Papua New Guinea platitude: Reacting to Reg Renagi and his mates

 BY JOHN FOWKE

HOW WILL Julia Gillard help Papua New Guinea to become more independent and fight corruption through good governance if her operating agency in PNG is closed?

I am not known as a fervid AusAID supporter by any means, but if we in Oz and Julia Gillard and her Minister for Foreign Affairs are to be of help to our mates in PNG, how may this be facilitated in any other way but a material one; where the agreed material help comes with relevant advice and instruction?

By Reg Renagi’s own admission, his own generation of educated professionals and leaders of society are so weak, lacking in guts and imagination, and dishonest as not only to stall progress, but to send it into reverse.

How may Australia help in this regard, unless by the offer and the implementation of assistance directed at the problem? By hypnotism? By a national Help PNG Prayer Day?

The river of weakness and lack of resolution runs deep in PNG, as these educated people well know. Who in PNG will get up and turn the nation around?

All any of these people do, with such few exceptions as to be counted on fingers of one hand, is endlessly talk and propose and suggest. You are self-proclaimed champion boxers who spend your lives hitting the punching-bag but always shy away from the ring and the real challenge.

And sit back to watch the crooks become stronger and more numerous week by week.

Reg and his fellow educated professionals in PNG are musicians who play many tunes; music played according to who is listening, not music played from passionate feeling.

I find this immensely disappointing, whilst at the same time maintaining a full heart and high regard, in fact love, for so many old friends and their families who live in the villages.

These people have never had the opportunities that Reg and his mates have enjoyed, and they suffer a continuing diminution in conditions of daily life. Why? Because the educated generation has failed them absolutely and miserably.

We PNG-acquainted outsiders who are not able to do any more than talk and write are in many cases people who have worked hard and long as subordinates within PNG-managed institutions.

We have been putting up positive ideas, some of us for years, and there are some slight signs of acceptance - for instance, changes in the management at AusAID and Stephen Smith's announcement about funding for education and health through church-managed institutions.

These signs show perhaps, and while never acknowledged, that our ideas have caught the eye of those who control Australia’s inputs and aid delivery to PNG.

Forget about endless contributions on blogs, get together and make plans and actually do something instead of practising your famous Melanesian Way - talk, talk, seminars, 2050 programs, all this is simply horseshit.

When did we ever see anything positive come out of these magnificent plans? The Eight-Point plan, for instance? Plans, plans and more plans, accompanied by seminars and two-day stays at fancy locations. Tokwin tasol. Karana anina lasi. [Just empty air!]

Until you actually start kicking arse and getting people to come to work on time five days a week, accepting responsibility and working hard for that beautiful place which is your home, none of the problems you continually refer to are going to go away.

If you and your peer-group of some tens of thousands of middle class, educated citizens can’t hack it, the war's already over.

And the ghosts of people like Sgt Major Katui MM and Sgt Major Soa Ubia MM, who really cared, and who really fought and delivered for their country without the benefit of university educations and long white socks, will remain restless, disappointed, homeless spirits forever.