THE REALITY AS OPPOSED TO THE RAMBLINGS OF THE NAMELESS NIHILISTS.
JOHN FOWKE
May I issue a challenge to “: Kkingsley” and other well-spoken but overly rancorous, nameless “Oz-ophobes”? Those young men whose plangent but puerile verbal torrents seem always follow my own occasional and humble contributions?
The effort which Terry puts into the maintenance of this always-interesting and very worthwhile blog deserves opinion-pieces and responses which are both relevant and telling, rather than mindlessly bombastic and unreasoned. Please do respond, ol pikinini nogat nem, with due consideration and in a reasonably temperate manner, setting out some of your own well-considered solutions for PNG’s obviously-pressing problems as opposed to relentless criticism and cheap, usually silly point-scoring. Lets use this blog as a platform for debate and the development of worthwhile movement and the fostering of a fairer, better share for all PNG’ans in their common-wealth and common welfare.
May I suggest to you all that Australia has been a humane and unusually generous foster-parent to PNG, both before and after independence. Though the standard of public administration and accounting in PNG is very poor today, there is a foundation of convention and methodology and procedures and principles which is well-enough established to remain in place for better times, and here as on past occasions I make particular reference to the still-surviving but dormant system of Local Government Councils or LLGs as they are now known. Australia also laid solid foundations in terms of a wide appreciation of democratic ideals and principles among the educated class, who insofar as today’s middle-aged and older members are themselves largely the creation of Australia.
The traditional land rights of the people were preserved, wholly intact, by the Australians, and occasional proposals by private investors to import manual labourers from Asia to work plantations were squashed as soon as they became known. There is no debilitating post-colonial conflict between immigrant peoples and the dispossessed in PNG. Or at least not one dating from the Australian as opposed to the Asian colonial era.
Even though it is common wisdom in PNG that the country would be better managed by a dictator, such a situation is unlikely ever to eventuate unless by imposition following a foreign military invasion, again an unlikely eventuality. It is probable that dim and time-hallowed memories of the sanctioned despotism of the "Kiap system" of government feature in this oft-expressed longing for a strong governing authority. In reality any indigenous dictatorial initiative would be doomed to failure at its first manifestation, largely, it is true, because of tribalist antipathies, but also because the educated, when confronted with the fact rather than the fable would reject it on principle. A principle inculcated by Australians.
The press in PNG remains relatively free from interference by government, and presents anti-government sentiment where this is relevant, even though every government-of-the-day has a very tender sense of its own dignity and importance. Overt censorship, if and when manifested, will be received with righteous and universal, even violent rejection. The public of PNG often gets its facts mixed, but it is not afraid to act in matters of general concern. The issue of government censorship of news, resisted by union and Christian organizations, is one from which ideology-based politics might well be born in PNG, but in the meantime press-freedom and the principle of separation of powers as well as the freedom for an individual to speak out on matters of concern is a firm foundation upon which the nations’s standing as a free society is based. “ol lain nogat nem ” notwithstanding.
The avidity with which the two national dailies and the two weeklies are purchased and perused by a large reading public which wants to be informed in matters of national concern is one of the most visible and positive cultural characteristics manifested in post-independence PNG. This is an aspect of culture transfer of which Australians can be proud, reinforced by the advancing availability of electronically-carried news both by TV and by that huge new phenomenon, the mobile ‘phone.
In spite of a notable propensity to fight among themselves, collectively Papua New Guineans are a free people, free at present to make their way in the manner of their collective choosing as a nation on the world stage. Despite the colossal gaffe of the Westminster system, an entirely inappropriate matrix for political development in such an extra-ordinarily egalitarian, non-hierarchical, landowning society as this is, it was Australia's privilege and its achievement to endow a whole generation of Papua New Guineans with the opportunity to assume nationality in addition to the tribal identity their fathers and grandfathers already possessed.
Recognising both its mistakes and its achievements in PNG and the huge importance of maintaining a positive, friendly and tactful role in PNG's ongoing development, Australia is fully justified in spending the very large resources which it commits to this end. It is the planning for the delivery of the promised help as well as the concepts and the quality of the advice which is fed to Australian policy-makers and the managers of the relationship which has always had this writer very concerned.
Of course the time is fast arriving when PNG’s own internally-derived income will be comparatively vast, and it may well be valid for the large cash donation made every year by Australia to be withdrawn to be replaced by endowments of one-on-one exchanges of expertise and by training, both trade and post-graduate on a much greater scale than at present. Mateship as opposed to monetary support. This is what sensible, thinking people on both sides of the relationship desire, and this is what will transpire, growing from an established foundation of general good-will which is well-established.
May I issue a challenge to “: Kkingsley” and other well-spoken but overly rancorous, nameless “Oz-ophobes”? Those young men whose plangent but puerile verbal torrents seem always follow my own occasional and humble contributions?
The effort which Terry puts into the maintenance of this always-interesting and very worthwhile blog deserves opinion-pieces and responses which are both relevant and telling, rather than mindlessly bombastic and unreasoned. Please do respond, ol pikinini nogat nem, with due consideration and in a reasonably temperate manner, setting out some of your own well-considered solutions for PNG’s obviously-pressing problems as opposed to relentless criticism and cheap, usually silly point-scoring. Lets use this blog as a platform for debate and the development of worthwhile movement and the fostering of a fairer, better share for all PNG’ans in their common-wealth and common welfare.
May I suggest to you all that Australia has been a humane and unusually generous foster-parent to PNG, both before and after independence. Though the standard of public administration and accounting in PNG is very poor today, there is a foundation of convention and methodology and procedures and principles which is well-enough established to remain in place for better times, and here as on past occasions I make particular reference to the still-surviving but dormant system of Local Government Councils or LLGs as they are now known. Australia also laid solid foundations in terms of a wide appreciation of democratic ideals and principles among the educated class, who insofar as today’s middle-aged and older members are themselves largely the creation of Australia.
The traditional land rights of the people were preserved, wholly intact, by the Australians, and occasional proposals by private investors to import manual labourers from Asia to work plantations were squashed as soon as they became known. There is no debilitating post-colonial conflict between immigrant peoples and the dispossessed in PNG. Or at least not one dating from the Australian as opposed to the Asian colonial era.
Even though it is common wisdom in PNG that the country would be better managed by a dictator, such a situation is unlikely ever to eventuate unless by imposition following a foreign military invasion, again an unlikely eventuality. It is probable that dim and time-hallowed memories of the sanctioned despotism of the "Kiap system" of government feature in this oft-expressed longing for a strong governing authority. In reality any indigenous dictatorial initiative would be doomed to failure at its first manifestation, largely, it is true, because of tribalist antipathies, but also because the educated, when confronted with the fact rather than the fable would reject it on principle. A principle inculcated by Australians.
The press in PNG remains relatively free from interference by government, and presents anti-government sentiment where this is relevant, even though every government-of-the-day has a very tender sense of its own dignity and importance. Overt censorship, if and when manifested, will be received with righteous and universal, even violent rejection. The public of PNG often gets its facts mixed, but it is not afraid to act in matters of general concern. The issue of government censorship of news, resisted by union and Christian organizations, is one from which ideology-based politics might well be born in PNG, but in the meantime press-freedom and the principle of separation of powers as well as the freedom for an individual to speak out on matters of concern is a firm foundation upon which the nations’s standing as a free society is based. “ol lain nogat nem ” notwithstanding.
The avidity with which the two national dailies and the two weeklies are purchased and perused by a large reading public which wants to be informed in matters of national concern is one of the most visible and positive cultural characteristics manifested in post-independence PNG. This is an aspect of culture transfer of which Australians can be proud, reinforced by the advancing availability of electronically-carried news both by TV and by that huge new phenomenon, the mobile ‘phone.
In spite of a notable propensity to fight among themselves, collectively Papua New Guineans are a free people, free at present to make their way in the manner of their collective choosing as a nation on the world stage. Despite the colossal gaffe of the Westminster system, an entirely inappropriate matrix for political development in such an extra-ordinarily egalitarian, non-hierarchical, landowning society as this is, it was Australia's privilege and its achievement to endow a whole generation of Papua New Guineans with the opportunity to assume nationality in addition to the tribal identity their fathers and grandfathers already possessed.
Recognising both its mistakes and its achievements in PNG and the huge importance of maintaining a positive, friendly and tactful role in PNG's ongoing development, Australia is fully justified in spending the very large resources which it commits to this end. It is the planning for the delivery of the promised help as well as the concepts and the quality of the advice which is fed to Australian policy-makers and the managers of the relationship which has always had this writer very concerned.
Of course the time is fast arriving when PNG’s own internally-derived income will be comparatively vast, and it may well be valid for the large cash donation made every year by Australia to be withdrawn to be replaced by endowments of one-on-one exchanges of expertise and by training, both trade and post-graduate on a much greater scale than at present. Mateship as opposed to monetary support. This is what sensible, thinking people on both sides of the relationship desire, and this is what will transpire, growing from an established foundation of general good-will which is well-established.
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