HOW CAN AUSTRALIA PROVE IT’S FRIENDSHIP TO PNG?

by  PAUL AMATIO

This is a follow on to my thoughts shared yesterday on how Australia is perhaps not as true a friend as PNG thought it was. In this now, I would like to suggest how Australia can change the perception that many in PNG think of it.

What Australia (and the West, especially the US by extension) can do is to put its aid directly into implementation government agencies and only have one or two people within those departments / agencies for monitoring and evaluation purposes only. For example, if PPNG wants to develop a primary school curriculum that is localised in content and teaching approach, then it should put its money into the development of the materials needed. Not in the content of the curriculum. We already have enough educators who are experts and experienced enough in curriculum development as it is.

As I am more familiar with the police force, I shall use it as an example here and allow others to draw parallels with other organisations.

If the police force needs to enhance its capacity, then what Australia needs to do is support attempts to identify exactly what is needed, where it is needed and put the money there. I understand that as I write this the AFP has started work on a manpower project in the RPNGC that includes a restructure of the RPNGC. That may be good but what is really galling and upsetting to many senior officers now is that this work has already been done locally by our own officers. And all necessary documentation including statutory compliance requirements have been met and documented. So why are they repeating what has been done? Surely as “experts”, all they need to do is review and make recommendations on what has already been done. NOT redo the whole thing. This to me sounds like someone is trying to justify their existence. My sources inside the RPNGC tell me that this is similar to many other things that are happening under the AFP. Yes, under the AFP because they are being allowed to take control of almost all aspects of finance, administration and operations. This is way beyond their original terms of engagement and someone needs to review this and put them back on track or boot them out. Their interference is creating disaffection in the RPNGC.

I have long wondered why the RPNGC does not have an up to date windows based criminal intelligence database that is centrally based for ease of criminal records access. In this day and age, why is it that with the forensics office burnt down, we have lost a significant number of criminal records that we not transferred and stored both digitally, or off site in a secondary back up facility as well as on Cloud? The cost of a mini server, remote file transference and secondary back up would surely be cheaper than one VX. Surely any security person worth his salt would have advised that this is a prerequisite for high security documents and especially in Australia. The fact that they did not do this very basic of things for us speaks volumes.

The fact that the AFP has consistently refused to recognise the policing terrain in PNG is truly unacceptable. PNG is not an industrialised or urbanised country like Australia. Policing approaches are quite different here. And so is governance for that matter. We are more homogenous and rural where most things have to a large degree of communal consensus including justice and enforcement. When developing policing and enforcement policy and initiatives, these need to be taken into account.

While the station of excellence concept may be great in Australia, here it is an impractical and unrealistic concept. Besides, what exactly is a station of excellence? I absolutely have no idea and so do many others. What is there that is not in other stations?

What the Constabulary needs is not a restructure. What it needs is a structural enhancement.

Training and Personnel

The Constabulary needs the current training syllabus enhanced and upgraded to reflect modern times. If we are recruiting grade 12s, then let them study grade 12 or diploma level courses at Bomana. To instil discipline, one of the key factors is parades and drills. Any disciplined services instructor will tell you that. The uniform and authority must be earned, not given away. Enhance the lesson contents, drill hours, route marches and courses needed to when they graduate, they will respect their uniforms and work. As it is many are happy to have a 3 month holiday and come out to become ruffians in uniform. The course must be set at a level where the attrition rate should be something like 30%, not the 2-5% now.

Manpower

It needs more men out in the field. Instead of putting the cart before the horse and buying cars and guns, build moire houses for policemen everywhere. A good example is my province of Jiwaka. We need more men but we do not have policing accommodation to move them in. Enhance our capacity here through building more police houses. We can get the vehicles and equipment from the local politicians and business houses. We also need one or two more police stations as well but without the manpower, that is pointless. So build us the accommodation and then we can look at the new stations. By the way, stop the excuse about the police organisation structure for the province. That can be worked on. We don’t need more NCOs, we need constables and one or two commissioned officers like a few of those running around NCD doing bugger all.

ICT

The RPNGC needs a centralised crimes information system (this is like the 100th time I am saying this!). Police in Vanimo must have real time access to information and bio data of criminals in Alotau or AROB. Having endured the AFP and Australian police for over 20 years now, the RPNGC still lacks this simple system which is standard in Australia. Why is that? Surely this is a critical area of policing enhancement? Or do we not have police officers who understand how to make data entry and run search queries on a database in the RPNGC? Or will it give the police the ability to significantly reduce repeat crimes through proper record keeping that provides a full criminal record of all persons who come into adverse contact with the police? Surely such a system will go a long way towards crime deterrence but perhaps that is not in Australia’s long term interests of keeping this country a crime infested cesspool? The AFP have a lot to answer for in this area especially.

Following on from there, the police radio network nationwide is in disarray. The AFP can assist here by getting this network back into active service so that any police unit travelling the highlands highway or in Madang or Lae can be in constant radio communications at all times with the local communications centre by radio. It is also a very valuable tool for use during national events like the upcoming general elections where policemen and electoral officials posted to areas without mobile phone coverage still have access to their bases. So why has this not been looked at?

Discipline

Where are then men and women in uniform? I can recall sometime back, I was assisting a senior police officer with his manpower update on direction from police HQ. I found that a significant number of personnel were NOT where they were supposed to be. PHQ had them on the payroll as being in one place but in reality they were somewhere else altogether. Nobody had done a physical roll call in s very long time it appeared. And nobody cared. Many of these people were wondering the streets of NCD yet drawing pay off the payroll while being AWOL! What was even more surprising was the lack of will to discipline these miscreants. To the credit of the officer I was assisting, he took action to send show cause notices, had them off the payroll and I believe even had a few disciplined and dismissed. But that was only one PPC. What about the rest? By the same token, seeing that this was an AFP initiative, what became of the information collected on this situation? Was corrective action taken? Of course not! And this comes back to the manpower issue in the provinces where PHQ is unwilling or unable to act on data and information collected and sent back. What a total waste! The information, although collected for budget and payroll purposes, was also relevant and applicable for discipline and manpower correction purposes. This is another area where AFP advise to the Commissioner on corrective action would have been welcome.

Community based policing

The community policing avenue is another area that the AFP would do well to enhance and justify its existence in this country. As I said earlier, PNG is a homogenous and rural and communal based country where almost everything is done using communal consensus. The recent call for reservists should go hand in hand with community based police officers. Some years ago in 2015, I developed a research paper on community based policing with Chief Superintendent Joseph Tondop. The paper did not propose a new kind of policing but a new approach to policing taking into account what we have now and how best to use that with the active support and participation of the communities, village courts and community leaders. I later did up an actualisation plan and costing for this approach. Among other things, this approach envisioned bringing policing into the communities as well as enhancing and strengthening the villages courts and revitalising them through active police support at the community levels resulting in a whole of justice service right at the community levels which would free up significant police resources to concentrate on serious crime.

The paper was presented to the AFP and has since gone into a filing cabinet somewhere. I strongly believe this paper would form the basis of a model approach to policing in this country as it takes into account the Kimisopa report as well as other models used outside and comes up with an approach that is uniquely PNGean and could work here is executed and directed properly. As with all other things in this country, my greatest fear is the politicisation of this concept.

Ends

The above constitute my thoughts on how Australia, through the AFP in PNG, can demonstrate that it is a true friend who is truly interested in revitalising and enhancing the rule of law in this country by strengthening and enhancing the premier law enforcement arm of the state in PNG namely the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary instead of wasting our time and playing on our hopes and aspirations through bullshit projects that do little to actually enhance and assist the police as opposed to justifying their presence and boomerang assistance.