had one child and were expecting their second.

Malcolm Fraser, prime minister of Australia, 1975-83, popularised the maxim, 'Life wasn't meant to be easy'. The issue of Bougainville independence is a vexing one for all PNG politicians

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE – Martyn Namarong is quite correct in his commentary, ‘Bougainville highlights need for a new PNG’, both in his analysis of the Bougainville dilemma and his discussion of the implications for Papua New Guinea.

Denying Bougainville independence would be a catastrophe for PNG; while granting it independence will inevitably open up fissures in the wider PNG polity.

The headline that James Marape condemned as 'misleading'

KEITH JACKSON

NOOSA – Papua New Guinea’s prime minister James Marape has been forced to state publicly that at no point has his government agreed to Bougainville independence.

Marape has attacked the PNG Post-Courier’s reporting of his Wabag meeting with Bougainville president Ishmael Toroama, stating that “in no part [of our joint statement] is Independence mentioned."

Martyn Namorong - "PNG needs a new Constitution that recognises the different tribal nations and empowers them with their full rights to self-determination within a political union"

MARTYN NAMORONG
| PNG Signal

PORT MORESBY - Will Papua New Guinea break up if Bougainville is granted full independence?

For some PNG leaders the threat of balkanization has shaped their attitudes towards Bougainville leaving the union of 850 tribes.

One of them is prime minister James Marape, who recently pleaded with Bougainville's leaders to take into consideration PNG’s fate when deliberating on the matter.