Young people urged to work hard and achieve goals

Young people including school children in Ialibu-Pangia, Southern Highlands, have been urged to set goals and commit time to achieve them.

These were the words from lawyer and author Stanley Liria (pictured) during the occasion of launch of his second book titled Inequalities in Developing Rural Communities in Papua New Guinea: A Pangia Perspective (pictured).

“Goals cannot be achieved if we do not pursue them with some personal sacrifice,” he said.

“Without commitment and personal sacrifice, we cannot achieve our goals.”

Mr Liria’s second book was launched at Tunda Primary School by Governor-General Sir Paulias Matane.

More than 3, 000 people, who were very pleased to meet Sir Paulias, gathered for the launch and performed their unique Wiru culture.

Mr Liria’s book is about issues of rural development.

Through his three-year research on Pangia, he has probed on the first contact, early settlement of  clans and tribes, cultures and traditions and their conflict with modern laws and norms, impact of national and local-level government elections on society, development status, law and order and gender relations.

These subjects are discussed generally but applied with regard to the situation in Pangia.

Mr Liria says that he is very relieved that after three years, he has finally published his work.

He says that apart from his small legal practice in Port Moresby, he is passionate about writing and wishes to write on matters that will have influence on many people in society.

Inequalities in Developing Rural Communities in Papua New Guinea: A Pangia Perspective is his second book.

His first book was published in 2004 titled, A Law Awareness for Papua New Guinea – Our Guide to the Rule of Law, which has been well received by many school children in Papua New Guinea.

The author says his second book is suitable for our school children in the area of social science, personal development and legal studies.

He says it covers societies and their cultures and traditions, and their social relations.

“Therefore, it is a good book for social science students,” Mr Liria said.

“In the area of personal development and legal studies, it covers subject matters like national and local-level government elections, equality and freedom, gender inequality, role of police, courts and councillors, social and legal issues on marriage, land ownership and land dispute resolution.”

He acknowledged the support of Southern Highlands Governor Anderson Agiru and his provincial government, provincial administrator William Powi and his staff, and Ialibu/Pangia MP and Public Service Minister Peter O’Neill for ensuring the visit of Sir Paulias and the book launching.

 

 

Comment on Papua New Guinea consultants paid A$360,000 tax-free

By DAVID WILLIAMS

It would be a shame if all of us Aussie's were tarred with the same brush as these highly-paid public servants.

In my 14 years here, the most I have earned is a paltry A$20,000.00 + room & board, and I like to think that I have given my best to PNG in that time, despite the complete lack of support from government, and even my own country's AID agencies.

I know of many others who are in the same boat. People who believe in trying to genuinely help PNG, whether it be in remote schools, health centres or missions. It would be a shame if this sort of anti-Australian publicity drew towards us, the same intolerance and racial hatred currently being shown towards the Asian community, simply because it caused people to think we were all only here to line our pockets.

Enough of this bullshit from Australia!

I think all Papua New Guineans are basically fed up with all this bullshit about millions of Australian dollars being poured into Papua New Guinea when it's all "boomerang aid" - a'la the flying stick of the Aborigines - when it all goes back down south.

This big news of the day is the revelation by AAP that Australian taxpayers are shelling out millions of dollars for top level consultants in Papua New Guinea who earn up to $360,000 a year tax-free.

The figure is more than Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's base salary of almost $335,000.

What tangible benfits have we seen since independence in 1975?

Bunch of bludgers, I dare say, and we don't need you!

Pacific art set to take Australia by storm

Artwork by Peter Leo Ella

Artwork by Joe Nalo

Artwork by Joe Nalo

Beneath the Petals, by Joycelin Leahy

Joycelin Leahy

Joycelin Leahy talks to a village elder on the beautiful Tami Islands of Morobe province about intangible heritage

Australia’s great sugar industry, for those who came in late, was founded on the blood, sweat and tears of Pacific islanders, Papua New Guineans included.
Now, Lae girl, former journalist and Miss Papua New Guinea, Joycelin Leahy, is taking Australia by storm with an art exhibition, aptly titled Pacific Storms.
Pacific Storms, a contemporary art exhibition will be opened by Australian Minister for Pacific Affairs, Duncan Kerr, on June 3 and ends on July 13 at Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery.
It will, in a way, it will be poetic justice as Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery is historically a significant location for Pacific people including South Sea islanders that have contributed immensely to the sugarcane plantations – many through the infamous blackbirding days - and Queensland's economy.
Ms Leahy said that in addition, staging Pacific Storms in the Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery linked contemporary Pacific expression to the region’s significant history through the Australian sugar industry.
“Australia’s sugar industry was founded on the sweat of men and women, some kidnapped and all enticed from more than 80 Melanesian islands including the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, the Loyalty Islands of New Caledonia, and to a lesser extent, the eastern archipelagoes of Papua New Guinea, and Tuvalu and Kiritabati,” she said.
“Today’s Australian South Sea islanders are descended from indentured labourers in the 19th century.
“In the 19th Century this form of human trafficking was historically known as ‘blackbirding’ and the individuals were called ‘kanakas’.
“There were about 50,000 Islanders and 62,000 indenture contracts.
“Under the White Australian Policy, between 1901 and 1908, Australia ended this migration and deported most of those remaining.
“Some were exempted from repatriation, and along with a number of others who escaped deportation, about 2,000 remained in Australia to form the basis of what is today Australia’s largest non-indigenous black ethnic group.
“The question of how many islanders were illegally recruited and how many chose to come remains controversial.
“Bundaberg is a major centre for Australian South Sea islanders.
“Pacific Storms re-unites these communities with their wantoks through a collaborative community engagement at the Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery.”
Pacific Storms will feature new and well-known Pacific artists such as Daniel Waswas and brothers Jeffrey and Mairi Feeger from PNG, as well as Paskua from Tahiti.
“The show will show key works, not seen in Australia before,” says the popular former journalist and 1989 Ms PNG, who ran Beyond Art in Port Moresby before moving to Australia.
Ms Leahy, now based in Australia, is well-known in both PNG and overseas for being an art curator.
A fortnight, she visited home at Wagang (Sipaia) village in Lae and took a boat to the cultural treasure trove of the beautiful Tami Islands off Finschhafen, Morobe province, to buy art works.
“There are a number of their descendants and other islanders that live there,” Ms Leahy says.
“The exhibition hopes to draw the community together to re-connect with history in a contemporary and art sense.”
The show is coordinated by Pacific Curator Ms Leahy with the support of Bianca Acimovic, Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery.
In the Pacific, when you see frigate birds, you know, a storm is not far behind.
During a workshop in Bundaberg last year, Ms Leahy proposed Pacific Storms as an idea to Bianca Acimovic, colleague and exhibition officer at the Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery.
After much discussion and a written proposal, the gallery accepted the idea and Joycelin, 20 years experience in working with PNG and other Pacific artists, invited over 30 artists across the Pacific islands and within the Australian diaspora communities to have a collaborative show to highlight climate change and a number of other challenging issues in the Pacific.
These included the killer disease HIV AIDS, security, logging, and many other social threats.
Ms Leahy’s interest in climate change and how it affects cultures of coastal communities in the Pacific culture in the Pacific led to call for new art for a topic which is a hot global debate, but one that is serious for many islanders who watch their homes disappear under the seas with sea level rise and other intense weather.
“Australia has significant geographical, historical and economical ties with the Pacific islands,” she says.
“It is important for Australians to learn more about the Pacific people, as many now live and contribute to the economy and call Australia ‘home’.
“The Pacific Storms programme at Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery extends to and links the community through family and artist community collaborations, professional development and celebrations of Pacific Culture.
“Apart from Bianca and myself, several other artists are all helping to pull together what we need for the show as given the obvious economy state of our country; it has been very tough trying to get assistance.
“However, I am proud to say that the show has developed a momentum and we have been inundated with inquiries about the art, programme and involvement of others.
“It is also a good opportunity to assist the artists to do business with Australian galleries, museums and collectors as well as general public for future business partnerships.
“We are looking for a second venue in Brisbane and in hope to keep the show running for a further six to eight weeks.
Pacific Storms explores the spirit, life, and challenges of the contemporary Pacific peoples.
Pacific Islanders are proud of their resources, ocean, land, environment, culture, arts, languages and their traditional knowledge.
The Pacific remains one of the few regions in the world where you can find many hundreds of languages spoken, diverse cultures and some of the most vulnerable communities on the globe.
Being rich in both tangible and intangible heritage provides Pacific people with an endless source for artistic expression.
“The unique art forms are evidenced in museum and gallery collections all over the world, collected over centuries,” Ms Leahy says.
“It is from this valuable artistic source that a selection of well-known and emerging artists across nine countries was challenged to use their heritage to create a contemporary Pacific expression.
“In their interpretation of who they are and how they feel about their societies, these new works were developed.
“In Pacific Storms, the challenge was to draw away from mainstream society’s categories and stereotypes of what is Pacific art and who Pacific people are, to explore new aesthetics.
“Pacific Storms is also a platform of contemporary creativity which integrates and addresses the real issues of the modern Pacific society.
“The Pacific region is marked by exceptional cultural and biological diversity within spectacular physical landscapes; thus each has their own unique way of building resilience to climate change, globalisation, security and civil unrest, HIV-AIDS and many other social issues.
“These expressions are exhibited in hope that wider audiences understand the complex issues through the diversity of art across the Pacific.”
Ms Leahy can be contacted on email beyondart@bigpond.com or visit her website http://beyondpacificart.com.au/.

Papua New Guinea consultants paid A$360,000 tax-free

AusAID consultants ‘paid more than Rudd’

AAP

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AUSTRALIAN taxpayers are shelling out millions of dollars for top level consultants in Papua New Guinea who earn up to $360,000 a year tax-free.

 

The figure is more than Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's base salary of almost $335,000.

Documents obtained by AAP show a single consultant hired in PNG through Coffey International Development receives $10,517 a month in tax-free allowances under AusAID's Advisory Support Facility.

And if the consultant brings their partner along they get $14,239 a month for accommodation, hardship, medical or utility fees.

That alone costs Australian taxpayers about $170,000 a year.

If the couple have children the allowance goes up approximately another $1000 a month for each child.

Consultants on short stays under 180 days receive $469 per day for the first 28 days then $400 a day for the rest.

If they work 180 days that earns them up to $74,000 in allowances.

An agreement between the Australian and PNG governments gives aid advisers tax-free salaries, putting a married senior consultant in PNG on approximately $30,000 a month, netting them $360,000 a year.

Junior single consultants gross approximately $20,000 a month, adding up to $240,000 a year in salary and allowances.

An AusAID spokesperson said there were around 250 long-term advisers and around 50 short-term advisers working under the PNG-Australia development program.

"The allowance rates for people contracted are reviewed regularly against actual costs in PNG and allowances can change,'' the spokesperson said.

"The allowances paid to advisers in PNG are comparable with rates for this kind of work around the world."

According to an AusAID website, ASF assists the PNG government to improve public sector management and administration.

It is estimated $200 million of AusAID's almost $400 million a year goes to agents, consultants and staff who provide 'technical assistance' to PNG.

Prime Minister Rudd flagged his concern at AusAID's reliance on consultants when speaking last month at a press conference with PNG counterpart Michael Somare.

''Too much money has been consumed by consultants and not enough money was actually delivered to essential assistance in teaching, in infrastructure, in health services on the ground, in the villages,'' Mr Rudd said.

 

 

AusAID's engaging private sector is not the way to go

By PAUL OATES

 

On another matter, what do you think of the following comment about Keith Jackson's blog article?

_____________________________________________

Meanwhile, the head of AusAID in PNG, Bill Costello, has said his organisation does not have all the answers to PNG's development challenges and that it is now seeking engagement with the private sector to canvass ways to move forward.

 

"AusAID will sit down with business leaders and development stakeholders to look at where we are and how we can improve our engagement. Achieving development outcomes through innovative partnerships with the private sector is perhaps an area in which we have only scratched the surface so far," Mr Costello said.

________________________________________________________

 

With due respect to Mr Costello and his team, who I'm sure are very well meaning, the answers to PNG's challenges do not lie in the Private Sector.

The private sector can only move development forward when a favourable climate and environment exits for it to do so. Until that favourable climate is re-established, AusAID may as well turn their collective funding hose either back into the wind or into the nearest 'consultant's' bank account.

PNG's framework of government has clearly ruptured and haemorrhaged. It is in real danger of falling apart altogether. In order to understand the essence of the problem one must first ask, "Why is this so?"

When the decision was made to move PNG as a single entity, towards Self Government and Independence, there was no detailed plan of how to do this and an agreed timeline to achieve this objective. Why? Well at the time, the major players in this decision were never really involved at the 'kunai roots' level and therefore had no idea of what was involved. I can say that because as a kiap in the field at the time, I was caught betwixt and between. On one hand, as government representatives in the field, kiaps were instructed to commence the so called Political Education process in the villages we visited and prepare the local people for this momentous event. Pressure from the United Nations on Australia to grant Independence as quickly as possible and from Canberra, in the early 1970's to make it happen, impacted directly on our rural operations. On the other hand, many of us knew that the local people in the villages did not want us to

disappear overnight and leave them to their own devices.

As public servants, no one ever asked us what we thought about the fast tracking of Independence or whether the people we spoke to at the village level thought it was a good idea. I seriously doubt if anyone above District level ever read the Patrol or Situation Reports we submitted or if they did, understood what was being reported. We were just expected to do what the government directed. Most people in the villages that I spoke to at the time thought the idea was crazy. They didn't want Australia to throw them out of

the peaceful development phase they had only just entered. Training local officers to takeover responsibility at all levels was only just starting to take effect when Independence was thrust upon PNG. A newly created PNG that had really not yet developed a true, national identity and a BROADLY based ability to say about what it wanted.

So what happened? Old and traditional practices were revived and lauded as the way to go. Traditional practice was clearly the only available alternative to those who the power of government had been thrust into their hands. What this precipitate change in direction did in practice was to bring to a halt, the process of peaceful development through government control. In reality, the change created a power vacuum that could only be

filled by the traditional custom of the 'village Bigman' and not by effective government systems on a national level.

This reversal of PNG government direction in the mid to late 1970's has now robbed the younger, educated generation of Papua New Guineans from being able to aspire to manage their own country effectively. How can an educated PNGian start to improve their own country when the framework of government responsibility and accountability is clearly flawed. They have been effectively disenfranchised by the elite of the PNG 1960's and 1970's, many of whom still hold onto power.

The only way to manage a country is to start at the top of a country's system of government and to then have that system improve in a 'trickle down' methodology. The trouble is, who can start this process? At the moment it seems, only those who are part of the problem.

Katim bol bilong ol (cut off their balls!)

By PAUL OATES

 

Ref the PIM article on your blog.

How well I remember a photo at the time of a sign held aloft at a public march to protest against the increasing crime rate and sexual crimes.

 It read "Katim bol bilong ol”.