Comments

I, Mr. Martin Itamai, from Bougainville, and I am interested to know more about the concept of carbon market in Papua New Guinea.

Well, how about Harry Humphrey who held the MP seat for Talasea Electorate in WNBP for a long time and then his son Peter Humphrey who held the Regional Seat for WNBP before Muthuvel. There are also other foreign/expatriate MPs that are not mentioned in this blog.

Very good article I enjoyed reading it. The main problem needed to be solved is deep inside of us and it needs people who are wise. We have brilliant people who are well educated yet our attitude is beyond what we have in hand. Most can talk nicely and act like they have professional heart but in reality they are the ones who fail to implement. Therefore PNG needs to get back to its roots and see if we have lost our values in the midst.

Malcolm 'Kela' Smith (late) was the other naturalized citizen to hold the EHP regional seat for a few terms. There's a confusion with the name 'Henry Smith' who I believe was a local Goroka man who represented the Goroka Open seat.

Thankyou for sharing this article, was an interesting read.

Hi Michael! Thank you for sharing your wonderful blog. It's good that you shared your experience surveying Bougainville Island’s village agriculture. It's sad that the landowner received small money but big work in growing a crop. I'm glad that I discovered the language "Bikpela wok na liklik mani" meaning “big work but small money.” We can't blame the villagers if they give up on selling their crops due to the small income they get despite the big work.

Impressive article, enjoyed reading it. Thanks for shedding light on this topic.

Andrew and Kingtau, you are right. A relative of mine recently visited eastern Rossel island in Milne Bay province, where he met with the community. They informed him, they had no teacher for their elementary school, and no aid post or health worker. As a result, their children did not get an elementary school start to their education, and the community lived and died in the absence of basic health services. In my experience, without significant help, this community has little prospect of breaking out of this cycle. Without an elementary school education their children have little chance of competing with their peers from grade 3 at community school, assuming of course they get to one in the first place. And without the most basic start to their formal learning there is little prospect of any of them rising through the school system, to obtain the tertiary training needed to drive change in their communities. In 2012 more grade 12 school leavers from Gordons secondary school received offers to take up places at tertiary institutions than all the grade 12 school leavers from Western province combined. There is your disadvantage. Experience has shown that schoolteachers and community health workers posted to remote settings they did not grow up in, rarely stay – and understandably so. The only people likely to stay in such settings, are ones who were born and raised in those communities in the first place. And therein lies the problem. Progress in rural settings is invariably dependent upon communities being able to educate their talent to tertiary level. In this regard, they are at a serious disadvantage to their urban cousins. Under these circumstances, they have little hope of supporting their children through the education system with the prospect that some will return as teachers, community health workers or with other skills to serve their own people. Since provincial governments, do not have the finances or transport resources to support teachers, health workers and community policemen in remote settings, it is up to the people to find ways to break this cycle of development inertia. Only then will they have the mechanism to educate their talent and move forward together. I have seen how this can be done, through rural economic empowerment, especially of women. With vision and buy in from communities it is possible to allocate some of the benefits from economic empowerment to support the delivery of essential services. However, the process is not “sexy,” it is long and slow, and there are no fast bucks in it for those who are so inclined. It requires a strong focus upon equity across communities, especially upon women who are the care givers and educators. It requires competent coordination and management. It is not appealing to elected leaders with their eyes on short term cycles and it doesn’t attract funding. I am convinced this area of development needs a great deal more attention. If it were forthcoming the results could be a revelation.

Need for a change in Marape led Government.

Thanks Kingtau for sharing about your village – it is quite sobering. This (rural decline and the fact that young people who are growing up in this situation of lack of opportunity for basic government services, including education) is worrying and scary.

Thank you, Andy, for sharing the reality in the rural villages. I am from a remote place up in the mountains of Morobe province. Our village had an aid post, but it has been closed since 1999. Recently a teenager in my village died from a snake bite. Even though he was taken to the nearby government outposts clinic, there was no medicine for the snake bites. So he died at the clinic. Law and order are also going backwards. The number of youths getting into drugs has been increasing; there seem to be a race of accumulating arms to signal others- "not to mess around with us or else we will deal with you". Once respected and confident, village constables are now demoralised and less confident to execute their responsibilities out of fear that lawbreakers will retaliate. I think the Melanesian way of taking care of and defending tribes man is heading in the wrong direction to maintaining law and order in society as the trend of protecting lawbreakers from being arrested is on the rise. Youths consciously support their tribe's man against law enforcers even though their tribe's man broke the law. Village elders educated to grade 6 in the 1970s and 1980s speak fluent English more than recent village grade 10s and grade 12s. I have no data to support my claim but I think most of the students selected for limited space in University/colleges are likely from cities and towns who have chances to a better education than their rural village counterparts. Obviously, inequality between urbanites and rural dwellers will be widened in the future if this rural decay is not reversed. Thanks again for addressing rural decay in your speech.

I think that the above visa quotas allocation proposal missed the point all together. The real underlying reason which born the Pacific Engagement visa is to help the small pacific island nations by producing a means for its population to migrate to Australia thereby strengthening their economy and the bond and ties between Australia and these small pacific island nations to keep them from the temptation of sliding to the other side of the fence into China's welcoming arms with its "Loan to Own a Country" financial schemes, which it has already been dishing out quietly for decades, throughout to most of the Pacific island nations . The smaller the nation, and the poorer the population, the easier it is to fall prey into Ciina's welcoming arms. This is the reason why the Australalian foreign minister Ms. Penny Wong visited these small Pacific island nations as soon as the Labour government won the election. It was to strengthen the ties and bonds between Australia and its small Pacific nations neighbours, and hence the reason for the Pacific Engagement visa. For this reason the pacific engagement visa quotas must be allocated strategically, with a military point of view in mind. Not just by diasporas, population, and the size of the country only, but rather careful considerations must be given to these small islands nation's economic status topmost, and their geograpgic locations. If you consider the locations of the nations named in the proposed tables above with the smallest quotas, they have some of the largest international water rights to sea areas amongst them in the South Pacific. If you combine these sea areas and their international water rights together according to their location, then you can see what China sees as the whole picture. If it can LEGALLY control, let alone own these small nations with their VAST sea rights, then there is nothing in the world that can stop them owning the rights to the waterways of the South Pacific and setting up strategic naval bases in these island nations right in front of Australia's doordtep. This is what the Australian government is trying to avoid from happening. This is why Australia is trying hard now to revive and strenghten the close ties and strong bonds with these Pacific Island nations, where some have been neglected and overlooked over the years, including Papua New Guinea and the solomon islands. This is the sad underlying truth behind the Australian government's efforts to secure the security of the Soth Pacific from China's web of ecoconomic strategic planning to control the Pacific not with bullets, but with cash. This is why the Pacific Engagement visa was born, to keep the warm ties between Australia and the poorer small nations of the South Pacific from falling into the temptations of the Chinese dollars dangling from the other side of the fence. Therefore the quotas allocations fot this Pacific engagement visa, should take the economic status of each island nation into consideration first, when allocating quotas which will help keep them warm towards Australia by showing that Australia cares, and is still the Watchdog of the Pacific, as it has been throughout the years.