The Australian-PNG Relationship - Its more than just a bilateral arrangements and alliances

Paul Barker with Geraldine Paul and Daisy Taylor at Loloata Island Resort. Image: Paul Barker.

My personal view towards Diplomatic and Bilateral Relationships between nations has always been a cynical one. 

Yet, looking back from the 1980s to the present, there are numerous instances where I have been proven correct in my misgivings and doubts about Bilateral and Aid Donor / Recipient relationships, especially the long standing one between Australia and Papua New Guinea.

From Independence to the present, Australia (from AIDAB to AUSAID to DFAT has “spent” millions upon millions of Australian money in its bilateral programs with regard to Papua New Guinea. 

Yet after 43 years of bilateral efforts between the two nations, there is very little tangible outcome to show for the Australian taxpayers loss.

So Perhaps we should consider several fundamental and inherent myths and flaws of Bilateral Relationships especially now as highlighted by our globalized arena as evidenced by the spectacular failure of APEC Port Moresby. 

We now see how the Pacific especially Papua New Guinea itself became the proving battleground of the unmasked, ultimate economical intentions of the global imperial powers among which, Australia is but a minnow with little or no industrial might to have any impact on the unfolding globalized economic scenario:


1. “Aid is Economic Assistance”

This is misplaced trust. We should rather see Aid as a common diplomatic tool for influencing domestic policy in the recipient country. 

And any recipient country should carefully negotiate conditions of aid application so that domestic development strategies are able to benefit from the extra funding. 

Papua New Guinea seems to have failed miserably in this area because it was looking at bilateral relationships through the wrong lenses.

Numerous high level and middle level management Papua New Guineans failed their mother country because they did not accurately read bilateral arrangements.

So following that, they could only be diligent in pursuing bilateral arrangements as a passive compassionate concept of relationship between giver and taker, superior and inferior arrangement.

In that kind of bilateral cultural arrangement, perhaps the major beneficiary was the successive Australian Departments of Foreign Affairs who seem over the decades to have been able to dictate Australian Foreign Policy to an open mouthed Papua New Guinea.

 We could masticate on “Boomerang Aid” forever, and we might forget about the vast financial resources and opportunities that Papua New Guinea squandered in a bilateral aid donouring system that has in 43 years left no tangible impact on the administrative systems and structure of Papua New Guinea.

Now China is the new aid donour and a powerful one indeed. But the PNG government has already proven that just like it did with Australian Aid, that it would also squander this opportunity.

 But this is a new playing field and the price of failure is perhaps more deleterious. So our legislators may now be playing in a field of gunpowder.


2. “Development Assistance” vs “Trade and Investment”

At the end of 2018 which seems to be a year in which we see the stock markets fluctuate around the economic relationships between China and the USA, what does this really mean?

 Where is Australia in that picture and what does it have to trade with Papua New Guinea and in what area of commerce might it now decide to invest?

 What Australian enterprise would in this day and age, affect the socioeconomic and political (corrupt) state of Papua New Guinea? 

If Papua New Guinea has been advancing in a blinkered state, blind to international economic realities for 43 years how might it now benefit from a shift in Australian Bilateral partnership?

 How could Australian economic trade and investment in 2019 reverse the state of a country that is crumbling into a chaotic basket case?


3. “Human Rights” vs “Corporate Intention”

Is human rights a real concern today? Was it ever a concern when looking back at the history of slavery and labour? 

Look again at the history of Australian colonialism and look at the failing systems of Papua New Guinea since the relationship started.

 Look at the numerous cultures and systems of survival that have crumbled in Papua New Guinea.

 Compare the pre-independence economical culture to our post independence economic culture and look how much wealth and dignity ordinary Papua New Guineans have lost to systems that seemed to have been pretending to care for basic human needs but instead were focused on corporate profit. 

Look at Bougainvillie and Misima.

 Look at the Ok Tedi and the destruction of the Fly River eco systems. 

Look at the Forestry and the Fisheries sectors. 

Look at all the Government Departments of Papua New Guinea? 

What drives them? 

Human rights or corporate profiteering?

Look again at the condition of humanity on the planet and the wars and the refugees that we justify in the finely embroidered language of bilateral arrangements and alliances.

Wishing us all a conscientious 2019.

Source: Paul Barker.