NZ's Chief Ombudsman says PNG attack shows how ombudsmen need backing of courts

16 DECEMBER 2009 WELLINGTON (RNZI) ----- The Commonwealth Ombudsman and Chair of the Pacific Ombudsman Alliance, Professor John McMillan, has condemned the shooting of Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) Chief Ombudsman Chronox Manek.

Mr Manek was shot and wounded outside his home in an apparent assassination attempt.

Professor McMillan said that since his appointment in 2008, Mr Manek has dedicated himself to safeguarding PNG’ s citizens through his fearless investigation of complaints against government officials and agencies’.

His sentiments were echoed by New Zealand’s Chief Ombudsman, Beverely Wakem who said Mr Manek had been fearless in his investigations into corruption, albeit in the highest places in the land:

“..and I think that does, where the rule of law can sometimes be a bit shaky, it does expose an ombudsman in pursuit of the truth unfortunately to pressures of one kind or another, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard of an ombudsman, in what looks like an attempt assassination of an ombudsman and we’re deeply concerned about that”

Ms Wakem said ombudsmen ultimately have to rely on the rule of law and the power of the courts to support them in their work.

The National sweeps media awards night

I am happy to report that The National swept the top awards at the Media Council awards nite last night.

We won in virtually every category that we nominated.

Among the winners (in the print category) are:

Yehiura Hriehwazi – Investigative Reporter of the Year

Julia Daia Bore – Court Reporter of the Year

Sheila Lasibori – Business Reporter of the Year

Isaac Nicholas – Political Reporter of the Year

Patrick Talu – Environment Reporter of the Year

Bosorina Robby – Rookie Reporter of the Year (Ian Boden Award)

Henry Morabang – Sports Reporter of the Year

Andrew Alphonse – Regional Reporter of the Year

Malum Nalu – Blogger of the Year

Kari Totona – Education Reporter of the Year

Wallace Kiala – Commendation for Most Improved Health Reporting

The list is not exhaustive, as I left before some of the awards were announced.

Some of the winners received Blackberry phones sponsored by Digicel.

The National was proudly represented at the event and the recognition would not be lost on many major advertisers who were present as sponsors.

Congratulations to the winners and keep up the good work.

Next time, we should have even more entries, particularly from the regional bureaus, whose work is often unrecognised.

PS: The Post-Courier boycotted the event, apparently due to last year’s fiasco and the negative attention they drew from the Media Council recently.

It's Christmas time in the city

Caption: The Christmas lights wowed the crowd when NCD Governor, Powes Parkop,  officially switched the lights on last Friday at the Unagi Oval. -Picture by AURI EVA

 

THE National Capital District Commission (NCDC), in conjunction with its various corporate sector partners, is proud to share the Christmas spirit with its city residents with a great programme line-up for the festive season.

The 2009 NCD Christmas programme begins with the ‘Open Air Movie Shows’.

The movie shows started on Monday Dec 12 and will continue on to Sunday Dec 20.

Other activities like the Light Show, Dance Show, Karaoke Show and Music Show will follow after the movie shows.

All these activities will lead up to the Carols by Candlelight on Dec 24.

All these will be happening at the Unagi Oval starting at 6pm.

Everyone is urged to go to the oval and enjoy the night commemorating the festive season.     

For more information on all these, contact Baeau Tai or Lucy Kapi at the NCDC Public Relations Division on mobile numbers: (675) 7624 7602 or (675) 7199 4536.  

ADB meeting in Phillipines

By FRANK ASAELI of PNGPCL

 

PNG Ports Corporation Ltd’s chief commercial officer Stanley Alphonse is one of four participants from Papua New Guinea attending an Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) symposium in Manila, Philippines.

ADBI MP3IC Knowledge Sharing Symposium on PPPs in Infrastructure in Asia Pacific: Global Challenges and Constraints is scheduled for the 16^th and 17^th of December this year.

PNGPCL acknowledges the invitation and is pleased to help profile and share practical details of Global Public-Private Partnership in Infrastructure (PPPI) in order to advance PPPI policy agendas and accelerate private sector investment and participation.

Chief executive officer of PNGPCL, Brian Riches, said that Mr Alphonse’s participation was also to help with ideas and pragmatic information to improve the design and implementation of PPP programmes or projects to achieve greater access and more cost effective infrastructure service delivery in ADB DMCs (developing member countries).

The participants to the symposium are leading senior or mid-level PPP for infrastructure (physical and social) policy makers or programme/project managers, at the national or sub-national levels who are engaged in and/or responsible for infrastructure regulation, infrastructure planning and financing, infrastructure program/project design and implementation, and infrastructure service delivery in ADB developing member countries across the Asia Pacific region.

Of the total targeted, 50% or 20-30 national or sub-national level delegates (who meet the target audience criteria) will participate at ADB headquarters in Manila.

The remaining 50% or 20-30 primarily sub-national level delegates will participate by video conference through links with 4-5 selected cities from across the Asia-Pacific region.

City selection will be finalised based on confirmation of target audience interest and in consultation with the Cities Development Initiative Asia, and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).

ADBI is meeting the full accommodation costs for the four PNG participants while the PNG Department of National Planning and Monitoring is taking care of the airfares and allowances.

 

ETS tax explained

From PAUL OATES in Queensland, Australia

 

Let's  put this into a bit of perspective for  laymen!
ETS is another tax. It is equal to  putting up the GST to 12.5% which would be  unacceptable and produce an outcry.
Read the following analogy and you  will realize the insignificance of carbon dioxide  as a weather controller.
Pass on to all in your address book  including politicians and may be they will listen to  their constituents, rather than vested interests which stand to gain by the  ETS.
Here's a practical way to understand  Mr. Rudd's Carbon Pollution Reduction  Scheme.
Imagine 1 kilometre  of atmosphere  and we want to get rid of the carbon pollution in it created  by human activity.  Let's go for a walk along  it.
The first 770 metres are  Nitrogen.
The next 210 metres are  Oxygen.
That's 980 metres of the 1  kilometre.  20 metres to go.
The next 10 metres are water  vapour.  10 metres left.
9 metres are argon.   Just  1 more metre.
A few gases make up the first bit of  that last metre.
The last 38 centimetres of the  kilometre - that's carbon dioxide.  A bit over one  foot.
 97% of that is produced by  Mother Nature.  It's natural.
Out of our journey of one kilometre,  there are just 12 millimetres left.
Just over a  centimetre - about half an inch.
That's the amount of carbon dioxide  that global human activity puts into the  atmosphere.
And of those 12 millimetres  Australia puts in .18 of a millimetre.
Less than the thickness of a  hair.  Out of a kilometre!
As a hair is to a kilometre - so is  Australia's contribution to what Mr. Rudd calls Carbon  Pollution.
Imagine Brisbane's new Gateway  Bridge, ready to be opened by Mr. Rudd.
It's been  polished, painted and scrubbed by an army of workers till  its 1 kilometre length is surgically clean.  Except that Mr. Rudd says we have a huge problem, the bridge is polluted - there's a human hair  on the roadway.
We'd laugh ourselves  silly.
There are plenty of real pollution  problems to worry about.
It's hard to imagine that  Australia's contribution to carbon dioxide in the world's  atmosphere is one of the more pressing ones.  And I  can't believe that a new tax on everything is the only way  to blow that pesky hair away.
Pass this on quickly while the  ETS is being debated in Federal Parliament.

The Carbon Debate and Climate Change

From PAUL OATES in Queensland, Australia

One of the most important issues confronting the world and most national governments is climate change. While the Copenhagen Conference discusses what powers the United Nations will supposedly be given to combat climate change, the issues appear to some to have been overtaken by a calculated campaign of misinformation. Images shown at the Conference's Official opening of a terrified small girl clinging to a fragile tree branch while the rising water threatens to drown her was an excellent example of how a very serious issue can be highjacked by using fear as a weapon of choice. Anyone who dares speak out against the notion of human caused climate change is labelled a 'Sceptic and dismissed accordingly. The world's press are having a field day.
So what are the real issues and can they be discussed without descending into an emotional and non logical argument?
Is the Earth warming and the world's climate changing? Most scientific evidence seems to agree that the world's climate is changing. Many scientists also agree that the Earth has undergone these sorts of changes previously. The most recent example was a warming period around one thousand years ago when Greenland was in fact green and settled by Scandinavian settlers and dairy farmers. These warming and cooling periods seem to occur in a recognizable pattern and have happened on a regular basis in the Earth's history. OK you say, no apparent disagreement there. The issue about the current climate change stems from whether humankind's activities are exacerbating the current warming cycle by increasing the amount of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere.
Carbon Dioxide is a naturally occurring gas that is part of the Earth's make up from almost the very beginning when the Earth cooled after the 'Big Bang'. Planets like Venus that still have an atmosphere have large amounts of Carbon Dioxide as part of their atmosphere. So too did the Earth for many millions of years and certainly when life on Earth first developed. Now that must surely be a significant fact. CO2 is a natural part of our environment. Secondly, there appears to be no argument that the levels of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere have fluctuated over time. Right, then, two areas of agreement.
What are the reasons for the altered levels of CO2 in the past? Well that again seems to be unarguable. Life on Earth has been one of the main causes for altered levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. To do this, it required the ability of plants to photosynthesize their food by using the sun's rays to stimulate chlorophyll contained within the plant and absorb CO2 and water (H2O) to make sugars and starches from which all life on Earth now depend. Free Oxygen (O2) is then given off as a waste product. When plant life emerged from the sea and colonized the land there were no large plant eaters available and plant life expanded to fill the available space. That's what life does. Plants will therefore automatically regulate the amount of CO2 to normal levels. That is, if there are enough plants available to effectively achieve the previous balance. If the balance between animal and plant life is being changed by rapid population growth, then that equilibrium is inevitably altered.
Previously, during the Earth's Carboniferous Age, there was so much carbon based plant life around that the CO2 levels fell and the O2 levels rose to greater than they are today. The effects of this imbalance created the vast stores of underground, compressed Carbon from dead plants known as coal. There is therefore a natural and constant see saw between Carbon Dioxide and Oxygen levels in the Earth's atmosphere and that has occurred since life on Earth began. Again, there doesn't seem to be any argument about this occurrence unless you subscribe to the head in the sand 'Creationist' theory that says it just all happened and ignore about HOW it happened.
So where does that leave us? Seemingly, with no real scientifically based disagreements at all. That is unless you want to debate whether so many parts per million of CO2 is more or less harmful to the world.
Enter the real problem confronting most world governments today. How to control their populations and give the illusion of power when if fact they have almost no power to do anything at all.
"No passion so effectively robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear." Edmund Burke 1729 -97
What if a nation's population can be diverted from concentrating about their government's inadequacies and start thinking about some far more important considerations? That's logical. What could also therefore be logical is that a concocted climate of fear that would be very welcome to take the heat off complaints about almost any government activity or lack thereof. Let's see how this might work..
-         Hospitals and health systems a mess? Sorry, too busy saving the planet.

-         Schools and Education going downhill? Sorry, far more urgent issues at stake.

-         World population is rapidly expanding and using more water and resources than there is available? EASY. Blame the effects on humans affecting climate change by destroying the environment.

-         Unable to force multi national companies to re engineer their energy inefficient and polluting products to less harmful alternatives. EASY. Blame consumers for using too much energy and threaten them with increased taxes on energy consumption in the hope this will decrease energy use.

-         Developing countries clamouring for a bigger share in the world's resources? EASY. Tax the developed world and give the money to errr.umm.. (Wait for it), the governments of the so called developing countries via a non elected and non representative quasi UN government? How? EASY. Hold a world Climate Change Conference and vote for this measure without your electors really knowing what's actually happening. Then spring the results on them as a 'fait accompli'.

-         Want to get the people to support your views? EASY. Promise developing nations a share of the Carbon Taxes you are planning to implement without voter approval. You'll soon have all those who can see easy money being vocally on your side without them having to do anything difficult at all. Of course we all know that the governments of developing countries will automatically give all this largesse to their people and not squander any of this windfall on themselves. don't we?
On the other hand. Practice good, accountable and responsible government?
Sorry! FAR TOO HARD!

Song lyrics evoke the spirit of family and tragedy

From MvM Newsletter 8

December 2009

Montevideo Maru Memorial Committee

 

PETER GARRETT’S life has not been without great tragedy.

As well as losing his grandfather on the Montevideo Maru, his father, a company executive, died of work stress and later his mother died in a house fire.

Peter’s song, In the Valley, draws its power from these dreadful events.

He has written of it: "It's just a simple story of someone talking about what's happening to their family and the passing of generations - and how that stays with you."

 

IN THE VALLEY

My grandfather went down with the Montevideo

The rising sun sent him floating to his rest

And his wife fled south to Sydney seeking out safe harbour

A north shore matron she became with some paying guests

My father went down with the curse of big cities

Traffic tolls and deadlines took him to his peace

Now Bob Dyer glued us to our seats

And lawns were always Victa neat

Whilst Menzies fawned at royal feet do you remember

In the valley I walk I took some comfort there

In the valley I walk cold comfort I can hear you talk

In the valley I walk - who will take me there

When my mother went down it was a stiff arm from Hades

Life surprises and tears you like the southerly

She always welcomed the spring always welcomed the stranger

I don't see too many around like this

Oh no, that's what I'm looking for, year, what we're looking for

In the valley I walk who will take me there

In the valley I walk cold comfort I can hear you talk

In the valley I walk I took some comfort there

In the valley I walk oh rough justice I hear you talk

In the valley I walk to meet my water shed

I hope virtue brings its own reward

And I hope the pen is mightier than any sword

I hope the kids will take it slow

I hope my country claims its own

In the valley I walk I cried yes I cried I was down then I crawled

Mercy's arms all around me when I was down there

In the valley I walk do you read me they can hear me in the valley

© Hirst/Moginie/Garrett