Tag Archive for: Papua New Guinea

Game-planning national security and the PNG NRL team

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Papua New Guinea’s entrance into the National Rugby League (NRL) is officially confirmed. Already, sports writers are excitedly pulling out their whiteboards to draw up potential rosters for the team’s inaugural season in 2028. But before the team kicks off, a clear national security gameplan is needed to support it.

Australian national security requires a close relationship with a stable PNG. Increasing strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific is also pushing Australia to quickly secure its role in the Pacific.

The Port Moresby-based team is the result of two years of political collaboration. It aims to refresh and deepen the strong foundation of the PNG-Australia relationship while also delivering domestic opportunities.

The team aspires to be a national symbol for PNG and a unifying force in a large, diverse and sometimes divided nation. It also brings significant economic and tourism opportunities.

Despite shared history, most Australians know little of PNG. A PNG team in the NRL may remedy this, building familiarity as it plays regularly on Australian screens. As highlighted by PNG Prime Minister James Marape, the team will foster the crucial people-to-people connection needed for our bilateral relationship.

Creating the team is a rare foreign policy opportunity for public and political diplomacy, as well as improved national stability, justifying its admittedly hefty $600 million, 10-year cost to the Australian government.

The squad is also already scoring national security points. Australia has negotiated an agreement under which PNG will not sign new security agreements with China. This ensures that Australia won’t be blindsided, as it was by the Solomon Islands-China security agreement in 2022.

But for this policy to succeed, Australia needs to carefully manage security risks. The team is a unique initiative and will face high levels of media scrutiny, with stories on team performance or player misconduct potentially loaded with political criticism and geopolitical commentary.

Chinese interference presents the highest-profile risk. The team will be an important part of Australia’s bilateral engagement with PNG and will block a China-PNG security relationship. China cannot directly replicate this type of sports diplomacy, but capital, industry and regional banking presence offer it ways to influence or interfere.

In the team’s first 10 years, the Australian government will strongly influence ownership and sponsorship of the squad. This will inhibit interference and safeguard two core objectives: the team being clearly Papua New Guinean, and it being recognised as a product of the PNG-Australia partnership. Both require protecting the team from other international influences.

But not all risks are geopolitical. Serious criminal risks may emerge, considering the team’s high profile and high value, its athletes being young and highly paid, and its connections to the PNG and Australian economies.

Sport Integrity Australia and Australian law enforcement will need to closely collaborate with the PNG government to protect the team from organised crime. According to the Global Organized Crime Index, PNG suffers from pervasive corruption and a reasonably complex organised crime ecosystem.

Money laundering, fraud and bribery are prevalent and commonly facilitated by Australian professionals. Law enforcement will need to look both ways to keep Australian and PNG criminal entities away from the team and make sure it stays in the public’s good books.

Managing geopolitical and criminal risks will require close attention to team ownership, finances, sponsorship and the conduct of the team’s executive leadership.

Comprehensive vetting and protections are needed from the start and will still be needed beyond the team’s first decade. It is unclear what measures will be in place after this period. If Australia has no direct oversight or input, it must establish regulatory bodies. Viable options include a PNG mechanism, similar to Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board, capable of blocking foreign investment where it is contrary to the national interest, or an investment review mechanism co-managed by the PNG government, the NRL and the team itself.

Physical security concerns also loom. Major sporting events can trigger public unrest or result in personal injury to the public or the players. Port Moresby’s January 2024 riots, resulting in an estimated 1 billion kina ($400 million) of damage, highlight the need for precautions. Australian-PNG law enforcement collaboration will be crucial to protecting against violence, with incidents potentially undermining public safety, team legitimacy and social licence, and business operations. Security is also key to boosting tourism and giving Australians confidence to travel to games in Port Moresby.

Effectively managing any of these risks will depend on clear communication from both governments and the NRL. Pressures may mount in coming years, contesting the logic behind creating this team, with cynics or hostile actors attempting to spin issues into major challenges. Preparation and clarity of messaging will be key, as will transparency on the team’s foreign policy and national security role.

This initiative’s success relies on a team effort now and going forward.

PNG raises security deal with Australia reflecting close ties and China concerns

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The first visit to Papua New Guinea by Foreign Minister Penny Wong was probably a success the moment she arrived in Port Moresby.

It removed, or at least eased, one longstanding irritant in the Australia–PNG relationship. It has not gone unnoticed in Prime Minister James Marape’s re-elected government that the first visit was by the foreign minister and not by a junior ‘minister for the Pacific’.

Delegating our important bilateral relationship to a junior minister has long been an annoyance—the two countries are supposed to be equal partners, yet while PNG has the relationship managed by its foreign minister, Australia has for much of the last 30 years delegated it to a minister often not even in the cabinet.

Wong would be wise to continue a hands-on approach, perhaps delegating to the minister for the Pacific management of the generous development assistance program.

The more she engages with Marape and her new PNG counterpart, Justin Tkatchenko, the better.

A second ‘irritant’ has helpfully been removed. Like other Pacific island nations, PNG was offended by what it regarded as an uncaring approach by Australia to climate change. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s policy commitments on global and regional climate issues are warmly welcomed by the PNG government.

There will be challenges—especially when it comes to funding climate change initiatives in PNG.

Significant parts of the country are experiencing severe drought. In a nation dependent on hydro power in key cities and communities, drought has a double-whammy impact—it affects farmers in rural areas as well as electricity users generally.

But a more complex factor has helped strengthen relations between Australia and Papua New Guinea: the growing impact of China in the region.

PNG has a ‘one China’ policy, but increasingly the heavy-handed Chinese approach to regional relationships worries key figures in its new government.

In the pre-election Marape cabinet, foreign affairs was held by an openly pro-China minister, Sorio Ere. He has been demoted to the relatively insignificant provincial government ministry.

Tkatchenko was very forthright in his comments at a joint press conference with Wong.

PNG, along with most Pacific Island Forum members, firmly rejected China’s demand they all sign security agreements with Beijing.

The new foreign minister wants to reach an agreement with Australia on a bilateral security agreement for the first time since PNG gained independence from Australia in 1975.

As Tkatchenko spoke, Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles proposed a greater upgrading and wider development of the Lombrum naval base on Manus Island.

The current upgrading funded by Australia and the United States is modest by any measure. It won’t facilitate the berthing of larger international naval vessels.

Marles knows PNG better than any other Australian politician. He is widely respected there, and a more extensive upgrading of the base and a security agreement will be strongly in Australia’s national interest. If they go ahead, they’ll mark a new era of cooperation in an aspect of government that has been somewhat neglected in recent years.

The PNG government must to contend with the fallout from a very divisive election period. It will need to strengthen its police and defence force urgently and rebuild public confidence in both organisations, especially the police.

The funding of both the police and the defence force simply does not rate highly in a tight fiscal environment in which members of the public demand funding for roads, schools and health centres.

A security agreement with Australia will inevitably require serious additional funding from Canberra.

By strongly pushing for an agreement before the end of the year, Tkatchenko has very cleverly sought additional funding for both police and defence as a priority.

It is more than a coincidence that the greatest impact of additional funding—improved accommodation, more modern equipment, new uniforms and greater training and skilling—will be evident in the foreign minister’s electorate of Moresby South. It contains one army base and is home to many police and their families.

The politics of police and defence funding in PNG is complex. If Australia takes up a greater share of funding what ought to be and must be high-priority areas, that will help the Marape government deal with very immediate challenges.

Other aspects of a wide-ranging bilateral relationship were no doubt discussed during Wong’s visit. But when it comes to fundamentals, such as countering China’s expansion and intrusion, this trip represents a very sound beginning to PNG–Australia relations under new ministers.

Both sides will be well pleased but will acknowledge that this is just the beginning. There will be challenges, but the initial visit offers the real hope that they can be managed without disruption to the important overall relationship.

Covid-19’s toll on Papua New Guinea

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Papua New Guinea is divided over its Covid-19 response. The virus has spread throughout the country since March and is now pushing hospitals to capacity in the nation’s worst Covid-19 surge so far, but a lack of community education on the pandemic means many are more frightened of the vaccine than they are of the virus.

Endemic vaccine hesitancy has led to death threats against frontline workers. The Delta strain is filling hospitals in Western Province—the region closest to Australia—but people are ignoring restrictions and crossing the province’s porous land border with Delta-stricken Indonesia.

Covid-19 has triggered cascading impacts in PNG’s health, economic, social, civil and administrative sectors while undermining the government’s capacity to address them. Australia should help with PNG’s uphill struggle to respond and recover, and provide more support for the vaccine rollout, governance and community messaging.

Community transmission since March has devastated urban centres and rural villages. Packed hospitals were forced to suspend other critical health services. By May, one in three tests proving positive at Port Moresby General Hospital indicated drastic rates of community infection.

Since then, the highly contagious Delta variant has spread to all areas including the remote Western Province, where the two main hospitals are now full of Covid patients. In Port Moresby, the general hospital’s Covid quarantine facility is at capacity.

PNG’s health system was unprepared. It was already stretched thin and struggling with serious issues with staffing, supplies, infrastructure and community health education. PNG’s maternal, child and infant mortality rates are among the highest in the region, and diseases like malaria, tuberculosis and HIV remain prevalent.

When Covid hit, PNG had only seven doctors per 10,000 people and Australia sent 20 AUSMAT staff with equipment to help in April. Australia had Covid under control at that time, which raised questions about why it didn’t do more then to help PNG. A senior PNG doctor suggested Australia should have sent a team of 100.

Immunisation was already a problem. PNG’s baby boom in hard-to-reach rural areas has led to frantic campaigns for basic childhood inoculations. In 2018, it took five nationwide vaccine campaigns to suppress a polio outbreak. But an immunisation drive requires strong community engagement and education; otherwise, injections can appear sinister and mothers in rural areas worry that jabs will harm their children, especially when ‘they are not sick’.

That the Covid jab is for adults, and not for infants, raises more questions in the community. It’s unrealistic and unreasonable to expect people with little information and many unanswered questions to volunteer to take the vaccine.

In May, a World Health Organization–supervised Covid vaccine launch in the Southern Highlands was disrupted by crowds demanding information. The Post Courier quoted a frustrated local: ‘First we talked about HIV-AIDS, and then came TB and polio and now COVID-19—this is confusing for us simple villagers. So we need more information on the disease, the side effects, how long it will protect us when we get the jabs.’

Vaccine misinformation and conspiracies have spread rapidly via Facebook and WhatsApp, and many people in rural areas lack access to credible information. Solutions could be as simple as financing nationwide radio programs to provide medical updates and combat misinformation.

Vaccine hesitancy is far worse in PNG than in Australia, including among healthcare workers. Some PNG surveys have found that nearly 80% of people mistrust the vaccines for Covid-19. So far, only 194,962 doses have been administered, or enough for 1.1% of the population.

In April, Australia’s contradictory and inconsistent health advice about the AstraZeneca vaccine fuelled widespread fears. By June, PNG administrators were ‘scrambling’ to distribute hundreds of thousands of AstraZeneca vaccines donated by New Zealand under the COVAX program, but it was a hard sell and logistically challenging. PNG had to transfer 30,000 doses to Vietnam to prevent wastage when the vaccines neared expiry.

Chinese state media chimed in, accusing Australia of ‘working in the shadows’ to sabotage China’s vaccine donations and ‘dumping its stockpiled, unsafe vaccines’ in PNG.

Beyond health security, Covid has exacerbated institutional instability in PNG’s governance and service sectors, issues which will take a long time to address.

Just 13% of PNG’s people live in urban areas, but they are the backbone of the economy and the services and governance sectors. They’re especially vulnerable to Covid due to soaring rates of comorbidities like diabetes and drug-resistant tuberculosis. High infection and mortality rates among civil servants and administrators have hindered coordinated action on the unfolding crisis. Covid-19 has already taken many of the bright minds who might have made crucial contributions to the nation’s recovery.

Institutional and governance weaknesses have increased Covid’s impact and allowed it to cast a darker shadow over national resilience and economic recovery. PNG was let down by these issues and the lack of decisive leadership and messaging. By comparison, Fiji has fully vaccinated more than 80% of its population.

For PNG, economic resilience won’t be just a matter of fixing the damage wrought by Covid. Major challenges that existed before the pandemic, including poor fiscal management, corruption and rising national debt, still need to be addressed. Economic dependence on foreign-led resource extraction also undermines resilience, particularly as the large mining sector—the biggest contributor to PNG’s exports—relies on foreign fly-in, fly-out employees, many of whom are Australian. The significant reduction in FIFO workers due to the pandemic has slowed work in the sector.

In May, the Queensland and federal governments reopened some limited FIFO operations, which was a welcome start. The Australia Papua New Guinea Business Council highlighted the importance of restoring FIFO operations to avoid leaving PNG’s economy dead in the water.

Critically, economic recovery is contingent on resolving the nation’s widespread skills shortages. PNG’s burgeoning youth population could be a boon to the economy if these young people were trained for the workforce, but they are not. Around 87% of the population lives in rural areas with patchy access to education and limited work prospects. Cultural norms restrict women’s participation in the workforce. Around 35% of the population is under 15 and the median age is 22. In the long term, PNG’s skills deficit and rising youth unemployment could threaten economic resilience, stability and governance.

And while Australia’s development partnership with PNG, valued at $600 million a year, has sponsored education programs through the World Bank, it doesn’t encompass ongoing support for a cohesive education program for the nation’s young people. It should.

Australia’s national security is linked to our neighbour’s recovery. In my next article, I’ll look at what Australia can do to support PNG’s long road to recovery from Covid-19.

Australia’s evolving guarantee to the South Pacific

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It’s hard to believe these days, but Australia used to be shy about proclaiming a defence or security guarantee to Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific.

In the 1970s and 1980s, a gap opened between secret defence guidance about Australia’s determination to fight for the island arc and what Canberra said to the new nations of the arc.

Well into the 1990s, Australia promised to do its bit so South Pacific states could ‘look after their own strategic interests’; in a crisis, the focus of the Oz military would be ‘evacuation of Australian citizens’.

The mindset was crammed into one phrase by Ashton Calvert (secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade from 1998 to 2005), who remarked to me that Australia’s policy in the South Pacific was ‘to intelligently manage trouble’. Australia would stand ready but stand back, keeping its hands off.

The mindset has changed remarkably. Canberra’s ambitions have grown, as has the need.

The depth and geographic reach of Australia’s guarantee expanded, evolving outwards from PNG to cover the whole of the South Pacific and Timor-Leste. That growth matched the development of international relations thinking beyond state security.

Australia’s pledge to the islands today is as much about internal security—human, economic, political and environmental—as defence against external threats.

Because Canberra’s South Pacific view is always framed by PNG, the gap between Oz secret strategy and public statements in the 1970s and 1980s had a PNG foundation.

No longer the colonial master, Australia was discovering how to deal with an independent neighbour, just as it had to build understandings with other newly independent island states. A Canberra element was to shift the secretive habits of Australia’s Defence Department: some core interests are so important they need to be publicly stated.

To see how this once operated, come to a meeting in 1985 between Indonesia’s defence minister, General Benny Murdani, and Australia’s defence minister, Kim Beazley. Murdani asked the extent of Australia’s military commitment to PNG. Beazley replied: ‘First, you need to understand that we would fight for PNG to the last Australian soldier. We have done it before. Second, we would never be as emphatic in our expression of that to the PNG government in case they decided to test it.’

Beazley was telling Murdani that Australia would go to war to defend PNG’s border against Indonesian incursion. That danger was real because the rebel Free Papua Movement was using bases in PNG to operate in Irian Jaya.

Angered at Port Moresby’s ‘connivance’, Jakarta made military plans to cross the PNG border in force to destroy rebel camps. The secret version of the 1986 Review of Australia’s defence capabilities feared Indonesian troops would stay in PNG permanently to ‘occupy the border region to some depth’.

Knowing it’d fight for PNG, Australia decided to stop worrying about PNG testing a guarantee. Don’t ask, don’t tell was too dangerous a policy. Stop worrying about ‘moral hazard’ (PNG could take risks because Australia would carry the cost if things went badly) and just focus on the hazard. Time to give formal expression to Australia’s willingness to defend PNG.

Beazley later said the Indonesia border issue was one reason Australia needed to formalise the PNG defence relationship within a broad 1987 treaty: ‘The purpose in part was to discourage Indonesia from doing anything in PNG and in part for us to get a handle on what the PNG government was doing.’

The 1987 joint declaration of principles on Australia–PNG relations pointed to ‘unique historical links and shared strategic interests’. It stated: ‘In the event of external armed attack threatening the national sovereignty of either country, such consultation would be conducted for the purpose of each Government deciding what measures should be taken, jointly or separately, in relation to that attack.’

Australia’s pledge to fight for PNG didn’t have any ANZUS-style reservations (‘acting in accordance with its constitutional principles’). The guarantee had to be part of a general declaration of principles because Canberra and Port Moresby couldn’t agree on the terms of a separate defence treaty. A certain principled vagueness was retained, but the fog was clearing.

A decade later, in 1997, the Howard government’s strategic policy described Australia’s ‘compelling’ interests in PNG and readiness ‘to commit forces to resist external aggression’. For the first time, the unclassified document expanded the PNG guarantee to make it a Melanesian pledge, with the ‘same considerations that apply to PNG’ also covering Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

Having given a PNG-level promise to Melanesia, the 1997 statement then embraced the whole of the Pacific Islands Forum, recognising that ‘any attack on them—or penetration by a potentially hostile power—would be serious for our security and that, as with PNG, we would very likely provide substantial support in the unlikely event that any of them faced aggression from outside the region’.

What Australia could hardly say officially to PNG in the 1980s it was now affirming to the whole of the South Pacific. Timor-Leste was soon added.

In 1999, Australia led the UN into East Timor to protect the independence vote. For the Australian cabinet, the new reality was that ‘our long-term interests in East Timor’s security and territorial integrity’ amounted to another security IOU.

In learning by doing, Canberra has come to understand that its guarantees have economic and political meanings as well as military.

We’ve worked out you can’t have an exit strategy from your own region: as Solomon Islands teetered towards disaster in 2000, Canberra rejected a request for 50 Australian police (no exit strategy!) and sent a navy ship to evacuate Australians from Honiara, a moment of panicked exit not policy commitment.

The region—not just Australia—draws much from the peace process in Bougainville and the 14-year Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands.

Australia’s Pacific pivot is an external defence guarantee and an internal promise to the South Pacific and Timor-Leste: offering economic and security ‘integration’ to uphold the region by holding it closer.

China’s challenge is the pivot headline, yet many previous Australian steps lead to the Pacific step-up.

Canberra’s worry these days isn’t the moral hazard of its pledge. It’s more that the South Pacific takes the guarantee for granted—as a mere statement of Australian interests—and that it doesn’t carry enough weight in island policy choices.

Misinformation threatens control of Covid-19 outbreak in Papua New Guinea

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A member of the PNG parliament died from Covid-19 last week, but it still wasn’t enough to convince many Papua New Guineans that the virus is real and is probably out of control in their country.

Misinformation and lack of trust in authority are so widespread in PNG that people on social media are questioning and vilifying the country’s most experienced doctors and scientists.

Even the PNG national pandemic controller, David Manning, was accused of peddling a hoax when he confirmed that the MP for Open Kerema, 53-year-old Richard Mendani, had died from Covid-19 on 20 March.

Conspiracy theories are spreading faster than Covid-19 on PNG social media. Posts claim that the disease is an invention of the West to control population, that Papua New Guineans are guinea pigs for vaccines and that God is protecting Melanesians from catching Covid-19.

The senior consultant specialist clinician at the Port Moresby General Hospital, Glen Mola, called it the ‘bullshit of social media’ in a Facebook post last week.

He wrote: ‘Sorry, getting a bit frustrated here with some of my compatriots. Health workers are risking their lives to continue to provide health services and many people are just spending their time on screens accusing us of unethical practice, criminal and corrupt misuse of government funds and putting forward false, ridiculous, unfounded conspiracy theories for which there is no evidence.’

Earlier in the week he had warned that his hospital wouldn’t be able to keep its doors open and women ‘may end up dying in the hospital car park’.

Women scientists and journalists in particular have been singled out for vile misogynistic abuse on Facebook.

ABC Tok Pisin journalist Hilda Wayne turned off comments on her Facebook posts at the weekend. She said she was quoting direct sources on Covid-19 and turning off comments to stop the toxic responses and interactions.

That the detection of Covid-19 cases in PNG has tripled in the past month isn’t a surprise to those aware of the healthcare situation in the country. Two thousand mothers die in childbirth every year. Tuberculosis, pneumonia and malaria are rife, but they are diseases that can be treated.

New restrictions, including the wearing of masks, are now in effect this week, but they will be almost impossible to enforce. The majority of PNG’s population of nine million live closely together, either at home or when they travel on public transport. Around 90% live in rural areas and just 15% have access to grid electricity.

While Australians look on in blind horror and surprise at the disaster unfolding in our nearest neighbour, we are also watching a failure in communication and education.

Australia used to play a major role in providing independent and trusted news to the Pacific, but importantly also providing news about the Pacific to Australians.

The ABC’s international broadcasting to the Pacific was cut drastically in 2014 following the Abbott government’s decision to cancel the Australia Network contract. Around 80 staff, many of them with years of specialist experience in covering the Pacific, were made redundant, including members of the Tok Pisin and French-language teams.

Since then, Australia’s media voice in the region has been reduced to a whisper. The ABC doesn’t have the resources by itself to provide a comprehensive international multiplatform media service.

The small specialist Pacific team that is left provides an excellent service, but is stretched.

The ABC’s PNG correspondent, Natalie Whiting, provides outstanding coverage, but she’s the only full-time Australian journalist based in the Pacific.

Technology has given the Pacific a voice to the rest of the world and people are able to share information instantly. That includes misinformation.

Mobile phones come loaded with Facebook as part of prepaid data plans in many Pacific countries. Most people can’t afford to pay for internet browsing. Affordable mobile data plans offer cheap access to Facebook.

There are varied figures for the percentage of Pacific islands population on Facebook. It’s highest in French Polynesia (59%), Tonga (49%) and Cook Islands (49%), and lowest in PNG (7%), Kiribati (25%) and Solomon Islands (11%).

I noticed the gap in independent and factual information about three years ago when I founded The Pacific Newsroom on Facebook (also on Twitter, but with a smaller presence). It’s an aggregated site of verified and independent news about the region—from journalists, academics, analysts, bloggers and citizen journalists.

The Pacific Newsroom has become the town square of the Pacific where people can share stories. Facebook has allowed this to happen, because it is the internet in the Pacific. We have more than 20,000 members, not just from the region, but also Fijians based in South Sudan and Afghanistan, seasonal workers in Australia and Tongans in Utah.

We fill a role that should be publicly funded. New Zealand journalist Michael Field and I work as volunteers, sharing a long-term commitment to public interest journalism.

While traditional media, radio, TV and newspapers retain an important role, distribution isn’t always reliable. We know that in the absence of accurate and trusted information, rumour, speculation and innuendo fill the vacuum.

The Pacific had a tragic example of this in Samoa in 2019, when 83 children died because of a drop in measles vaccinations and misinformation by anti-vaxxer groups.

That’s why the dissemination of accurate and trusted news is vital to countering misinformation in the region about the Covid-19 pandemic.

Australia and New Zealand are providing support in the way of vaccines, but people won’t get vaccinated if they believe conspiracy theories.

Professor Mola says the propagation of this misinformation has the potential to lead to thousands of deaths in PNG if people pretend Covid-19 does not exist.

Australia and New Zealand should be working with PNG on rolling out a national multimedia information campaign to help fight the ‘social media bullshit’ as part of their assistance package.

This pandemic has shone a light on what works and what doesn’t. Things aren’t working in PNG and it’s time for Australia to take a closer look at its relationship with its neighbours.

China to build $200 million fishery project on Australia’s doorstep

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With Australia’s relationship with China under great pressure, a project that challenges our strategic national interest has been quietly endorsed by the Papua New Guinea government, as reported by Aaron Smith in The Guardian last month.

The town of Daru is the closest PNG community to Australia. Even though it is around 200 kilometres from the Australian mainland, it is very close to the islands of the Torres Strait that are within our northern border. Daru is the capital of Western Province (also known informally as Fly River Province), but it is a small community that’s beset with numerous health and social issues.

Last month, China’s Fujian Zhonghong Fishery Company signed a memorandum of understanding with the PNG government and the Fly River provincial government to build a $200 million ‘comprehensive multi-functional fishery industrial park’ on the island of Daru.

Any doubt that this project is sponsored directly by the Chinese government is put to rest by the fact that it was announced by China’s Ministry of Commerce, supported by Beijing’s powerful ambassador in Port Moresby, Xue Bing, who declared that the investment ‘will definitely enhance PNG’s ability to comprehensively develop and utilise its own fishery resources’. Really?

In a remote and woefully underdeveloped community like Daru, a $200 million project will have a massive impact.

But the question that needs to be asked is simple: why Daru?

I’m assured by people with a reasonable knowledge of PNG’s fisheries that there are no commercial fishing grounds close to Daru. So why plan to spend $200 million on a fish-processing plant in an area not known to have commercial fishery resources?

The fact that the plant will lie just a few kilometres from Australian island communities is a likely reason. It’s hardly comfortable, and certainly not in Australia’s strategic interest, to have a major Chinese government resource exploration project right on our northern doorstep.

But it appears that only the federal member for the north Queensland seat of Leichhardt, Warren Entsch, understands just how consequential the project will be. He has raised concerns, but it’s not clear if anyone in authority is listening, or if they care.

Australia, Queensland and PNG have a comprehensive treaty covering the Torres Strait, and that includes fishing rights.

Implementation of the treaty over the years hasn’t been without controversy, but relations between the people of PNG who live in Daru and communities in coastal Queensland and the Torres Strait are generally harmonious. That harmony is driven by a unique set of fishing and border-crossing rights enshrined in the treaty and managed by officials from both countries with significant input from Queensland.

If the project goes ahead, it’s reasonable to assume that Chinese fishing boats will be active in the seas around Daru, and in the Torres Strait. They may use fishermen from Daru and elsewhere in Fly River Province, something the Chinese ambassador was clearly alluding to.

It will hardly be ideal for the Australian Border Force, which patrols the strait, to have to decide which fishing boats and crew are actually from PNG and which might be fronts for Chinese operators from the ‘multi-faceted’ facility.

Australia’s relationship with PNG is at a critical phase. At every opportunity China pushes policies that drive a wedge between our two countries.

A $200 million ‘fishery’ investment in an area not known for an abundance of fisheries but strategically as close to Australia as you can get, surely raises questions about the real agenda.

Australia has spent a considerable sum on aid programs in health care, education and other services in Fly River Province, including in Daru. But it’s clear we have fallen short when it comes to economic development, and especially development that lifts living standards and provides small business and employment opportunities for villagers.

The agreement for this project falls under the Belt and Road Initiative being pursued by China in PNG. If Australia is to stop the project from proceeding any further, it will need to move fast. Whatever Australia opts to do, its response will have to be substantial, people focused and readily achievable.

One has to hope that the important strategic location of China’s planned investment generates sufficient attention in Canberra to prompt delivery of an appropriate counterproposal, and quickly.

Editors’ note: The first paragraph of this article was amended at 7.30 pm AEDT on 14 December 2020 to include the name of the author of The Guardian article cited in a link in the original text.

Papua New Guinea faces an infrastructure crisis—thanks to shoddy work and opaque deals

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Since I raised serious questions about the transparency, or lack of it, in Asian Development Bank–funded projects in Papua New Guinea, I have been deluged with highly credible information that highlights not just the failure of the ADB when it comes to transparency, but also the record of Australia’s development program, the World Bank and the PNG government itself.

In this update, I deal with just two specific instances of shoddy work and a lack of transparency and accountability when it comes to vital economic infrastructure—roads, bridges, airports and ports.

Ken Fairweather wrote in his memoir, Farewell white man, that the greatest area of corruption and abuse in PNG since independence has been in road construction. As a former member of parliament and government minister, as well as the owner of a major transport business, he is in a better position than most to make that observation.

In 2018–19 Chinese-owned construction companies ‘won’ more than half of the ADB-financed construction projects in PNG, and no less than 78% in monetary value. The largest ADB contract since then, valued at US$54 million, went to China Railway, while at least nine smaller contracts went to companies from a range of countries, including PNG and Australia.

At the moment, at least four companies owned by or linked to the People’s Republic of China are lobbying for up to US$3 billion in road contracts, principally but not totally funded by the ADB.

The question which needs to be asked—and one the Australian government must ask—is how much transparency and supervision of ADB and other countries’ and agencies’ contracts, as well as quality and value for money, is PNG getting for infrastructure projects handed out to Chinese companies?

The road construction example I’ll give isn’t an ADB contract, but one funded by the World Bank with a 30% contribution from Australia’s aid program. It involved upgrading the road from Alotau to East Cape in the Milne Bay Province. The contract worth around K89 million (A$35 million) went to a PRC construction company, China Overseas Engineering Group Co., known as COVEC.

A reputable PNG company, Devcon, was subcontracted to do a small part of the work. COVEC paid local villagers just over K1 per cubic metre for gravel royalties, while the local company paid them around K6 per cubic metre.

The work on this vital piece of infrastructure is not up to the Australian and New Zealand standards which PNG applies to such projects in a range of key areas that are likely to mean pavement failure within two or three years.

Both the ADB and Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade need to explain what efforts they made to ensure the road work was of an acceptable standard. Their response will likely be that it was the responsibility of the PNG Department of Works as the ‘implementation agency’. However, that doesn’t seem to be resulting in value-for-money outcomes for PNG or Australian taxpayers, given that the Department of Works reduced a liquidated damages order (for delays and other issues) against COVEC of around K4 million to just K600,000.

This is just one example of shoddy and costly work that will almost certainly mean massive future repairs for the PNG government to fund and undertake.

COVEC is the same company that in 2017 had a K50 million court order against it for illegally extracting road materials from land privately owned by a PNG family for a major project in the Simbu Province. Yet it has continued to win major construction projects across PNG.

The second example is one which I believe has significant and urgent safety implications for our closest neighbour, whose rugged terrain makes air travel not only vital, but potentially hazardous.

The National Airports Corporation has a K1.6 billion program to upgrade 20 regional airports across PNG. Most of the work has—surprise, surprise—gone to PRC construction companies. It involves improving security and safety, repaving tarmacs, and upgrading terminals.

COVEC (again) was awarded the contract for upgrading the Hoskins Airport in West New Britain—and the work was completed in 2014, so there has been plenty of time to assess the quality of it.

The new pavement failed within the first three months. It was dug up and replaced twice, at the expense of the PNG taxpayer, and pavement issues continue to cause costly problems. The terminal building was poorly constructed, and included asbestos imported from China.

A similar story can be seen at other airport work under the program, including Momote on Manus Island and Guria in Oro Province.

The total program is funded 90% by the ADB and 10% by the PNG government.

Again, there are serious questions for the ADB to answer.

The problem with each of these pieces of vital infrastructure is that poor construction quality is going to have massive adverse consequences—and is already doing so.

PNG needs efficient, safe and reliable infrastructure if it is to grow its economy, especially for the vital agricultural sector. On the basis of the numerous reports I have received, the whole area is one riddled with corruption, mismanagement and failure.

That is the last thing PNG, with its economy in dire circumstances, needs.

Chinese workers injected with experimental Covid-19 vaccine inflict unknown risks on PNG

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The tough stance taken by Papua New Guinea’s police commissioner on the 48 Chinese workers destined for the Chinese-run Ramu Nickel mine in PNG’s Madang Province gives an opportunity for the Chinese government to explain whether it’s using Chinese workers in PNG as test subjects for vaccine prototypes, and whether the workers were coerced or genuinely volunteered.

Commissioner David Manning, who is also the national emergency controller, responded to news that the 48 workers had been vaccinated with an unproven Covid-19 vaccine before leaving China by cancelling another flight carrying almost 200 workers destined for various Chinese projects in PNG.

Both Manning and PNG Health Minister Jelta Wong have demanded that the Chinese ambassador explain why the workers were vaccinated and why PNG authorities were not informed until the issue had been exposed in The Australian.

The opposition leader, Belden Namah, has chimed in strongly supporting the police commissioner’s actions, insisting that PNG is not a testing ground for vaccines.

These events may well strain the China–PNG relationship and the health minister is clearly irritated at the lack of a prompt response from the ambassador.

Part of the response from Ramu Nickel is typical—publicity campaigns in Australian and PNG media and warnings that PNG’s actions might ‘harm relations between China and Papua New Guinea’.

What will harm relations between China and PNG is the lack of respect shown by the company and Chinese officials for PNG’s government and population, who, after all, were unknowingly sharing the risks in this Chinese vaccine experiment in their country.

The harm is being generated by Chinese actions; exposure simply allows that harm to be addressed. The incident means that other Chinese projects that involve Chinese labourers must now also disclose whether any of the workers involved are similarly being used to test experimental vaccines.

This is about whether the PNG government and people can trust the Chinese state-owned enterprises that are active in PNG or whether confidence can only be established by close monitoring and supervision of these projects and the workers involved.

Beijing is desperate to win the global race to develop safe, effective vaccines against Covid-19, but that’s no excuse for inflicting risk on the people of other nations without their knowledge and informed consent.

Relations between the Ramu Nickel mine management and local landowners and the provincial government have been strained for years.

There has long been a lack of transparency when it comes to the makeup of the workforce, not only at the Ramu Nickel but at any number of other Chinese-run projects in PNG, most of which are funded by unfavourable loans to the PNG government by the Exim Bank of China.

Manning has a unique opportunity to establish the status of the vaccinated workers. He can use the wide powers available to him under the Covid-19 regulations to examine passports, visas and work permits—something Australia could and should help him to do.

One of the necessary questions is whether the workers consented to being vaccinated, and whether that consent was given because of incentives offered or under pressure. Manning might well also ask whether there are plans for other Chinese workers to be injected with a vaccine that isn’t internationally recognised or approved by the PNG government.

It’s been reported that China has been testing vaccines on military personnel and that some 30 ‘special volunteers’ at China’s SinoPharm have been voluntarily injected with experimental vaccines. But testing these vaccines on poorly paid skilled and semi-skilled workers who may feel compelled to agree is a deeper and more difficult ethical problem to contend with.

Examination of the backgrounds of these Ramu Nickel workers might be the start of ensuring that PNG standards for health, skills, qualifications, labour rules and immigration status are being met by Chinese-based mining and construction firms.

Questions that have long been asked about the integrity of the foreign workforce in PNG might finally be answered, and the conditions in place for China-sourced projects might be brought into line with the requirements that apply others, to PNG’s benefit.

The timing could hardly be better. PNG police and immigration officials have recently been raiding logging sites in the hunt for illegal foreign workers.

A clean-up of PNG’s visa and work permit system is to be welcomed. It is a project long delayed and longer overdue.

Australia’s engagement in such a process must be to provide the kind of technical and logistic support our neighbour needs.

It remains to be seen whether Manning will allow into PNG the almost 200 workers who were turned around after initially being given approval to work on projects for the PNG government and its state entities.

It’s hard to see that happening without greatly improved transparency and openness from Beijing that enables the integrity of companies’ operations to be established in accordance with PNG law and processes.

It’s been a long time since PNG ministers and officials have asked serious questions of the Chinese government about its workforce in PNG. That has now changed—and Beijing’s response is awaited with interest across Papua New Guinea.

Helping PNG improve border security is in Australia’s national interest

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The Australian Federal Police deserve high praise for shutting down a major cocaine trafficking exercise near Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, that was intended to deliver a drug haul valued at around $80 million to Australia.

The AFP had excellent cooperation with the PNG police drug squad, which is to be applauded.

It’s clear that the AFP had been monitoring the drug-trafficking syndicate for some time. Soon after the light aircraft carrying the drugs from a makeshift airstrip near Port Moresby crashed on take-off,  alleged members of the syndicate were arrested in Melbourne, Sydney and North Queensland.

PNG has long been regarded by authorities as the source of significant marijuana trafficking to northern Australia, but the news that trafficking of a large (500-kilogram) consignment of cocaine has now been attempted is alarming.

This detection also highlights the extent to which PNG needs long-term help to improve its border security, with an emphasis on illegal people trafficking and movements, and now major drug trafficking.

This latest revelation, with its wider implications, surely adds to the case for the naval base redevelopment on Manus Island, driven by Australia, to be given an even higher priority.

The capacity of PNG’s police and defence forces, and customs and immigration agencies, to detect and respond to sophisticated drug-running and people-trafficking operations is very limited.

Canberra alone has the capacity to help fix that—and to prevent PNG from becoming a half-way house for deliveries to Australia.

Australia needs to reprioritise its significant program of aid to PNG (over $600 million this year) and focus on just a handful of areas of highest need. Strengthening the police and the defence force heads the priority list.

Border security needs to be given a massive funding boost. Some of that money could come from the existing aid budget, but additional support for training and resourcing will need to be provided in  October’s federal budget, if not sooner.

Neither the PNG police nor the PNG defence force have the resources needed to monitor a very extensive land border with the Indonesian province of Papua. When it comes to coastal areas, including many inhabited and uninhabited islands, the PNG agencies’ capacity is very limited.

That is not the fault of the police and defence force leadership. Their budgets have been inadequate for many years. Dealing with the challenges of local crime, tribal fights and illegal border crossings have stretched their limited resources well beyond capacity.

Now is the time for Australia to add this vital issue to the ‘Pacific step-up’ program, as well as the existing development assistance arrangements.

The program needs to be people based and to greatly enhance the recruitment of young men and women and their training and skilling, to strengthen border security right across PNG’s vast landmass and islands. Emphasis also needs to be put on getting governors and local leaders fully involved, especially in coastal and island provinces.

But this process needs to go beyond training and skilling. The PNG defence air wing is run down, as is the very limited naval force, and the police need the most modern surveillance equipment available.

If this enhanced engagement is properly constructed and promoted, it will not be seen as intrusive or unnecessary; it will be warmly welcomed not only by the leadership of the PNG police and defence forces, but also by the national political leadership and the eight million people who are our closest neighbours.

PNG police commissioner David Manning has in recent days been frank and honest about the extent of drug trafficking in and around the country. He and his senior officers will welcome greater Australian engagement and assistance with open arms.

The ongoing investigation into the drug haul near Port Moresby will no doubt reveal the extent of PNG engagement, and especially where such a huge quantity of cocaine originated from.

There is every chance that this is not a one-off event.

The Australian border with PNG has long been seen as porous and Australia’s northernmost islands are just a few kilometres away.

Shutting down a massive drug-trafficking operation is to be welcomed, but it illustrates the need to urgently help our closest neighbour strengthen its border security. It is overwhelmingly in Australia’s interests to do so.

This is not the time for Australia to reduce its aid to PNG and the South Pacific

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As the federal government prepares to hand down its pandemic-delayed national budget in October, it will be looking for areas in which spending can be cut.

When the pressure’s been on in the past, the international development assistance program has been an easy target and, given the significant belt tightening and staff cuts in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, one can assume that it’s again under review.

Despite the undoubted pressures at home in the wake of Covid-19, it’s to be hoped that the government accepts the need to maintain our development assistance to Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific. Revise and restructure it most definitely, but any significant reduction would send a terrible message to our neighbours, virtually all of whom are struggling fiscally and economically, as well as socially.

The extent of the crisis varies from country to country and, so far, Covid-19 infection rates have been low in the South Pacific. But lockdowns, travel bans and related factors are having a devastating effect.

Of primary concern are our closest neighbours, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Fiji, but we also have to look at the impact on other small regional nations such as Tonga, Samoa, New Caledonia and the Cook Islands.

At over $1 billion, our total development assistance to the South Pacific is a significant part of our national budget. But there are real non-fiscal reasons why it must be protected, at least for the current financial year.

The first is the dire economic and social conditions in our key neighbours. Travel between Australia and these countries is off the agenda for this year, if not much of next year.

Tourism is vital to Fiji’s economy and very important to Vanuatu, Samoa and Tonga. If travel between these countries and Australia and New Zealand continues to be barred, the consequences for their tourism and business sectors will be truly horrendous.

Our aid program to the smaller South Pacific nations needs urgent revision to help industries that are directly affected by the virus and Australia’s border closures. Australian investment in the tourism, hospitality and service industries in these countries is not insignificant, and our assistance will help both our own investors and the thousands of people they employ throughout the region.

The needs of PNG and Solomon Islands are less tourism related. There are 5,000 Australian businesses operating directly and indirectly in PNG, and many hundreds more in Solomon Islands, the Cook Islands, Samoa and Tonga. Most, if not all, will be struggling to survive and it will get worse before it gets better.

The federal budget is still three months away, which is enough time for DFAT and other government agencies to engage with Australian businesses operating in the region and discuss what practical and reasonable support can be given to them and to their employees to sustain their operations for as long as is necessary.

The tight restrictions on travel will make it difficult to maintain our existing development assistance programs at least for the balance of this financial year. Many of those programs relate to health, education and social welfare.

That aid money should not be dropped or deferred. It should be redirected in an innovative way.

One option which should be urgently examined is to expand the seasonal worker program in our agricultural sector. With appropriate quarantine systems in place, the program could be stepped up at a time when Australian farmers need workers. We can forget about European backpackers picking fruit and doing other work in rural communities for at least the next year.

The relatively low virus rates among our South Pacific neighbours ought to enable men and women from those nations to fill the gaps in our workforce. Most will return some of their income to their families, which will help ease the desperate economic circumstances most now face.

This program will only work with substantial federal government funding and management and the involvement of the states and territories. It might be just a short-term measure, but it would enhance our people-to-people engagement in the region—and that must be the heart and soul of our aid program.

Support for the private sector in our regional neighbours through our development assistance program needs to be maintained at least at current levels until the pandemic’s impact diminishes. That is many months, if not years, away.

The other reason we must maintain our regional development assistance is that, if we don’t, the People’s Republic of China will happily step into any gaps we leave. China is already increasing its aid in the region, as local media has noted. Any impression that we’re reducing our regional engagement will play into China hands.

We need to assure the people in our region that we are not neglecting them despite our own massive fiscal and economic challenges.

A targeted development assistance program, focused even more strongly on our people-to-people and business-to-business engagement, is surely what Australia needs today and as far as we can see into the future.