By Susan Merrell
And he sold our reputation, On the proceeds he will dine, In a land of golden plenty… Where just the dregs are mine.(With apologies to) Idris Davies
The bilateral PNG solution to Australia’s refugee problem is wrong on so many levels but I am going to address just one:
…from the point of view of Papua New Guinea
It is already well recognised that the agreement is a cynical and expensive exercise at vote grabbing by the desperate leader of an ailing Labor Party whose wresting of power from Julia Gillard at the eleventh hour requires him to pull a rabbit out of a hat.
And does Rudd care about the consequences for anyone other than himself, first, – the Labor Party, second – and Australia, third? I doubt it.
There are more people to consider: like the refugees (who have many people advocating, quite rightly, for them including the UN).
Then there’s PNG.
Here we have a nation battling to achieve modernity: struggling with the concept of democracy where pulling together over 800 discrete tribes into a nation is proving a challenge. Here’s a nation that achieved independence only 37 short years ago – some have mooted it was premature. Poverty is rife, as is governmental and institutional corruption.
The tortured transition to modernity combined with abject poverty and lack of government services has produced profound social problems, not least of which is violence against women. Indeed PNG is a recognised producer of refugees – most of them women fleeing domestic violence.
Add to that law and order problems and a population that have embraced a form of punitive and retributive Christianity that sees homosexuality and adultery still on the statute books and a population generally intolerant of religious difference.
Under the circumstances, it is a society hardly likely to take kindly to the special privileges that will be afforded refugees through Australian money – a better life than they could ever hope for. Can you blame them?
The main problem is not logistical, it’s ideological.
If you are going to say to the abused spouse that if he wishes to pursue Cinderella, he will be forced to marry the ugly sister – how must that make the sister feel?
PNGeans are not comfortable with the role of ugly sister, and neither they should be.
The whole idea of using the threat of living in PNG to deter refugees is repugnant. PNG is a nation struggling to maintain national pride through all of their profound problems, not helped when even the ‘touchy, feely’ Green Senator Milne, insensitively stated that Rudd’s solution surpassed even Abbott’s in cruelty to refugees.
When international headlines have labelled PNG as ‘Hell’, a ‘shithole’ and other equally pejorative terms, how does PNG maintain a vestige of national pride?
The cartoonist, Larry Pickering postulated that:
The only cost to O’Neill is that his country will now be known as a worse hell-hole than the world’s worst hell-holes.
It’s a price far too high!
In a land of poverty and strife where just existing is often difficult, O’Neill has sold cheaply one of the few things that PNGeans have to embrace and hold dear – their pride.
Gary Juffa, a new breed of Member of Parliament who is fiercely patriotic and who sits on the middle benches (ie neither government nor opposition) wrote:
…Australia is sending them [refugees] to a nation that is a developing nation with many issues of its own to contend with…in the international landscape, PNG is painted as a horrible place, IT IS NOT! I am saddened that my home is being used to deter people, scaremongering as it were…I welcome those who need help but what if they do not want “OUR” help? No body wants a hostile guest…
Introducing: Papua New Guinea’s number 1 citizen and signatory to the agreement
Independence in PNG brought into prominence an echelon of society that is venal, corrupt – and ruthlessly so. This stratum is the highest in the land. It is well understood in PNG that the only way to riches is through becoming a Member of Parliament where one can put one’s snout in the lucrative corruption trough. It is why there were close to 3000 candidates contesting 111 seats in the last election.
At the very highest of this echelon is the man who, last week, sold the reputation of PNG for ‘cargo’ (a concept well entrenched in PNG tradition): to achieve that which venal governments should easily have achieved long ago had they not stolen government funds:
He is Peter O’Neill, the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea.
In the early ‘noughties’ O’Neill was embroiled and implicated in a corruption scandal that saw millions of dollars disappear from the coffers of the National Provident Fund.
Although he was named in the Commission of Inquiry (along with others,) no one was ever convicted of any offence – which is par for the course in PNG. Corruption is a low-risk business. O’Neill’s case did not even reach the courts but was dismissed through lack of evidence – evidence that was clearly extant during the Inquiry.
With half the annual budget regularly going missing to corruption, who knows how much of Rudd’s blood money will even reach its PNG target. The Australian Prime Minister’s desperation is making O’Neill’s negotiations like shooting fish in a barrel.
The agreement promises that PNG will have more control over aid monies, for instance, something for which O’Neill has been agitating since his inception as Prime Minister. That notwithstanding, the very reason that Australia stopped contributing aid to the general national budget was to give the politicians and public servants less control and thus to stop funds disappearing into well lined pockets.
A national disgrace
No nation can thrive without national pride.
Without national pride to cement civil society, Papua New Guinea’s problems are just poised to worsen.
When Kevin Rudd positioned PNG as the proverbial repulsive ugly sister, for the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea to have, smilingly, agreed is nothing short of treason.
O’Neill should be in the business of nation building not nation (and soul) destroying.
Seven million Papua New Guineans are struggling to maintain their national pride against great social and economic odds. Take away pride and you take away the last vestiges of hope. How dare this Prime Minister?
This Judas got his 30 pieces of silver.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Whatever you want to brand PNG; go ahead, with whatever motive you have only known to yourselves. For me I’m a native Papua New Guinean and this place is where not only I was born but my ancestors have live and thrived. Pacific is my territory with my neigbours isolated in the islands Pacific Ocean. I love being Papua New Guinean and a Pacific Islander. For me PNG is home; and it is where my heart is. My forefathers have never migrated in search of greener pastures/appeals and I primarily take pride in it wether you level my home as “shithole or ghosthole”. Aborigenes are my blood lines; and I feel for them too especially when I read something (historical or current) injustices being done to them. Only thing I don’t like is shouldering someone else’s load – all of them – not half/part of it.
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Ngibe, let’s apportion blame to where blame is due and it is not due upon Susan. She has, in fact, written against such a view, which is one expressed in headlines overseas and here; and with which I also agree. So, no, Susan has not used that word. She has, however, used others, which, to my reading of them, say pretty much the same thing, so far as the country’s shortcomings go.
I admire the passion with which you talk about your native land. I’d expect no less from natives of any land, since this is the land of their birth, their childhood, their communal life. I, too, having been born in a stunning village in Greece would talk with tones expressing equal splendour about it.
However, we are talking about conditions that asylum seekers would meet and would have to content with, as well as what PNG would end up, if thousands of these refugees are dumped there and locked up for an indefinite period, only to then be released, severely traumatised and, probably out of their wits. Is PNG ready for this? Is all the medical, judicial, social, political, economic infrastructure ready for it?
As we speak, PNG, in fact, most of our neighbouring islands, are turned into tent islands. Soon, you will hear, not “PNG” but “Tent Island 1”, not “Nauru” but “Tent Island 2”, not “Fiji” but “Tent Island 3.”
How would this image fit the image you have of your birth place?
The “shithole” comment goes directly to the many difficulties the PNGeans are facing right now: from health institutions, to crime, to religious intolerance, to housing inadequacies, and to much else, all of which will become even more pronounced once this absolutely australian problem is unleashed in all its horror to your people and your people’s way of life. If you think that the life of your youth will not be adversely affected by this passing-the-turd political manoeuvre that our politicians are so adept at, then you are badly mistaken.
This will not be good for PNG and it will certainly not be good for this region.
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Nicely put, Atomou. We all know what a crisis Greece is going through at the moment in spite of your nostalgic remembrances. Unfortunately, the rose-coloured glasses of patriotism need to come off every now and then. My point is that O’Neill seems not to have a pair.
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And so a circle has being cycled!
We disagree only on, what I think is, a minor point and perhaps I’ve put that point a little too vigourously. Certainly not meant to cause you the slightest perturbation!
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There’s an old sea story about a ship’s Captain
Who inspected his sailors, and afterwards told
The first mate that his men smelled bad…
The Captain suggested perhaps it would
Help if the sailors would change underwear
Occasionally.
The first mate responded, “Aye, aye sir,
I’ll see to it immediately!”
The first mate went straight to the sailors
Berth deck and announced, “The Captain
Thinks you guys smell bad and wants you
To change your underwear.”
He continued,
“Pittman, you change with Jones,
McCarthy, you change with Witkowski,
And Brown, you change with Schultz.”
THE MORAL OF THE STORY:
Someone may come along and promise
“Change”,
But don’t count on things smelling any better.
RUDD, DIDN’T COMPLETELY BANKRUPT AUSTRALIA (Morally) , AT HIS FIRST ATTEMPT SO HE IS BACK FOR A SECOND GO !!
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I think both parties policies are abhorrent. I think the violent thug Abbott thinking he’ll wage war on Indonesia for base political one one-upmanship is stupid. The armed forces think he’s stupid as well, he announces his shit opps I mean policy without even talking to them instead relying on someone who retired embarrassed. He is seriously pissing off our neighbours. I’m more and more convinced that conservatives aren’t born with a mouth but two bums and Morrison that embarrassing fool was a good case in point today.
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Rudd has left us in no doubt that he OWNS the tragic boat people saga.
I’m deeply saddened by Tony Burke getting involved. I though that he was better that that.
Of course,it’s nothing to do with the opposition, NOTHING….They haven’t been in power for 6 years. So the whole sorry saga is owned – lock stock and barrel, by Rudd, now: the ‘Camp Czar’.
I can’t see what it has to do with Tony, or indeed Malcolm,who’s on the same side.
They are just the opposition.
I suppose it’s there fault that Swan, fucked up the accounts too?
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As I said Julian, Conservatives are born without mouths and two bums.
You simply don’t have a clue do you. Up until Tampa we had bipartisan policy on asylum seekers, yet Howard saw an opportunity to wedge and win an election. Win at any cost that’s the tory way. Since then we’ve had nothing but cruelty as regards asylum seekers arriving by boat from both sides.
Unlike the tory filth I don’t see it as one side or the other. But when I see the hatred that spews from the mouth of someone like Morrison or the crap the comes from Abbotts mouth about a “national emergency”. This is simply dump sickening base politics and counter productive.
And who says Swan mucked up the accounts, big joe windbag whose going to use a suburban accountant again to cost policy?
Sad really!
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As I said, and I’ll repeat it, since it doesn’t seem to have sunk in.
‘Rudd’. owns the boat problem and all its camps.
It has nothing to do with The Opposition.
Rudd and The Labor Party have been governing for six looong years.
They are a dysfunctional bunch of buffoons.
Why just the other day they changed the whole fu**en government – again, NOTHING to do with The Australian Opposition. They are just in opposition. Your lot has been in power for SIX years. Boats, camps and camps. What a shocking disgrace.
Now your gonna lose the election and saddle us with thousands of poor souls in concentration camps.
How can the cruelty be committed by a party that isn’t in charge?
Wow, you really can be dense.
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PS” What happened to Wayne’s surplus nyk nyk.??
And don’t bring Hockey into it. He’s NOT in government.
When he is and he makes mistakes…go for him then. I will too. At the moment he is just a member of parliament.
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Fat Joe got a suburban accountant to do his costings and got it horribly wrong. Why do you think the tories spent three years in opposition.
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Of course, for those sick and tired of the Greek Parthenon with the heiße Wurste vans parked outside, there is always this experience!
Travelling in PNG can be challenging. With almost no tourism infrastructure and limited information available in books and on websites, it can feel like you’re stepping into the great unknown. But this is exactly why travellers find this country so compelling. Nothing is contrived for tourists and every experience is authentic – even the main island of Bougainville is a largely DIY travel experience. The striking natural beauty and myriad complex cultures offer some riveting and truly life-affirming experiences. The island of New Guinea, of which Papua New Guinea is the eastern part, is only one-ninth as big as Australia, yet it has just as many mammal species, and more kinds of birds and frogs. PNG is Australia’s biological mirror-world. Both places share a common history going back tens of millions of years, but Australia is flat and has dried out, while PNG is wet and has become mountainous. As a result, Australian kangaroos bound across the plains, while in PNG they climb in the rainforest canopy.
For a glimpse into PNG’s fascinating tribal cultures, the Highlands is where you should head (the town of Tari is a good place to see traditional Huli wigmen), while the Central, Oro & Milne Bay Provinces are home to gorgeous reefs and historic wartime sites – including the country’s foremost attraction, the Kokoda Track. Also part of these eastern provinces, and about as far off the beaten track as you can get, the D’Entrecasteaux Islands are like the land that time forgot, mountainous, jungly and totally undeveloped. The gritty capital Port Moresby, on the other hand, is big and sprawling and even a bit intimidating until you get under its skin and see past the bad press.
PNG is one of earth’s megadiverse regions, and it owes much of its diversity to its topography. The mountainous terrain has spawned diversity in two ways: isolated mountain ranges are often home to unique fauna and flora found nowhere else, while within any one mountain range you will find different species as you go higher. In the lowlands are jungles whose trees are not that different from those of Southeast Asia. Yet the animals are often startlingly different – cassowaries instead of tapirs, and marsupial cuscus instead of monkeys.
The greatest diversity of animal life occurs at around 1500m above sea level. The ancestors of many of the marsupials found in these forests were derived from Australia some five million years ago. As Australia dried out they vanished from that continent, but they continued to thrive and evolve in New Guinea, producing a highly distinctive fauna. Birds of paradise and bowerbirds also abound there, and the forest has many trees typical of the forests of ancient Gondwana. As you go higher the forests get mossier and the air colder. By the time you have reached 3000m above sea level the forests are stunted and wreathed in epiphytes. It’s a formation known as elfin woodland, and in it one finds many bright honeyeaters, native rodents and some unique relics of prehistory, such as the giant long-beaked echidna. Above the elfin woodland the trees drop out, and a wonderland of alpine grassland and herbfield dominates, where wallabies and tiny birds, like the alpine robin, can often be seen. It is a place where snow can fall and where early morning ice coats the puddles.
Read more: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/papua-new-guinea#ixzz2ZweM9wlh
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Thank you Gerard – exactly! Not a ‘shithole’ at all.
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Flora, fauna and horizon, gorgeous! Tick.
Perhaps we should give every refugee trafficked there, a copy of this page -translated in their own language, of course! They’re not going to see anything ungorgeous about PNG in those paragraphs, so she’ll be right!
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Poverty as a measure of how many coins a person has is an abjectly miserable condition in a society that places such a store on money we call it treasure in story book land and draw pictures of coins overflowing out of pirate chests to illustrate what is lost when it is stolen. We know this.
Australia is not in the deprived circumstance that the people of PNG are. It is simple economics. Wherever poverty dominates, corruption flourishes wherever it can and not that it does not flourish in Australia. We have greater opportunity for voicing our disquiet. The grounds in which corruption flourishes are overtly flourishing in Australia or our power brokers would not be contracting with PNG to pay PNG to accept anybody.
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You know the irony, Sandshoe – the people of PNG live in poverty but the country is, in fact, very rich. There is plenty of money in the PNG coffers and they are about to come into a veritable tsunami of cash when the Exxon-Mobil LNG project comes on stream next year. For some time the government has been talking of how they will handle all the money coming their way.
The last election was a particularly fiercely fought one – mainly because being in government when paydirt is hit is a very desirable position (snouts in a very big and full trough).
These bastards have robbed their own people blind for years (politicians). The more successful thieves swan around in personal aeroplanes and helicopters, spend $800,000 in a weekend at Sydney’s Star Casino. Their people live in slums on the edge of cities, women die in childbirth at an alarming rate, Their pristine old wood forests get depleted, Tuberculosis is rampant, most people live on less than $1.00 per day. There is absolutely no welfare in PNG – and you wonder why there are social problems.
Peter O’Neill did not need the money that has been promised to PNG for this deal. He needs to start doing his bloody job and making sure that the country is run efficiently, that services get delivered and that he stamps out corruption instead of agreeing that his country is a ‘shithole’. Well if it is, it’s his bloody fault. The buck stops with him – he has been in parliament now for many terms in various senior positions.
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Susan, I recognise the irony and keep seeing what is neglected in PNG, particularly the deterioration of environments from mining that has raped the country and people now who I fear will be released to work for those mining operations and will, looking for a way out and who may never get that way out if the stamp that is being imposed on them before they even arrive and while they are in transit sticks. I feared it would beginning with Bob Carr’s statement out of the blue yonder that asylum seekers were found to be economic refugees.
While not a single one other of any of the politicians I have seen interviewed then agreed with his statement, I smell so many rats it is difficult to breathe in the face of the stench. I recall of Australia’s history (my experience) leprosy colonies peopled by people who never left because the conditions they were sent to isolated them from their homes and families forever and I see indigenous Australians rounded up into Christian missions that were then moved because their placement was not convenient for the intentions of the administration and children stolen from their mothers and not only the stolen generation of indigenous Australians but the British children and so it goes on… I see the rights of people fleeing oppression denied them, because surely that is what it means to suggest these people will never set foot in Australia and such a suggestion has been made.
One thing I glaringly see is a significant gap between industrial welfare as we expect it to operate and the welfare of workers who are visa seekers working in the meat works HERE so I am so frightened for these people being sent to PNG because I see how corrupt our leadership is regards the welfare of the visa seekers HERE! Of course there is a shortage of labour at the meat works HERE! 2 extra hours every day pulled out of the bag. 12 hours a day!? What is going to happen to them in and thereon in Papua New Guinea!? By the same token, I do not believe the money Australia hands over ultimately will be directly for the administration of the solution, but will quickly end up being blood money compensation for the damage done to PNG. I fear this is the most expensive solution of all for Australia at the most basic level and we have no knowledge of what the deal is and what the outcome is expected to be in that regard. It is infuriating.
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And your daughter may be ugly Atomou – but do you destroy any self confidence she has by trumpeting the fact to the world? You the very person who should be her champion?
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I don’t understand the reference, Susan.
My observations were that a) you’re being contradictory in that you disparage Milne and others for saying that PNG is a shit hole but then you go on, showing us why it is one. Or were you telling yourself that since this is only a minor blog, the PNGeans wouldn’t be reading it and thus not be offended? and b) that from all accounts, (re crime rate, intolerance of other religions and other human practices) PNG IS, in fact is not simply ugly but a real shithole, so no one, including you (not “trumpeting it” notwithstanding) is wrong on this.
The conditions on Manus are even more appalling (would that be a more acceptable word?). By the sounds of it, they are even more appalling than those in Guantanamo and no one has a problem with calling that shithole, a shithole; and that shithole is supposed to be holding criminals of the “worse of worse!”
There’s a vast difference between someone being ugly in looks and being ugly in heart and deed. If my daughter was of the latter type -and thus dangerous to society- I’d certainly trumpet it from the rooftops. The ugliness of the body is of no consequences whatsoever. No one’s child is ever ugly in looks or body; and even if they are beautiful, one needs to be careful where one trumpets this fact. Certainly not in front of someone who might take that as an indirect reference to them, if they feel their disabled body is ugly.
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I think you do understand my reference, Atomou – I’ve never been particularly nebulous. Papua New Guinea is a country with many problems and challenges but for the PM of her nearest neighbour to suggest that she’s such a basket case that the thought of settling there will deter even the most oppressed refugee is a diplomatic faux pas…then when the Prime Minister of PNG agrees with him- well that is the recipe for national humiliation. PNG does not need such international humiliation.
Another analogy: the delinquent child does not profit from people telling him/her how hopeless s/he is. The child must be given dignity and a way forward. PNG is a child nationally – only an independent nation for 37 years. What’s more, it was less than 100 years ago that thousands of tribes were discovered in the Western Highlands that had never before encountered white man. Call PNG what you will – that’s your prerogative – the Prime Minister of PNG does not have that prerogative – he should be proud of his nation and working to fix its problems not humiliating his countrymen for a pound of flesh.
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Sorry, Susan but you’re talking PC.
Careful, casuistry about messages that will apply to a number of different audiences, all with diametrically opposing agendas and with diametrically opposing desires.
What the one audience wants to hear is not the same as that of another. A very common dilemma for politicians but in this case, whatever the phraseology, and even if all megaphones were switched off, the shafting of our problem over to PNG, is a vociferous condemnation in itself. There is no question about the fact that our bilious leaders consider the act as a punitive measure, one which they are hoping will frighten the hell out of anyone fleeing incalculable dangers to their life, more than the drowning in the ocean, more than the stories they must already be hearing from those preceding them, about unmitigated brutal treatment.
This is a message of fear: If you get on board a boat (not a plane) and head our way, you will be punished. You will end up in a third or fourth or fifth world country where the worst of crimes are committed and where the vast majority of officialdom, all the way to the country’s pinnacles, is corrupt. And it is true. Sugar coating this reality will not do much to change the situation, either for the PNGeans or the asylum seekers or the Australians. Perhaps it just might put the wind up some of these corrupt shits and mend a few of their ways. I certainly hope so. Then the message might well change.
The mentality behind our PM Rudd is identical to that of George iii when, once the prison boats were clogged with starving thieves, he sent them over to another penal colony. That message, too, wasn’t a pretty one and these days of instant communication, foul messages about sludge camps spread a lot more quickly.
Had Rudd and O’Neil said that PNG is a paradise, it might have given the PNGeans a tiny bit of a morale boost (and the tick of approbation to the crims and corrupt bastards) but the truth would reach Indonesia well before these two liars switched their microphones off.
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And you are slipping and sliding Atomou. You have called PNG a ‘shithole’, and now accuse Susan of PC. Well, no one could ever accuse you of quivering with sensitivity towards your fellow travelers, especially not towards the problem that was outlined in this piece. I think PNG has done remarkably well and is far from being the ‘shithole’ that you are implying. If you compared what Australia has achieved with dealing with its own indigenous, would you denigrate their achievements in the same manner?
Come to think of using the analogy of crime rates and lawlessness, corruption etc. as residing in basket cases or ‘shit-holes, maybe even Greece falls in that category.
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• This spells “shithole” to my understanding of the word; and if it smells shithole to Aussies, why would it smell of roses to anyone else?
• http://www.smartraveller.gov.au/zw-cgi/view/Advice/Papua_New_Guinea
•
• We advise you to exercise a high degree of caution in Papua New Guinea because of the high levels of serious crime.
• Pay close attention to your personal security at all times and monitor the media for information about possible new safety or security risks.
• Large crowds and public gatherings should be avoided as they may turn violent.
• Crime rates are high, particularly in the capital Port Moresby and in Lae, Mt Hagen and other parts of the Highland provinces.
• Local authorities have advised of a heightened risk of armed robbery and attack at well-attended shopping centres in urban areas, including Port Moresby.
• Since June 2011, there have been a number of violent incidents in parts of The Highlands, Oro Province, Central and Southern Bougainville, and Lae. You should exercise a high degree of caution when travelling in these areas and monitor local media reporting for information about the security situation.
• Ethnic disputes continue to flare up around the country. Disputes can quickly escalate into violent clashes. Such clashes not only create danger within the immediate area but also promote a general atmosphere of lawlessness, with an associated increase in opportunistic crime.
• Car-jacking is an ever-present threat, particularly in Port Moresby and Lae. Car doors should be locked with windows up at all times and caution should be taken when travelling after dark. In the evening or at night, we recommend you travel in a convoy.
• There has been an increase in reported incidents of sexual assault, including gang rape, and foreigners have been targeted. These crimes are primarily opportunistic and occur without warning. We recommend you monitor your personal security, in both public and private surroundings, and ensure you have appropriate security measures in place.
• Given the difficult terrain, extreme weather conditions and the condition of some remote airfields in PNG, flying in PNG carries greater safety risks than flying in Australia. On 13 October 2011, an Airlines PNG aircraft crashed near Madang, killing 28 people. Part of the Airlines PNG fleet was grounded on safety concerns but has since been cleared to fly following the implementation of additional safety measures.
• Cholera is now considered as endemic in PNG. See the Health section for more information.
• Wet season is from November to May. During the wet season flooding and landslides have resulted in deaths. Roads can become impassable. Check with local sources on the condition of roads and the likely impact of rain before travel.
• Be a smart traveller. Before heading overseas:
o organise comprehensive travel insurance and check what circumstances and activities are not covered by your policy
o register your travel and contact details , so we can contact you in an emergency
o subscribe to this travel advice to receive free email updates each time it’s reissued.
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Atomou – PNG has more than its share of social woes. No one is denying this. PNGeans are well-aware of their problems, and they love their country anyway. They do not deserve to have their dignity destroyed for a base political motive – especially by their own PM. Have you been there? It has some of the most beautiful geophysical landscapes I have ever seen. Nothing and nowhere is ever all good or all bad.
Anyway, if that’s Australia’s advice then I wonder how the Australian government can send the refugees there in good conscience? As I said, I have only really looked at this from one angle – national dignity. There are oh so many levels at which this policy is wrong for PNG, for the refugees and for Australia. Rudd has made me ashamed to be called a Labor voter.
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“…how the Australian government can send the refugees there in good conscience?”
Alas, no conscience whatsoever, Susan, good or bad!
“As I said, I have only really looked at this from one angle – national dignity.”
I was looking at this from universal dignity, universal human rights.
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PNG is a country that would be kinder to boat people than us. As for crime, yes, but no worse than George Street, Sydney or any Australian city center with it’s fine youth out after a night on the booze. Rampaging drunks looking for King hits, footballers for easy rapes and ambulances doing a roaring trade in violent meth=crystal infused maniacs. Just ask the local police how safe we are. For someone to describe PNG as a shithole while admitting of never having been there is something only fools would engage in. Perhaps it would be a better question asked about Australia of those that are residing on Christmas island, Nauru or the detention camps.
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It is all a right mess. My only hope is that it does work in that no-one comes and then sent there. Then we might have a proper look at the problem which to me is stopping people from drowning. I’ve said before, cut normal immigration and take asylum seekers.
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Viv, this what I have been saying for years; cut the immigration , take most of the asylum seekers in, process them speedily in Oz and send them to various country towns that are losing their population, help them at first, but then allow them to work, win win for all, Oz and the asylum seekers. Australia has to give its own people enough education and skills and not take the skilled people from the poor countries that have educated them. Fair?
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this is
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Yes, Helvi. We’ve both said it and not once have I ever had a response. Discussion ends. 180,000 regular migrants, all pretty much economic, a few for romance etc. The Afgans who have settled in rural Victorian love it and the locals likewise. They are good farmers. Still, Rudd and Abbott are playing touch poker – what’s next? russian roulette maybe.
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tough, not touch. Cold fingers, not connecting properly with brain.
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Still, Susan, your descriptions of PNG differ only by slight turns of phrase used by those you accuse of disparaging and dispiriting PNGeans. Your descriptions -and I would certainly not argue against them, since I’ve never been there- make me come to the conclusion that PNG, is, indeed a shithole, in terms of terrifying crime and irreversible corruption.
What’s the dif?
I’ll go with Christine Milne’s description of Rudd, who, now more than Abbott, is enamoured by distant (beyond the city’s borders) dunnies -as in the days of the Old Testament- to move his social bowels.
O’Neil looked and sounded like the glowing paradigm of the smug sleaze, both, when interviewed by Dateline and whenever he appeared next to Rudd. Anything that has come out of the mouths of those two van be nothing but malodorous bog!
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Nice to see you again Susan.
It is a strange twist of fate that PNG is now going to be the dumping ground for Australia’s refugees. There is Australia, a former penal colony, still happily residing at the feet of Mother England rejoicing in a new baby prince, now doing a reverse dumping. Oh well, something came good of a long labour .
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You too Gerard.
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Yes, I have seen and heard legions of extraordinarily insensitive statements made about the destination of the refugees among power brokers and to the credit of the ‘ordinary’ or ‘in the street’ commentary I have been awed by the phenomenon of appropriately worded commentary that steers well away from crudity or insult that implies we ourselves do not have the same eg set of crime statistics in pockets, particularly ironically where refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants spend their earliest years struggling with adaptation, culture and available services. I take that point that you make, Susan. It was a statement that rocketed and hit my instinctive nerve for insensitive comment, but that is however alert listening to politicians we need to be diplomats.
The article you have written, Susan is passionate and has the clarity of someone with an instinctive drive to solve and not to destroy. I thank you for it as a barfly and I will read it again (over). I agree PNG is not an appropriate solution. I consider it a shocking comment on the short sightedness of those who set this in motion.
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Poverty; if you are coming from the perspective of who receives income and who does not, yes many PNGns are poor. But that does not necessarily mean PNGns live without dinner for a day or two. We always have food on the table to eat. This is because although we don’t have stable income, we have land to plough to grow food and raise animals. We have special attachment to the land – the land; from which comes all goodies is ours and no one will take it from us. We enjoy communal living environment in which sharing and caring are part of our nature – individual’s needs are met by contributions from the community members.
We don’t let someone go hungry – we care for each other. We harbour and feed strangers/needy without asking them for rentals/bills. I recall how blessed I was to have grown up in that loving atmosphere where my relatives were “real relatives”. I enjoyed my days in the rich forests enjoying the naturally crystal clear streams and songs of birds up in canopies. It was the source of refreshment to my mind. I enjoyed them freely – without being bound by regulations here and there. It is not articificial – it is not natures park/botanics – I have no one to fear for anyone because the land is mine.
I am now caught up in an environment where I am what I own – my survival is limited what I own and what I can afford. I cannot go and ask my neighbor for help when I need something unless I have to pay for it. I’ve ended up in an environment where I have no choice but keep my problems to myself and keep moving with life. It is a nightmare to me – I cannot even share my problems with neighbours because they don’t have time for it. This is what you call “modernization/westernization” – a very individualistic and selfish society indeed. Rich turn the blind eye to the plights of poor/needy – a very uncaring community.
It is hence a little wonder Australia is ranked 50th in the 110 coutries in the suicide rates (WHO; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate ) And you check if PNG is on the list too. But I feel for my Aborigines brothers and sisters who are highly disadvantaged and suffer the most of the horrors of suicide not of their making. I am not surprised at the report that Aborigines top the list of suicide rates in Australia although their population is mere 3% of Australia’s 23.6 million (http://thestringer.com.au/australias-aboriginal-children-the-worlds-highest-suicide-rate/). Many of these indigenous people have been robbed of their land and possession and their race hunted down and reduced to minority. Now they no longer have the land they used to hunt and enjoy its beauties. They have been forced to adapt to this selfish life. European Australian have been racist and continue to be racist in all aspects of life. It is displayed in the social disparity between Aborigines and white Australians.
And now you Susan Merrel or whoever call this modernization; compared to PNG. Modernisation by brazenly forcing the indigenous people off their land and feeding them with scraps? As a human being I would be ashamed if I were European Australian! For you (whoever said it) PNG is a “shithole, ghosthole or blackhole” but for me it is my home; my only beautiful home my forefathers have passed on to me – paradise where everything is prestine and intact. From what I know Australia is a “nightmare or hell on earth” as long as Aborigines are concerned. I enjoy my prestine environment but my Aborigines counterparts are robbed of this and end up in poverty and suicide.
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