ISPs 'ripping off people'

 By MALUM NALU

The National

Monday, July 22, 2013

Internet service providers (ISPs) have been bluntly accused of ripping off the people of this country when it comes to internet services.

Acting director of National Weather Service (NWS), Samuel Maiha, lashed out at the predominantly foreign-owned ISPs in no uncertain terms during the launching of its state-of-the-art very short aperture terminal (VSAT) satellite communication system last Friday.

One small step for NWS, a giant step for PNG…Maiha and former Teleikom CEO Peter Loko cut the ribbon to launch the revolutionary VSAT system last Friday.-Nationalpic by MALUM NALU

He said Papua New Guinea was way behind the rest of the world in information and communication technology (ICT) and children were missing out on so many educational opportunities because of the ridiculously high internet costs in this country.

Maihe said small and medium enterprises (SMEs) could not develop when internet costs were so high in this country.

Previously, the NWS used an ISP in Port Moresby, however, very high costs monthly costs and limited access forced them to seek VSAT services.

The new system, set up by 100% nationally-owned company Wanples Wireless, which is owned by USA-based PNG telecommunications and satellite engineer Mathew Wari and his family, allows NWS staff to have satellite access to real-time weather conditions in PNG and around the world at a fixed rate of K10, 000 a month with unlimited internet downloads – which will save the organisation millions of kina in the long haul.

“The internet rates in this country are the highest anywhere in the world,” Maiha told guests including school children.

“I believe there is gross collusion on the part of internet service providers to exploit the citizens of this country of their right to information, knowledge, and development.

“I say this because in the 21^st Century, information, technology and communication are power, and infrastructure such as this milestone installation is a stepping stone.

“Our children need to learn at the same level with their counterparts elsewhere in the world to be on par in terms of knowledge.

“India and China, and the fastest-developing countries, are those that have embraced ICT in a herculean manner.

“All our educational institutions, except the international schools, don’t have access to adequate internet service to do their studies.

“The children either cannot afford it, or if they do, it is too expensive and their downloads get cut off.

“This is the first for Wanples Wireless and we are told that plans are underway to roll out the service to schools in NCD, and districts through respective members of parliament.

“From here on, our children will have affordable internet for their studies, and the small and medium enterprises will also benefit.”

PNG paper labels asylum plan 'Ruddiculous'

By Eoin Blackwell, AAP Papua New Guinea Correspondent

Asylum seekers sent to PNG and eligible for resettlement will not be guaranteed citizenship and may be sent elsewhere, Prime Minister Peter O'Neill says.
Mr O'Neill on Sunday said Australia's $A500 million aid budget will be aligned to PNG's national priorities "for the first time" as a result of the agreement.
"Those found to have genuine refugee status will be resettled in Papua New Guinea and other participating countries in our region," Mr O'Neill said in a statement.
"There is no guarantee of citizenship unless and until all the requirements of our residency and citizenship laws have been met."

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The Australian Government will meet all costs for resettlement, from arrival through to processing and resettlement.
"There will be no negative impact on our budget," Mr O'Neill said.
"This will give our economy a massive boost, with the first benefits to be seen in a short period of time."
PNG citizenship can only be applied for after eight years of residency, and applicants must speak Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu or "a vernacular of the country, sufficiently for normal conversational purpose."
PNG currently does not allow dual citizenship, and applicants must pay about $A4,500 in fees, as well as provide birth and marriage certificates.
Processing and resettlement arrangements will take place under PNG laws, Mr O'Neill said, as well as the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, to which PNG is a signatory.
Papua New Guinea awoke to the headline "Ruddiculous" on the front page of its only Sunday paper, the Sunday Chronicle.
The newspaper also carried a damning editorial of the plan, which said the controversial border protection plan was about winning votes for Kevin Rudd.
"He (Rudd) has unashamedly dragged our PM into Australian domestic politics under the guise of correcting a regional problem which in the long run will effect us all," it said.
"The big question remains, where is PNG going to resettle those identified as genuine refugees." AAP is seeking an answer to that question from Mr O'Neill's office.
Comment is also being sought from the opposition, who have vowed to mount a constitutional challenge against the current, temporary asylum seeker facility on Manus island.
Mr O'Neill said PNG will benefit economically to the tune of "hundreds of millions of kina" from the controversial program.
"Perhaps the most important aspect of our new agreement with Australia is that for the first time since independence, Australia's development assistance program with Papua New Guinea ... will be aligned with our own national policy and program priorities," Mr O'Neill said in a statement.
"This is a major achievement. It is something every prime minister in the last two or three decades has wanted to achieve. I am proud to have delivered it via the agreement I signed in Brisbane on Friday.
"The agreement will deliver substantial, long term benefits for Papua New Guinea as a whole, and not just provinces such as Manus, which will have regional detention and assessment centres." He said there will be significant ongoing spending in the management and operation of detention centres - such as staff, food, services and infrastructure.
He also vowed to ensure local benefits to local contractors and small businesses were maximised

Protesters vow fightback on refugee plan

  Deborah Gough

Reporter for The Age

Kevin Rudd's Papua New Guinea refugee plan would fail within weeks because the island nation cannot cope with the 200 Manus Island refugees it already has, protesters at a rally on Saturday heard.
The protest, in Melbourne's CBD, was organised after Australia signed an agreement that no person arriving in Australia by boat without a visa would be settled in Australia. They would instead be processed in Papua New Guinea and settled there if their case was proved.
Co-chair of the Refugee Action Collective, Lucy Honan, told a rain-soaked crowd of about 600 that the rally was the beginning of a "fightback" against the hardline policy.

Protesters at a rally in the city against Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's new asylum seeker policy. Photo: Ken Irwin

"This policy, where we send refugees packing to Papua New Guinea, our poor struggling neighbour, is going to fall apart, in practical terms, within the next couple of weeks," Ms Honan said.
"It is not going to happen. Papua New Guinea, cannot, cannot, take the expected 20,000 refugees that are going to approach Australia," she said.
She said the 200 Manus Island refugees sent from Australia were regularly returned to Australia for medical treatment.
"The situation is falling apart," she said.
Ms Honan said refugee groups had successfully fought similar policies under the Howard government.
"We have obviously slipped back a long away, but we can turn that around. We don't need to turn the boats back, we need to turn back public opinion," she said.
Human rights lawyer Jessie Taylor said boats would stop when refugees in Indonesia had a way to apply for a visa to Australia.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young described Friday's agreement as a "rush to cruelty on refugees".
"Unfortunately, Kevin Rudd has shown that he is unable to stand up to the fearmongers," she said.
"And for Papua New Guinea, how atrocious for us to be dumping our considered 'political problems' onto a country that we should be helping. Dumping the world's most vulnerable onto the world's most vulnerable – it is bad policy, it is awful, horrible politics, it isn't just hardline it is hideous."

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/protesters-vow-fightback-on-refugee-plan-20130720-2qb43.html#ixzz2ZdszY3Fd

Opposition supports elements of PNG asylum policy as first boat arrives

Paige Taylor  

The Australian 

 THE first 81 asylum seekers subject to Kevin Rudd's new PNG regime have entered detention on Christmas Island, as the Opposition said a Coalition government would keep elements of the hardline Labor policy. 
 The asylum seekers' vessel was the first to berth at the island since the Prime Minister announced on Friday that people who arrived in Australia by boat and without a visa would be given no chance to settle here. 

A baby peers out of the door of a boat at Flying Fish Cove, carrying the first 74 people to be subject to Labor's new rules on asylum seekers. Picture: Colin Murty Source: The Australian

Instead, they would be sent to PapuaNew Guinea and settled there, he said.
Immigration Minister Tony Burke said that the rules would apply from Friday afternoon but that it would take a "couple of weeks" to send people to PNG’s Manus Island, beginning with single men and later including women and children.
The new boat was located by HMAS Bathurst at 9.50pm AEST Friday and at around 3.50am AEST was secured in Flying Fish Cove at Christmas Island.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (ASMA) received a call about the boat from the Australian mainland at 7.11pm on Friday night. The caller said a vessel had broken down on route to Christmas Island. 
After several more calls the position of the vessel was established to be 48 nautical miles north to north-east of Christmas Island. AMSA issued a broadcast to ships and sought assistance from Border Protection command, which sent the Bathurst to escort the boat.

 A statement from Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare yesterday said that there were 81 passengers and two crew on the boat. 
 The passengers, which included women, children and babies, have now been taken ashore.
Mr Clare's office confirmed that the asylum seekers, who are all from Iran, would be subject to Labor's new asylum regime.
Mr Rudd yon Friday put no limit on the number of people to be redirected to PNG under the policy shift, a new approach that triggered a political firestorm as the Greens and humanitarian organisations warned of the cruelty to refugees and the Opposition questioned Labor’s ability to implement the policy.
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said yesterdat that a Coalition government would keep aspects of the new rules but said that Mr Rudd’s plan was light on detail.
“Once again we have a prime minister making a big announcement but the detail and the operations and the costs are completely unknown,'' he said.
“The problem is not with the idea but with this government's inability to implement idea … The coalition sees some merit in these measures and they can certainly complement the measures that the coalition stands by ... (But) of course you need to go the extra distance and turn boats back where it is safe to do so.''
Mr Morrison said the Liberals welcomed PNG's preparedness to resettle people.
“That is certainly something we'd be seeking to take up from them, as well as the ability to expand the regional processing capacity on Manus Island.''
But Mr Morrison warned the policy raised a number of legal issues and could be subject to a legal challenge either in Australia or PNG. He also said there were practical challenges in implementing such a policy in PNG that could take years to resolve.
Meanwhile, Queensland Premier Campbell Newman told the Liberal National Party state conference in Brisbane that the policy could cause more PNG residents to cross the “porous” Torres Strait border to use services in Queensland, and that asylum seekers were likely to follow them.
“Right now the taxpayers of Queensland are spending $10 million each year ... on treating PNG nationals who've come across the state into Queensland and some even made it all the way to Cairns to be treated for diseases there that they cannot be treated for in PNG,” Mr Newman said.
“What Kevin Rudd is doing is creating a launching pad for a wave of additional ongoing immigration from PNG into Queensland, either legal or illegal.''
But Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare defended the drastic new approach to boat people, calling it was a simple and practical idea that removed the incentive for people to risk their lives at sea.
“This is costing us billions of dollars already and its costing us hundreds and hundreds of lives,'' he said on the Nine Network.
“If this works it has the potential to reduce the cost that we currently pay for processing asylum seekers. And if it works it has the potential very importantly to reduce the number of people that are losing their lives in the middle of the ocean.''
And Treasurer Chris Bowen as defended Labor’s decision to advertise its policy change in full-page newspaper advertisements across the country yesterday. The ads state: “If you come here by boat without a visa you won't be settled in Australia''. The national campaign will be followed by advertisements overseas.
“It is very important that people in Australia understand the new policy settings and it is very important that people down the chain of supply of boats to Australia understand it as well,” Mr Bowen told Sky News.
Independent Senator Nick Xenophon said he would make a formal complaint about the ads to the Auditor General, which he described as a blatantly political campaign paid for by the taxpayer.
The United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, said it had not been involved in the agreement between Australia and the PNG, and that it was seeking information about the deal.
A group representing more than 2000 Australian lawyers called the new regime shameful. Australian Lawyers for Human Rights president John Southalan said PNG had indicated when it joined the Refugee Convention that it wouldn't be bound by obligations regarding the rights of asylum seekers to work and education.
He also pointed out PNG had not signed the treaty against torture.
“These are very serious deficiencies in the legal protections which Australia considers important,'' he said.
Additional reporting: AAP

Campbell Newman predicts wave of asylum seekers escaping PNG across Torres Strait to Queensland

Steven Scott National Political Correspondent 

The Courier-Mail  

July 21, 2013 

QUEENSLAND will face a new wave of asylum seekers trying to escape Papua New Guinea under Kevin Rudd's new policy, Premier Campbell Newman says.

In an dramatic warning about the flow-on effects of Mr Rudd's plan to tackle people smuggling, said PNG will become a ''launching pad'' for asylum seekers to island hop across the Torres Strait to Queensland.
''What Kevin Rudd is doing is creating a launching pad for a wave of additional ongoing immigration from PNG into Queensland, either legal or illegal,'' Mr Newman said.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and Queensland Premier Campbell Newman at the Liberal National Party conference at the RNA Showgrounds in Brisbane. Picture: Liam Kidston Source: News Limited

The Premier demanded Mr Rudd spend more on beefing up border protection measures in the Torres Strait.
''The Torres Strait is a porous border right now,'' Mr Newman said.
''It's only 4km from PNG on to the soil of Queensland.''
''You can go from PNG into Queensland across the Strait in a row boat.''
Mr Newman said PNG was not prepared to cope with the influx of refugees who would be resettled there under Mr Rudd's new border protection policy.
Federal Immigration Minister Tony Burke accused Mr Newman of a hysterical response to the new policy.
''It's hard to imagine anything more hysterical than this one,'' Mr Burke said.
''Campbell Newman appears to be objecting to the geographic location of Papua New Guinea. It's been there for a long time.''
The Premier's attack came as the federal Opposition delivered conflicting messages about Mr Rudd's deal to resettle all asylum seekers who arrive by boat and are found to be refugees in PNG.
Queensland Local Government Minister David Crisafulli was scathing about the impact of the new asylum policy on the state.
He said it was unbelievable that asylum seekers who had risked their lives travelling to Australia from Sri Lanka or Afghanistan would not try to do so again from PNG.
''The Federal Government has tried to end a political headache and in the process thrown Queensland to the wolves,'' he said.
''It's a half-baked, harebrained scheme out of Canberra.''
Opposition Immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the Coalition would keep the deal with PNG if it won the election but left open the prospect of changing it.
But Opposition Leader Tony Abbott attacked Mr Rudd's plan as an ''election fix'' that won't work and vowed to never use another country to solve Australia's domestic problems.
''The only solution to Australian problems is found here in Australia,'' Mr Abbott said.
''I will never subcontract out to other countries the solution of problems in this country.''
The Opposition Leader said Mr Rudd's PNG plan should be considered a failure unless every new asylum seeker arrival was sent to Manus Island and the rate of boat arrivals stopped ''from today''.
In an address to the Liberal National Party convention in Brisbane, Mr Abbott told his supporters the election would be difficult to win.
''I've got to say, I am grateful to Mr Rudd because if there's one thing he's done, he has destroyed any complacency on our side,'' Mr Abbott said.
''Let's be under no illusions that we have a fight on our hand.''
The Opposition Leader used much of his speech to attack Mr Rudd as he rallied his supporters ahead of the election.
''Mr Rudd is hoping to surf back to government on a wave of amnesia and relief at the demise of an unpopular prime minister,'' he said.
Mr Abbott mocked the Prime Minister's claims that he had changed and he would reform the Labor Party.
He lashed the Government's fringe benefit tax hit on company cars to the mining tax, saying it would raise no money and destroy the car industry.
He said Mr Rudd had tweeted the message ''your business model has just ended'' in a reference to his crackdown on people smugglers.
But he urged car companies, cattle farmers and insulation installers who have been hurt by the Government's policies to retweet the message in a show of anger.

Australia to send asylum-seekers to Papua New Guinea

Associated Press

July 19, 2013, 7:57 a.m.

CANBERRA, Australia — Australia's prime minister warned Friday that all refugees who arrive by boat will be resettled on the island nation of Papua New Guinea, a policy shift that rights groups immediately condemned.
The move, described by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as “very hard line,” aims to deter an escalating number of asylum-seekers who travel to Australia in rickety fishing boats from poor, war-torn homelands through other countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia.

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O'Neill, left, and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announce a new policy on asylum-seekers at a news conference in Brisbane, Australia. (Aman Sharma / AFP/ Getty Images / July 19, 2013)

The growing influx is a major political problem for Rudd's Labor Party, which is the clear underdog in elections expected within months.
“From now on, any asylum-seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees,” Rudd told reporters after signing a pact with Prime Minister Peter O'Neill of Papua New Guinea that will enable Australia to deport refugees there.
The policy was condemned by refugee advocates and human rights activists.
The new plan “shows not only a complete disregard for asylum-seekers but absolute contempt for legal and moral obligations,” said Graeme McGregor, Amnesty International's refugee campaign coordinator for Australia.
David Manne, executive director of Australia's Refugee and Immigration Legal Center, described it as “a fundamental repudiation of our commitment to protecting refugees.”
Manne described Papua New Guinea — which is near Australia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean — as an unsafe country where violence is widespread and serious human rights abuses are a daily occurrence.
Rudd said the policy met Australia's obligations under the United Nations' Refugee Convention. Papua New Guinea is a signatory of the same convention that sets out refugees' rights.
The rules will apply to asylum-seekers who arrive from Friday onward.
Asylum-seekers who arrive by boat would continue to have their refugee claims assessed in Australia and at detention camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.
Australia would help genuine refugees settle in Papua New Guinea — a diverse tribal society of more than 800 languages and 7 million people who are mostly subsistence farmers. Those who are found not to be genuine refugees could return to their home countries or another country other than Australia.
By Friday, 15,728 asylum-seekers had arrived by boat this year. The arrivals are on track to exceed last year's total of 17,202, as well as the government's target of resettling 20,000 refugees a year.
Iran has become the biggest source country. Asylum-seekers from Iran last year accounted for one in seven arrivals. This year, they make up one in three.
Indonesia announced Thursday it will stop issuing visas on arrival to Iranians in a bid to stem the flow to Australia.
Australia is Papua New Guinea's former colonial master and is now its largest source of foreign aid. In return for accepting the refugees, Rudd said Australia will redevelop a hospital in the country's second-largest city and reform the country's university sector.
The new policy echoes that of a previous Australian government that in 2001 also pledged that asylum-seekers who arrived by boat would never be accepted by Australia. That policy all but stopped the asylum-seeker traffic.
Some refugees spent years in an Australian-run detention camp on the tiny Pacific atoll of Nauru before Australia eventually resettled them because no other country would accept them.
A protest by 150 asylum-seekers on Nauru turned violent Friday with several demonstrators and their guards injured, Australia's Immigration Department said in a statement.
The department said the unrest was unrelated to the new policy, which was announced later.

Papua New Guinea: a country suffering spiralling violence

Australia will send asylum seekers to a country beset by crime and disease, whose children were deemed to be among the world's most vulnerable

Helen Davidson 
guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 July 2013

The Australian government’s controversial deal with Papua New Guinea will see asylum seekers sent to a country struggling to cope with spiralling rates of violence, particularly against women.
The Australian government currently urges travellers to PNG to “exercise extreme caution” due to high levels of serious crime and dangers of violent clashes, ethnic disputes, carjacking, and endemic levels of cholera, high levels of HIV, and malaria.

Papua New Guinea's capital, Port Moresby. Photograph: Rocky Roe/AFP/Getty Images

Papua New Guinea has recently been labelled one of the worst places for gender-based violence in the world. One hospital in the country’s second biggest city, Lae, recently reported that half of all sexual violence victims they saw were children.
Unicef described Papua New Guinea’s children as among the most vulnerable in the world, due to extremely high rates of violence, customary child marriage, exploitation, police brutality and detention in adult jails for young offenders.
The country currently allows five forms of execution: hanging, lethal injection, medical death by deprivation of oxygen, firing squad and electrocution. Homosexuality is illegal and adultery is a criminal offence.
PNG law officials recently repealed the Sorcery Act of 1971 which, among other things, made killing a person accused of sorcery potentially defensible. Recent news attention has focused on a spate of killings related to accusations of witchcraft.
Papua New Guinea is – like Australia – a signatory to the UN refugee convention. However when it signed in 1986 it made seven reservations.
The UNHCR noted that amid the high levels of crime and violence in PNG, “persons of concern, unlike most expatriates in PNG, cannot afford additional security. Non-Melanesian asylum seekers and refugees in PNG are particularly vulnerable to xenophobia and racism amongst the local population.”
The country is extremely rural. Around 80% of the 7 million people in PNG live in rural areas, and many are without basic services, infrastructure and education. The medical system is extremely weak.
PNG is currently experiencing a mining boom, but the unequal distribution of wealth has fuelled jealous violence, according to NGOs on the ground.
The prime minister, Peter O’Neill, who has vowed to clean up corruption and political instability in the country, earlier this year faced an attempted coup by a military loyal to former prime minister Michael Somare.
In a recent outbreak of violence, a group of defence force soldiers attacked a medical school.
Part of the arrangement with the Australian government is an increase in aid to PNG, addressing health and hospitals, universities, and law and order.