Comments

Bryant, Today, in law no body is a landowners at Hides, Juha, Angore and Hides 4 as no ILG has been formed since Oil Search days. Exxon Mobil is operating illegally on customary land as landowners for purposes of the ILG Act and the Oil & Gas Act, the state and Exxon Mobil are to enforce the law and if they cannot the project is operating on Black mail and assumed social license and in such a situation a mobilised community/landowners resistant and shutting down the project is inevitable. God help my country - PNG.

Early days but possible that new level for kina established at 30.95c, down from about 31 over recent months.

Hi Dinuk, thanks for these great posts on ending modern slavery that put forward really good proposals for strengthening the approach. I know that more and more consumers are trying to consider the supply chains of the things they buy, particularly clothing (though it is still probably a small percentage that care/are aware). So it would be good to decrease consumer information asymmetry as well as shareholder information asymmetry at the same time if systems to do that are put in place - if consumers were more aware, that would also add another reason for businesses to do something about the issue. I know some NGOs gather information and do reports on this and so on, but as a consumer it would be really useful to be able to access that information also.

An informative article with helpful links.

Hi Marcel Excellent comments. The foreign exchange issue is particularly critical for PNG at the moment. As your earlier work suggested, the currency is probably overvalued by 20%. In this context, the IMF's excellent recent work indicating a 10% devaluation would lead to a $US250 million improvement in PNG's balance of payments is highly relevant. Contrary to Bank of PNG views, there does seem some evidence that a devaluation (even if over the course of a year) would have a major positive impact in allowing some loosening of the crippling foreign exchange restrictions. The devaluation would also deal with some issues in the non-resource sector. I agree entirely with your comment that the World Bank report gave inadequate attention to the agriculture sector. There also was not enough discussion about the collapse of private sector investment, which is now negative after allowing for inflation. How can PNG achieve positive growth rates in per capita terms without some real business investment? Still good the World Bank and IMF are doing more analytical work on the PNG economy. Hopefully this can stimulate some discussion on how to get back to better policies. Cheers Paul

Dear Michael, It is true but the law is law. unfortunately DPE and Lands department do not collaborate well enough to enforce the relevant laws. The ILG system is the best for a society like PNG - No Huli or any other Papua New Guinean can come up with better approach that will towed customary landowners to following one standard approach - ILG. It is just that it has never been enforced appropriately. I say this because all customary land in PNG is communal and unless a better mechanism is developed, the ILG system is the best so far for PNG. All it needs is better understanding of the culture and fitting that with the ILG system and agencies like DPE and lands department must enforce the relevant laws. The Huli's have customary law and they know how to follow so following modern law in the form of Oil & Gas is not difficult, if outsiders including companies want to do business which has the potential to changes many things including losing the land that they have lived on since time immemorial. Put yourself in their shoes and see what it will be like to just to give away land to a strangers for business without knowing the future. The same is the case - people talk and they must know what the future holds as a result of the business deal as they do not live on trees but on land. Thus the land issue is very sensitive. However, the problem with companies is that they want quick answers and this is the case with the PNG-LNG Project. Retrospectively, Oil & Search did not do a good job and so it came up with the Agent system for its own benefit and not for the landowners - they have deprived the landowners big time as there was no development in Hides in their time. Todays Hides issues are caused by the history of the early days. As to the PNGLNG project, the Project co-ventures pushed through the agreements without considering the law. Two major laws have been breached. 1 - Royalty payment: Section 168 is very clear. Royalties are to be paid to project area landowners , affected LLGs, and affected Provincial governments by the companies. [Note -m This refers to PDL areas] The question is, whilst upstream landowners are waiting to complete the SMLI studies and the licensee is yet to comply with Section 47(5) of Oil& Gas Act requirement, which law permits MRDC to pay royalties to pipe line and facilities landowners. This is a major issue. 2- SMLI studies - section 47(5): The law is very clear on every aspect of dealing with customary landowners. For instance , Section 47 (5) confirms that the licensee must do the Full-Scale Social Mapping and Landowner Identification (FSSMLI) and with the FSSMLI the licensee must apply for Petroleum Development License (PDL). It does not say licensee must be given the PDL before FSSMLI is done. What is happening at Hides, Angore and Juha is in breach of the law. The Licensee is not doing the FSSMLI studies and due to the Licensee's failure to comply with Section 47(5) requirement, landowners are denied benefit. Right now the Licensee does not have legal license but operating on assumed social license which is very dangerous. Remember Huli people did not form the law, yet they are waiting to comply with the law, so who is not following the law here? This is bad precedent set and the people of US (Exxon Mobil), Australia (Santos), Japan (???), the companies from their country is causing all this problem in our country. It is abuse of human rights and shareholders of Exxon Mobil, Santos and others must be told of this if they are not aware. The remark by Sam in that DPE and ADR/mediation are interested in their role whilst Exxon Mobil is operating 24 hours depleting the non-renewable resources - Gas and Oil Resources without legal license. By the time Exxon Mobil is gone DPE and ADR team will still be arguing over who is going to do the SMLI studies and funding continues to be an issues..With this scenario in a place like Hela region where men die or live a hero protecting their land, pig and women, jungle justice is inevitable and the signs are already written on the wall. All is not right at Hides....! JY

An excellent and informative write up.

Very touching and I'd like to know more on the policies of Family Support Centres here in Papua New Guinea.

Reality is that Fiji plays a leading role. PNG's policy framework is not encouraging emission reduction. Installing solar power is still illegal for some industries, for example. Therefore a lot of work left to do but hardly any interest to do it, except for a few academics and other converts.

Australian immigration policies are known to create ripples in not just Australia but also across the world 🙂 What's more interesting in your post is 'public understanding' of the immigration issue is largely based on the perception that migrants take up their jobs. The current immigration policy requiring the employers in Australia to sign a document stating they will contribute towards training of the indigenous human resources holds more water in the long run. Very informative post, Mr. Sherrell. Thank you!

A pity the writer was not in Vanuatu at the time when the national consultation process towards the National Sustainable Plan were underway - took more than 2 years to consult and put this document together. Please come and talk to us before you start falling into the same trap of generalizing about these very unique island nations.

Rohan this is great. Previously I have always had access to journals. However, since semi-retiring I have struggled getting access. I too started to build a list of reputable sites and would have to go into them one by one. However, I did come across two valuable points of access. One is the National Library of Australia. So by joining you can access their electronic journals. They do not have a lot on development but nevertheless there are some. There is often one to two year embargo on access. The second is ANU Alumni. Being a graduate of ANU allowed me to access selected journals. There is a range and it does include Wiley and SAGE journals which for me has been very useful. I am based in Canberra so if you had time I would like to discuss some of this further.