“Minister Airhead” Delilah Gore Is Proving That the O’Neill Government Cares Nothing About PNG Higher Education Nor Its Deteriorating Universities

By OHE Staff

Although it worked for Unitech Saga, the Minister for Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology (HERST), Hon Sohe MP Delilah Gore,  can’t blame last Thursday’s embarrassing incident at Girua airport on “Deceptive David” Kavanamur.   Yes, it was OHE Director General Kavanamur whose advice to Gore during the Unitech Saga made her look like an idiot.   This time, however, Kavanamur is out of the picture, having started a long recreational leave.  Kavanamur’s expectation is that all his deceptions and deviousness will be forgiven and forgotten by the time he comes back.  

Without Kavanamur around, who can Minister Gore point the finger of blame at?  What about another renowned  deceiver of OHE, Wannabe King and disgraced former Unitech VC Misty Baloiloi?  Not likely.  Even though Baloiloi seems incapable of feeling shame or showing true humility, these days he spends as much time as possible in Alotau.   Unless Minister Gore pays him enough to move his family down to Cairns to join the Kavanamurs, Baloiloi won’t be interested in copping the blame for HERST disasters.     

Thus, it seems that Minister Gore has no choice but to take the heat herself for any incompetence she displays.    On Friday morning the hot fire came in the form of the Post Courier’s screaming front page headlines “Do You Know Who I Am”.   Through that story, transparency ruled, as Transparency International always teaches us it will.  Gore’s despicable behaviour was made public to all of PNG, including eyewitness accounts.   

In fact the incident at Girua airport adds to an overall suspicion that under the O’Neill government, only incompetents need apply to become HERST Minister.   The Gore administration seems to be Arore without the partying, drinking, womanising and gambling.    Ministers G-Aro-re share the belief that politicians deserve respect normally given only to royalty.   Arore always demanded and expected ‘hamamas payments’ from, and to be wined and dined by those he should have been serving in higher education.   Similarly Gore expects to be kissed on her arse everywhere she goes, starting with the Unitech students who bluntly refused.   She’s at it again and once again in hot water.    

Does Minister Gore honestly think we believe that it was the Air Niugini flight attendants on PX853 who acted unprofessionally?    We haven’t forgotten that this is the same Delilah Gore who tried to convince us that Unitech students escorting their senior executive management out the door of the Unitech administration building was “unprecedented” in the history of PNG and the world!    

Minister Gore, before you start throwing out full page advertisements telling us that the treatment you got from Air Niugini is “unprecedented in the history of the world”, come back to earth, and smell the coffee.   These flight attendants serve up to 1000 people and more a day.    On Friday I checked with Air Niugini and confirmed that very few complaints are received about flight attendant unprofessionalism.    It is on the order of a handful or less every year.   Flight attendants are selected specifically for having agreeable personalities.  

No, Minister Airhead, it was you and your yap yapping on your mobile phone without respect to others on the airplane that caused the problem.   You were “about to switch off” her mobile phone” only after the flight attendant asked you to switch it off because you hadn’t switched it off when the public announcement was made, and yap yapped throughout the safety demonstration and even afterwards.  That is the truth of the matter.   

“Didn’t show manners,” Minister Gore complained about the flight attendant.    North Korea’s dictator says things like that too before he sends that citizen to the firing squad.  This sickness our PNG politicians have about demanding respect as if they were kings, queens, or dictators, must be deleted from their brains once and for all.   Minister Airhead, PNG is a democracy and in a democracy leaders don’t demand respect, they have to earn it.   PNG politicians shouldn’t get any respect whatsoever just because they won the election because they were the best at buying off votes or promising the moon to naïve and uneducated voters.       

What happened on PX 853 last Thursday confirms that the last kind of person PM Peter O’Neill wants to put into the position of HERST Minister is someone who has good sense and strong intellect.    Our PM treats the HERST Ministry like a cheap political favour to be passed out like PK.   He cares nothing about the intellect and academic background of the person he appoints, but worries instead what province they come from or what political party they belong to.   This is no different from the way Peter O’Neill uses free education, new classrooms, and even promises of new universities, in his never ending personal Saga to buy votes and loyalty.   

Our PM doesn’t give a damn about the education our students receive.  Nor does he care that this Ministry of all Ministries in his government is the one to determine whether or not our human resource in PNG ever gains the educational capacity it takes to be world competitive.  It is only through the quality of the education provided by our PNG universities that PNG can stop the growing foreign intrusion in our businesses and upon our land.  Only by developing a highly skilled and intellectual work force can we create wealth from our resources and keep it within the country to create meaningful development, instead of letting our wealth leak overseas as happens now.  

Right now, those goals are like dim stars moving further away from us, and why?  The PM’s recent promise to build a new university for Southern Highlands Province satisfies O’Neill’s desire to secure his political base.   It completely ignores an OHE report written by former PM Rabbie Namaliu and Australian top economists, Ross Garnaut (who O’Neill deported from PNG last year because Garnaut was Chairman of the Ok Tedi Sustainable Development Programme Board that O’Neill is trying to take over).   That report on the state of higher education in PNG recommended not to create more universities, but rehabilitate those that already exist.   

Take a look at our existing national disgraces aka as UPNG, Unitech UNRE and UOG.   See with your own eyes and listen with your own ears how run down they have become superficially and intellectually.    None of that concerns our PM as he promises a new university while he allows the existing institutions to further rot.  

Last year the O’Neill government gave more money in a single bank cheque to Paul Paraka than it spent on the entire University of Papua New Guinea.   The road flyover in Port Moresby will cost more money than the government spends on either UPNG or Unitech in a single year.    That’s not to say that O’Neill doesn’t give gifts to the universities.   However, his gifts always seem to be a cunning attempt to buy silence and loyalty, and stifle meaningful dissent.   The PMV bus that O’Neill gave to the UPNG SRC is becoming the most famous example.  On the other  side of the nation, questions are being raised concerning O’Neill’s gift to Unitech to reconstruct roads, through a contract whose awarding didn’t seem to be put out to tender.  Who benefits behind the scenes?    

Instead of complaining that people should respect her yap yapping on the phone and inconveniencing plane passengers, Minister Gore should be earning respect the honest way.   She can start by getting down to basics on how to turn around the decline of higher education in PNG.   HERST’s high priced consultants, new offices, new policies, endless meetings, and workshops held at the nicest of PNG’s hotel won’t make a rat’s arse worth of difference in the kind of education our university students receive until there is a dramatic increase in money designated to those institutions.   

The most effective, immediate way to provide university students with a better education is to greatly improve library and study facilities and their book holdings, greatly expand computer labs and their contents, and dramatically upgrade all the technical teaching and research labs with up to date learning resources.   Faculty quality must be upgraded immediately by paying competitive wages connected to meeting levels of academic performance that match world standards.   Substantial money must be directly invested to improve the liveability of student and staff residences.        

It is as simple as that.  There is no need to bring back Kavanamur and company to put together another report that confirms the obvious.   

Right now, Minister Gore should be planning a visionary approach to the 2015 budget (yes, it’s already budget planning time) for our public universities.  While it is the universities that prepare their budgets, the HERST Minister can come to the forefront and leading the attack to get much improved funding for 2015 to benefit all PNG public universities.  

Right now, as universities are beginning to plan their next year’s budgets, Minister Gore should make front page headlines by announcing to the nation that she will be asking parliament for a doubling of the budget allocated for PNG’s public universities.   That’s what our universities need to dig out of the hole the government threw them into.   This doubling of the budget must be made permanent.   The cost of living index must be formally linked to the university budgets to ensure that eroding purchasing power no longer destroys the universities as inflation has been allowed to do for the last 30 years.   

Does Minister Gore have the visionary leadership to make such a proposal or is she as empty-headed politician as her predecessor?   Will she listen to her own conscience at the pathetic state of higher education in this country or will she continue listening to Kavarap Kavanamur when he returns from rec leave?    

If the HERST Minister has any sense of how to get things done in this country, the next time she’s caught yip yapping on the phone, witnesses will notice she’s trying to ring up all PNG University Chancellors and Vice Chancellors, as well as university students to enlist their support for her initiative to double the budgets of UPNG, Unitech, UNRE and UOG.  

If the HERST Minister has any sense of integrity, she will offer parliament this 2015 budget submission with the notation that she wants all structural improvements to be carried out using contracts that are awarded on tender and transparently.  No more high priced, low quality projects designed foremost to benefit political cronies.

Are you doubtful that our government can afford doubling the budgets of the 4 PNG public universities?  Of course they can do it.   This is the government:

• That paid Paul Paraka over K70 million for doing what government lawyers could have done for far less.   
• That rejected Australian government financial assistance to buy rural aid post medicines so they could fund the less qualified suppliers that they wanted to give the contracts too.
• Whose HERST minister who didn’t give a hoot last Thursday how much time and money her “I don’t get no respect” tantrum cost nationally owned Air Niugini.  

Let the O’Neill government end the payoffs and perks that they’re giving to their cronies and start using that money to directly improve our universities!

Of course, the O’Neill government, including Minister Gore, will never do the right thing unless the people themselves start demanding better education for our young people.   If nothing else, that’s what Unitech students taught us – that our politicians are never the first to lead unless its for something that serves their selfish interest.  If we want action that truly benefits PNG, we cannot wait for the politicians.  The people must take the lead in demanding it, and doing so strongly enough that the politicians are forced to follow our lead.