The writs have been issued (24 April) and nominations have closed (27 April) for the 2017 PNG Elections. So, while we wait for polling to commence (24 June), Devpolicy, the PNG Canberra Students’ Association and ANU Pacific Institute invite you to see how Papua New Guinea’s National Elections began with a special screening of Path to Nationhood at 5.30pm, Wednesday 3 May, in the Weston Theatre, Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU.
This is the first in a series of screenings of PNG election-related films by the ANU PNG/Pacific film study group.
Path to Nationhood tells the remarkable story of how the Australian colonial administration prepared for the first general elections across the territories of Papua and New Guinea. This major undertaking included the creation of the first common electoral roll for the peoples of Papua New Guinea. Almost a million people took part in the 1964 election.
The screening will be followed by a brief discussion and Q&A with two ANU academics working on PNG election-related issues:
- Dr Nicole Haley, Convenor of the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (SSGM) Program, will outline SSGM’s involvement in the upcoming national elections, and provide some background to their long-term engagement with PNG election research. She will also provide a brief overview of SSGM’s new PNG Women in Leadership Support Program (WLSP), which began in January 2017.
- Dr Terence Wood, Research Fellow at Devpolicy, will introduce the new PNG Election Database. The database contains all available election results for all general elections held in Papua New Guinea since 1972. The database is our attempt to preserve Papua New Guinea’s electoral record and to share it with researchers, as well as people from Papua New Guinea who want to know more about the electoral history of their constituency, region, or country.
More detail on the screening is available on the flyer.
If you are interested in attending this film or future screenings, please take this survey to help us cater to audience interests and availability.
