Hillary Clinton will visit Papua New Guinea

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (pictured)  will visit Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Australia from Jan 14 to 19, U.S. State Department said on Wednesday.

On Jan 12, in Honolulu, Hawaii, the secretary will deliver a policy speech focused on Asia-Pacific multilateral engagement and will be consulting with Pacific Command, said spokesman Ian Kelly in a statement.

From Hawaii, Clinton will travel to Papua New Guinea on Jan. 14where she will hold bilateral meetings and meet with local society leaders to discuss environmental protection and women's empowerment.

On Jan 15, Clinton will travel to New Zealand for meeting with Prime Minister John Key and other senior officials. She will also hold meetings with New Zealand citizens and U.S. and New Zealand veterans.

The secretary will travel to Australia on Jan17.

In Canberra, Clinton, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and their Australian counterparts Stephen Smith and John Falkner will participate in the 25th Australia-U.S. Ministerial Consultations to discuss key global and regional security challenges.

 

Workshop addresses bio=control strategy for invasive pests and weeds

Participants at the Pacific Bio-control Strategy Workshop at Auckland, New Zealand, late last year

By ANNASTASIA KAWI of NARI

The biological control of invasive species in the Pacific was the agenda of a strategic workshop held in New Zealand recently.
Plant protection experts and quarantine specialists from the Pacific and international community were taken to task to address issues of adopting biological control or bio-control as a tool to fight invasive pests and weeds in agriculture, forestry and important ecosystems in the region.
The Regional Bio-control Strategy Development Workshop was held in Auckland last Nov 16-18.
Papua New Guinea was represented by Kaile Korowi, an entomologist with Ramu Agri-Industries; Tony Gunua, a senior plant pathologist with the National Agricultural Quarantine and Inspection Authority; and Annastasia Kawi, a National Agriculture Research Institute scientist.
Other participating countries were American Samoa, Cook Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, New Caledonia, Niue, Northern Marianas, Palau, Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu.
The main purpose of the workshop was to bring key players together to see whether bio-control of widespread invasive species could be undertaken in a more co-operative and collaborative way in the Pacific, and to develop a regional strategy that would allow this to happen.
Some of the issues addressed included:
· Reviewing of bio-control activities in the Pacific;
· Identifying capacity gaps and barriers in using bio-control to manage invasive weeds;
· Identifying opportunities and actions to increase bio-control work in the Pacific;
· Discussing criteria for selecting priority species for bio-control;
· Identifying actions and mechanisms to increase the understanding and acceptance of the use of bio-control as a management tool;
· Identifying potential funding sources for bio-control projects; and
· Creating a steering group to assist in the implementation of a regional strategic plan.
Participants were told that a significant number of successful projects on invasive species using bio-control already existed in the Pacific region with scope for more.
However, given the financial, legislative and logistical constraints faced by each Pacific Island Country and Territory (PIC&T), there was an urgent need is develop a strategy that could allow PIC&Ts to share expertise, experiences and resources.
Emphasis was also placed on each PIC&T to prioritise their invasive species, both plant and animal pests, for biological control.
With priority lists, countries with commonalities can work together to help minimise expenses of often-expensive invasive species management projects.
The workshop concluded that the PIC&Ts can share more information between agriculture, forestry and bio-diversity conservation groups to better address bio-control work, as well as look at strategies implemented in other regions in the use of bio-control agents to fight invasive plants and pests.
The workshop was funded by United States Department of State, Hawaii Invasive Species Council, Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, New Zealand AID, Pacific Invasive Learning Network, Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, Pacific Invasive Initiative based at Auckland University, Secretariat of the Pacific Community’s Land Resources Division, Landcare Research New Zealand and United States Forest Services in Hawaii.

Manus into coconut bio-fuel production

By ROSELYN ELLISON in Lorengau

 

Manus provincial Government (MPG) is slowly preparing itself to get into serious diesel fuel import substitution.

Of the K3 million National Agriculture Development Plan funding, K1.5 million is specifically set to get coconut bio-diesel production in a big way.

So far two of the major activities have taken place

One was the pre-feasibility tour of Buka Metal Fabricators’ coconut bio-diesel plant in Bougainville last August by MPG and provincial agriculture officers.

The other was the collection of 20,000 coconut seedlings from Aua Wuvulu and Nigoherm local level governments in the Western Islands of Manus last September.

The collection of nuts from the old German plantations was intended for the rehabilitation and replanting of 10 identified senile coconut plantations in the province.

This will cover a total land area of 300ha with the inclusion of a further 100ha.

 This extension will be from smallholders who will be given 70 seedlings each to plant to support the project.

However, other coconut growers within the province are also welcome to participate through the supply of coconuts to plant.

In August/September 2007, MPG engaged PNG Bio-fuel Engineering Ltd (PNGBEL) to conduct a baseline study of the coconut production capacity of the province

Coober Pedy's great leap backward

Life for many Aborigines is patently worse than it was 50 years ago, writes former Papua New Guinea crocodile hunter and politician John Pasquarelli

 

IN 1959 I arrived at the Eight Mile Field at Coober Pedy with two partners and, as luck would have it, our first shaft bottomed on saleable opal.

I was a 22-year-old dropout from the University of Melbourne law school and I met my first Aborigines in their own environment on the opal fields. In those days before mechanisation, Aboriginal women and their kids "noodled" on the mullock heaps of the working mines, which involved picking over the mined earth coming up from down below and collecting any opal chips and full opals, which were then stored in tobacco and cigarette tins. The law of finders keepers applied, but at the end of the day Aboriginal men would arrive and claim the collected opal, sell it to the people who ran the Shell service station and then go and buy metho; these were the days before Aborigines were allowed to buy the white man's grog.

I was made chillingly aware of the brutality that existed in the Aboriginal settlement when I noticed a young woman, obviously in distress, noodling on our mine. She had a filthy old singlet wrapped around her head and face and she was covered in flies. "Big trouble, boss," was the response from one of the women when I asked what was wrong.

The woman's drunken husband had assaulted her and forced her face into a campfire, burning out one of her eyes. I drove her into Coober Pedy in my 1936 Chrysler Model 66 sedan and she was taken to the Bush Nurses at Port Augusta. I never saw her again.

In 1960 I left Australia for Papua New Guinea and returned briefly to Coober Pedy in 1981, during a driving trip across Australia. Between 1959 and this year I have also visited Aboriginal settlements in the Western Desert, Papunya, Eumundi, Alice Springs, Tennant Creek, Katherine, Darwin, Kununurra, Mistake Creek and the notorious Palm Island. Outback Aboriginal camps remind one of Dante's Inferno. I have just returned from my third visit to Coober Pedy. Fifty years and billions of dollars on, the nightmare continues, worse than ever.

Coober Pedy is a stark microcosm of the problems that affect many Aboriginal communities. Many Aborigines run businesses, turn up at their jobs and look after their families. Signs proclaiming "Dry Area -- No Alcohol Allowed" and "Alcohol Consumption Banned" are posted everywhere.

But like some mad Monty Python script, drunken Aboriginal men and women are slumped on the footpath, crumpled VB cans beside them, within feet of these signs.

One afternoon in the main street of Coober Pedy, I watched a young Aborigine stagger out of a bottle shop clutching a plastic bag in each hand containing a bladder, or cask of wine.

In a catatonic state, he meandered back and forth as if trying to get his bearings before heading off to the settlement. Stones on the roofs of houses at the Aboriginal reserve are thrown there by drunks.

Dogs from the Aboriginal settlement roam the streets of Coober Pedy unleashed and the larger ones search the rubbish bins. One morning, a large, fierce-looking alsatian cross mongrel was standing on his hind legs rummaging through a garbage bin while 100m away an Aboriginal man was doing the same thing.

At the main hotel, de facto apartheid exists; blacks and town whites drink in separate bars by mutual arrangement. Unwary tourists soon realise their mistake. The police do their best but they have been turned into a de facto taxi service. They pick up drunken Aborigines in the main street and drop them back at the reserve, only to have them return an hour or so later.

The town's only ambulance is also co-opted to ferry drunks.

Coober Pedy sits astride one of Australia's busiest north-south tourist routes and local and foreign tourists pass through in great numbers seven days a week. Many will be appalled by what they see and will assume that the evil white man is responsible.

The question of how to deal with grog and drugs appears to be insoluble given our present laws and the influence of the civil libertarian movement. New draconian laws relating to the sale of alcohol could be passed. Years ago in PNG, problem white drunks had their photos distributed by police around the bottle shops and were refused service. This name and shame process proved effective, but imagine the response if such a remedy were mooted today to deal with Aboriginal drunks.

Far too many of the people that work in the Aboriginal industry, whether black or white, are totally unsuitable to be employed. They drink too much, smoke cigarettes and use drugs such as marijuana. Yet these people should be role models and mentors, setting an example and as such they must be drug-tested in the workplace. Unfortunately, many of these people are only too willing to promote the cult of victimhood, subconsciously or deliberately, and weeding them out must be a priority. Otherwise Aboriginal women and children will continue to suffer like that girl who had her eye burned out 50 years ago.

 

John Pasquarelli is an artist and political commentator.This article was first published in The Australian on August 19, 2009

 

 

Facts of the Lae port project

By FRANK ASAELI of PNGPCL

 

THE overseas wharf extension at Lae port (pictured) is funded by PNG Ports Corporation (PNGPCL) and not the Asian Development Bank (ADB) as many people think.

The budget for the project is about K88 million, and variations to the project may see total costs exceed K90m.

PNGPCL chief executive officer Brian Riches said the project, being constructed by Nawae Construction, would not only cater for the multi-billion kina liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects.

Mr Riches said although PNGPCL intended to provide port services for the LNG project, the extension of the wharf was earmarked well before the proposed LNG project for general incoming (import) and outgoing (export) overseas vessels.

“PNG Ports states the contract to Nawae Construction is valued at approximately K88.02m, with payments to date of K26.4m,” he said.

“Like all PNGPCL’s other ports, Lae port projects are undertaken as a result of either the deterioration of the existing facilities, or the need to extend these existing facilities to accommodate the increasing size and number of vessels annually in all ports or new facilities to meet our stakeholders’ requirements and to facilitate trade.

“Outside Australia and New Zealand, Lae port is the largest port in the Pacific region and generates 52% of the PNGPCL revenue.

“This project signifies our understanding of stakeholders’ demand for maritime services and the requirement to facilitating trade growth.

“More than 80% of all export/import trade passes through our nation’s sea ports.   

“PNGPCL takes the responsibility seriously in benchmarking port efficiency with other ports within the region.

“We also acknowledge we have to improve and expand our port facilities.”

Mr Riches said it was estimated that PNGPCL needed approximately K2-3 billion to rehabilitate its facilities across its network of 16 ports, which did not include the cost of the proposed Port Moresby port relocation.

The year just gone, and a challenging one ahead for Papua New Guinea

By REG RENAGI

THE Papua New Guinea government remains in power until an election in 2012 and economic forecasts until then look favourable.

But 2009 posed many challenges.

 Discouraging social indicators.

Government performance not up to expectations.

PNG already forecast to fall short of UN goals for 2015.

Opposition and people denied a voice in parliament.

 Laws passed without proper debate.

Key appointments not made on merit.

 Political patronage biased towards special interests. Government failing to investigate corruption allegations and misconduct.

The non-minerals sector remains undeveloped with a bias towards big mineral projects. PNG lacks internal capacity to properly manage two major LNG projects.

Human capital needs priority investment.

Overall, PNG is underdeveloped due to poor planning, inadequate service delivery and ineffective resource management.

Political reform is long overdue.

2010 brings more challenges.

Australia remains an important strategic partner.

Strong regional bilateral relationships will be maintained (Fiji is back on the agenda). China is a new foreign policy challenge.

PM Somare may well try to give the National Alliance party leadership to his son, Arthur, before the next election.

Offsetting this there may be splinter groups within the National Alliance that will challenge Somare’s leadership.

Whatever the outcome, PNG needs a new political order.

 

Wanted: a political approach to empower Papua New Guinea citizens

By REG RENAGI

SINCE INDEPENDENCE, successive governments have betrayed the values that brought Papua New Guinea to nationhood.

The early political promise at independence of providing opportunities to the people, taking responsibility and rewarding those who work hard, seems to have been forgotten.

The result is the people got poorer while the few who got the power and their special interest friends got richer.

PNG has some of the world’s best natural resources and most resourceful people.

The country’s natural beauty, culture and lifestyle could make it a great place to live, work, visit and do business.

Yet, since independence, the country has mismanaged its assets and squandered its opportunities.

The consequences are high unemployment, low incomes, a high tax economy, substantial urban migration, below standard services and a big national debt.

The political system is not working effectively for its people.

Waigani is dominated by special interests and an entrenched bureaucracy that has failed its mission of serving the people in all conditions.

Papua New Guineans are tired of the way their country has been mismanaged and are ready for leaders who are willing to take responsibility to lead the nation to prosperity and growth.

To do this, PNG’s leadership must have a good strategy for change that will transform the country.

The strategy must put people first with a plan to provide avenues for people to fully engage in life-changing opportunities.

The next new prime minister must start dealing with basic problems ignored for many years.

The next government must apply rational policies to traditional resource industries to make PNG competitive and provide benefits to all citizens.

More money must be put into the pockets of those who need it most.

Small and medium businesses, tourism, IT, fisheries, forestry and agriculture must be targeted.

The future government must ensure equality for all citizens by empowering them to equally participate in the country’s development.

PNG must ensure its natural resources are conserved and used for the collective benefit of all citizens and future generations.