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Apart from the Uni collaboration "twinning projects" for AU$30+ million, over AU$100 was invested in new buildings on the UPNG campus, without the University being ready for it. All eggs were put in one basket. The political and financial risks were evident from the start. By contrast the PNG University of Technology received next to nothing, although it was making great strides improving its academic quality (e.g. independent aptitude test for selection, internal quality audits, provision of campus wide broadband internet through O3B satellite system). In addition, the PNG University of Technology in 2017 became the first university to obtain an unqualified, clean financial audit from the Auditor General, one of the only a handful of PNG institutions to have achieved this.

This article perfectly publicises the exact scenario of current situation. Suggestions on the likely outcomes and remedies would help shape the premier institution better.

The Minister cannot just appoint people as he wishes. I gather the Minister's VC choice failed in all aspects of the recently concluded recruitment process. Is Sec for Higher Education in any way providing biased advice?

Excellent article and straight to the point. Unfortunately, the PNG universities are de facto no longer independent, and now run Chinese-style directly by the government. As a consequence, they indeed no longer deserve any Australian support. Unfortunately, without autonomous universities and freedom of inquiry, and a free press, however, PNG democracy is doomed. This PNG government however can make a case for the legality of its intervention. The Higher Education Act 2014 gives government extra-ordinary power to intervene. The accompanying regulation was never passed, however, and the government shirked back from amending the single University Acts, which still guarantee a degree of institutional autonomy necessary to protect academic freedom. In this legal limbo, the PNG government believes it can do what it wants. The HE Act 2014, however, was passed in a highly irregular manner, and the mandatory regulation was never approved. It did not contain any of the approved policy recommendations contained in the 2010 Independent Review of the PNG University System, the Namaliu / Garnaut Report, which advocated a range of measures to improve academic quality for the students, and a sensible reform of the University Councils. It never mentioned the appointment of the Vice Chancellors, or abolishing the Student Representative Councils. The shooting of hundreds of life rounds at protesting student on the UPNG campus on 8 June 2016, today exactly 1,000 days ago, was I am afraid an ominous sign of things to come. The Student Representative Councils at all public universities have been suspended, and the students' voice has been silenced. Finally, it turns out I was the last Vice Chancellor regularly appointed by an independent Council, in the end just to be falsely accused, arrested and expelled from the country forever in a move orchestrated by this government. For good measure, the other foreign Vice Chancellor, Prof. John Warren at the University of Natural Resources and the Environment UNRE in Vudal was also threatened and expelled last year. It is time now to wake up and see what the universities in PNG have become, and judge this PNG government by its actions, and not by its pious talk.

Hi Stephen many of us watch on dismay. I don’t know how much money is spent on uni to uni collaboration not only with ANU but JCU here in Cairns and frankly all for nought. You guys along with others need to make your views known every day of the week. It is instructive that this is an all too familiar tale been going on for years. Australian academics are making a pile out of consultancies around a basket case education sector. I like your stridency here. Aussie taxpayers played off a break again

Can't agree more with Prof Howes. PNG universities (UPNG included) need consistent collaborations with top Australian universities. ANU is a top university in the World. UPNG is lucky to have a good relationship with ANU. The participation of the ANU-UPNG resident lecturers, PNG Update conference and research work that are examples of strong collaboration and the people behind these works should be supported and strengthened by all means.

Interesting. I am working on innovative finance for the sustainable development of oceans and am interested to learn more about what Australia is doing in the Pacific region.

I thank Colin Filer for his blog-post and discussion paper. I think it is useful to examine the many issues that Colin Filer mentions by broadening the discussion and focusing on the legal basis of the statutory requirement for petroleum project social mapping and landowner identification studies. A very distant progenitor and source of the inspiration behind the PNG Land Disputes Settlement Act 1975 is the Indian Evidence Act 1857 (IEA), Sections 13 and 48. The IEA abruptly broke with the English common law tradition and by mandating that the customary law relevant and applicable to a court hearing is to be found in the testimony of the disputing parties and not, as under English common law, by judicial reference to recognised law books and their references to ‘time immemorial’. The IEA had a rippling effect across many of the British colonial jurisdictions that were faced with the problem of integrating or conjoining with established, often chiefly, native courts in both east and west Africa. In PNG, Village Courts, Urban-Village Courts and Local/District Land Courts are empowered to hear cases about land, arbitrate and make decisions on the basis of the testimony of the disputing parties as to the facts ‘on the ground’ and with reference to the customs of the disputants. The leading question is how should we understand the jurisprudence of these courts in relation to the issue of custom. I have benefited from many conversations with Village Court Magistrates. My interest centred not on the details of individual cases (which would have been improper) but on how did a Magistrate decide a case when there was no relevant or applicable statute law and when the judicial doctrine of precedent was either weak or absent. At first I found the answers I was given rather vague but a constant theme emerged that the judicial solutions were always to be found entirely within the facts and the arguments made by the contending parties. My understanding of what was going on in the Magistrates’ minds was greatly assisted by reading the work of the anthropologist Lloyd Fallers (Law Without Precedent: Legal Ideas in Action ...) and here (https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol27/iss4/5/). Unremarked upon by Fallers is that customary law courts typically decide cases by invoking decision points that are equal to or related to those found in the English law of equity, the law of fairness and natural justice. For example, what is at play in the case described above by Fallers is the equitable doctrine of laches. In other words these ‘lower’ courts decide cases on the basis of evidence given by the parties and measured by the standards of natural justice and fairness as understood by the parties. Equitable maxims or doctrines are indeed understood by the parties even if they are not always well-liked by by those who find the judgments unfavourable to their interests. The issue of fixing land boundaries is not often of interest in land dispute cases. Rather what is at issue is the balance of competing interests and the possibility that some disputants may have no legal land occupation-based landownership interest. PNG legislation determines that occupation of land for 12 years establishes a customary ownership right. Different jurisdictions and legal systems use different measures in relation to land (Roman law 2 or 3 years, Islamic law (Maliki school) 25 years). This legal view of customary landownership has a long PNG case law history and played a large part in the rationalisation of some land law legislation at PNG independence. Justice Amet’s (as he then was) Hides Gas Case 1992 decision provides an excellent summary as to how a PNG court may interpret ‘occupation’ in the context of a customary landownership dispute. Once the legislative and policy background and relevant judicial practice is understood the task of social mapping and landowner identification studies is made conceptually simple. These studies need to record populations, settlements, habitations, cultivation and land usage, and all the ancillary details that add to the facts of occupation. I would expect that any well-designed social mapping and landowner identification study exercise could achieve a very high level of success, if appropriately funded and resourced. The social mapping and landowner identification studies would identify persons, ILGs and self-identfying groups who have not yet achieved incorporation by registration but who, nevertheless have ‘occupant’ status. Payments to identified by Ministerial gazetting beneficiary landowners are made from trust funds. The money in these funds is strictly the property of beneficiary landowners. If the fund trustees were to pay money to persons other than properly identified landowners they would face heavy sanctions. The introduction of ILGs does solve the legal problem that trust fund payments must be made to somebody, some entity, that qualifies as a customary landowner. Before registration as an ILG a customary landowning group is the legal equivalent of a ‘friendly society’. There is no reason for a customary landowning group ‘friendly society’ to register as an ILG unless it wishes to enter into a relationship with the outside world. In this case the outside world involves the collective group ownership of trust-held funds and the legal basis of the payment of these funds to the group as a collectivity. There is no doubt in my mind that the process of paying resource project benefits to customary landowners introduces social change which may, for some, be unwanted. It may be helpful to describe an ILG as a PNG Province in miniature. Like a Province an ILG must take control of and direct its own future. Its ability to achieve coordination, and to implement its own regulations and move towards a desired future is something that GoPNG, located in the capital, can only support and encourage. There are indications that some landowner groups are achieving new and innovative levels of cooperation. The legal system of PNG is difficult to categorise. Some describe it as ‘legal pluralism’ and refer to the Village Courts as ‘hybrid courts’. I prefer to describe PNG as a ‘legal multiplex state’. I would suggest that central government (GoPNG) and provincial governments improve the resourcing of Village Courts in the petroleum project areas. There is a continuing need for education for all to both deepen the understanding of ‘natural justice’ within the framework of the PNG Constitution and to recognise the development need, as civil and personal law issues arise, following payment of the benefits to ILGs. Vailala

This is a nice article to read.

We had some enormous challenges with international volunteers coming after Hurricane Maria in the Caribbean island of Dominica. However, not due to a lack of qualification or competencies, in fact the unqualified, inexperienced, mostly young women, volunteers coming in to physically build earthquake and hurricane resistant schools with All Hands and Hearts who worked with our organisation Lifelinedominica.org as Local Partners worked brilliantly and not only donated two primary schools and three Pre Schools but challenged gender stereotypes significantly. This was a far more effective impact that the UN workers from Pakistan who had no clue about the Caribbean, our history and our particular GBV issues.

Thanks Paul for the great read - it is a critical issue for development and the achievement of the SDGs. On the one hand the private sector has many resources and skills useful for accelerating development; on the other it also has the resources and skills to capture most of the shared value. One way of protecting against this is for donors to avoid upfront funding of private firms and to enter into partnerships which provide payment for specific results. I found this CGD paper on the issue useful: https://www.cgdev.org/publication/guarantees-subsidies-or-paying-success-choosing-right-instrument-catalyze-private

Thanks Dek for the sharing the experience, the complication of getting the passport done is real. It’s worth the info. I can believe I am facing it right now. I am in Goroka and its worse. We have agents who can assist but the service fee is around K1000.00 to get both Birth Certificate and the passport done. I will be travelling down to Australia for a Conservation Science Student Conference in July, 2019. Yes the challenge of getting passport done with the new million kina NID project as a requirement is leaving many of us ordinary Papua New Guinea to struggle. Especially for those who want to travel but you dont have a birth certificate, NID card and the Passport and if you are not in Port Moresby, it’s very complicated. Only in PNG where nepotism is practice or bribery, the chance of fast tracking is okay. Corruption is at rife in PNG and its crippling the development progress in PNG. Regarding the PNG NID project, I still don’t seem to understand its simple meaning and purpose. It’s a waste of PNG taxpayer money. What are the benefits it offers to the development of this country? The Government must be real with its development priorities and not wasting too much money on a million year project. By the time all members are registered, they will all lose their identity.