Opinion & Commentary
Expect fallout here as our neighbour falls apart
With the impending war on Iraq and growing tensions on the Korean Peninsula understandably dominating media headlines, economic decline and government collapse in Australia's closest and largest neighbour, Papua New Guinea (PNG), is being ignored at our peril.
The threat that PNG could become a 'failed state' suggests that Australia needs to rethink its relationship with PNG now to avoid high costs in the future. The alternative is the prospect of Solomon Islands style disintegration, but on a much larger scale.
Two issues are at stake. The first is Australia's security. PNG cannot effectively monitor or defend its land and sea borders, nor control parts of its territory. A drugs-for-arms trade is growing across the Torres Strait while terrorists could take advantage of PNG's turmoil to establish operations on our doorstep. The potential for a flood of uncontrollable immigration poses both a health and security risk given the alarming rates of HIV/AIDS infection in PNG.
The second, no less important, issue is the further impoverishment of PNG's five million people, expected to increase to 10 million by 2025.
Living standards have barely improved since independence. PNG per capita income (in 1998 dollars) has risen from $1200 in 1975 to $1310 now, a mere increase of $110 per head. The country's mineral wealth-gold, copper, oil and natural gas-has turned out to be more of a curse than a blessing. 'Windfall' mining revenues, and over $12 billion in Australian aid alone, have subsidised a small urban-political elite at the expense of roads, schools and health facilities in rural areas where most people live. Many villagers are now worse off than they were 20 or so years ago. Infant and maternal morality rates are closer to some sub-Saharan African countries than to Asia Pacific nations.
This decline is accelerating. Population growth is high but economic growth is negligible so that the country is going backwards. Unemployment is around 40%. The number of young people without formal jobs is appalling, leading to demoralisation, social breakdown and escalating levels of so-called raskol crime, particularly in urban areas. The extent of lawlessness scares off investors and tourists, reinforcing a downward spiral whereby no jobs are created and law and order get worse.
In the past PNG has always muddled through despite grim economic conditions because people could back on subsistence farming and local markets to survive. But this social safety net is now disintegrating under the impact of crime, which has spread to villages. Gardens and houses are no longer safe from thieves, while villagers are robbed taking their coffee to market. The resulting hardship is taking a heavy toll on traditional village life, fuelling urban drift.
Democracy has been hijacked by those responsible for and benefiting from what former Prime Minister Mekere Morauta called the 'systemic and systematic' corruption of public institutions. Some exemplary prosecutions for high level graft would help restore legitimacy to government, but the legal system seems incapable of bringing either small or large crooks to justice. Raskols mimic political leaders' corrupt behaviour at the street level, enriching themselves through theft and operating with relative impunity. When criminals and corrupt politicians go unpunished, people lose respect for state laws and the authority of central government collapses.
Australia will not be able to ignore any fallout. A fundamental review of our policy towards PNG is urgently needed. It is clear that the longstanding 'hands-off' approach of respecting PNG's sovereign right to make its own choices by supporting its development since independence through generous aid has not worked in spite of AusAID's best efforts. Little development has taken place. The dilemma is that more intrusive options-such as withholding funds until corruption is addressed-may adversely affect Australian interests and are bound to attract charges of callousness and 'neocolonialism' on both sides of the Torres Strait, as well as stiff opposition from those with a personal stake in the status quo.
But the deteriorating condition of PNG and Australia's obligations with respect to it are too important for debate to be inhibited by tagging alternative policy directions as 'recolonising' PNG and continuing with more of the same. Australia has a responsibility to help because it is best placed to do so and because PNG's well-being is in our self-interest. If for a lack of imagination or willingness to address hard issues PNG sinks into terminal decline, we will not be able to quarantine the consequences. There is no 'exit strategy' as far as the neighbourhood is concerned.
Susan Windybank is a Editor of Policy, the quarterly magazine of The Centre for Independent Studies, Sydney. Mike Manning is Director of the Institute of National Affairs in Port Moresby.
