Opinion & Commentary
Only internal reform can rescue a stagnant PNG
PAPUA New Guinea's GDP growth, with good weather and high mineral export prices, is still only barely above population growth, so that living standards continue to stagnate. Mineral and timber exports have not led to rapid growth. Papua New Guineans might have been better off if natural resource development had waited on agricultural growth and small business and urban job creation. Women work hard in gardens and orchards to feed the growing population, but boys grow into men without earning an income in agriculture or urban jobs. It is no wonder that civil unrest and crime are escalating.
Australian and New Zealand advisories warn against travel to Papua New Guinea. The new Australian law and order aid "mentoring program" is well targeted at a key problem. But it will only succeed if the Papua New Guinea government starts to stamp out conflict, corruption and crime.
In the era of globalisation, when human capital has become a critical input to development, Papua New Guinea has lost a generation to poor education and health. Less than half of school-age children are in schools. Many fathers still think that educating girls is a waste of money. Rural and settlement schools lack decent buildings and are not maintained. There is no electricity, water and sewerage so that child diseases spread. Teaching materials are lacking. Teachers often walk for two days every fortnight to cash their pay cheques. Some 15 per cent of teachers are estimated to be "ghosts" who do not appear in front of classes. With the collapse of the rudimentary health care system of the 1970s in spite of aid inputs, an HIV/AIDS explosion threatens. If current trends continue, one to 1.5 million people can be expected to become infected by 2015-2020. The misery of such an outcome-with dying mothers and fathers and generations of orphans on an African scale-can hardly be imagined.
Australia is making substantial aid available to help Papua New Guinea deal with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. But aid will only be effective if the government takes ownership of the magnitude of the problem and promotes a general awareness of AIDS. Two steps should follow: early diagnosis of HIV infection, including HIV and sexually transmitted disease testing, HIV/AIDS surveillance and registry; and broadly based explicit education and behavioral intervention (including condom provision).
A third step of providing access to effective treatment and care has to be carefully handled because, in spite of great potential benefits to individuals and society, it also carries risks of increasing resistant strains of HIV and encouraging risky behaviour if intervention is not systematic and thorough. HIV/AIDS education in Papua New Guinea is sporadic and limited to voluntary groups. Some of these initiatives are excellent. But some are counterproductive. In many cases, church health services are the only sources of HIV/AIDS education. Some of these oppose the use of condoms, the only effective means of preventing HIV infection through sexual transmission. An apparently well-intentioned street theatre group blames women for spreading HIV/AIDS through promiscuous behavior and prostitution. In sum, the health care framework for the handling of HIV/AIDS infections has to be developed almost from scratch.
The backers of the "no confidence" motion that has suspended Parliament for seven months are unfortunately not motivated by Papua New Guinea's law and order, health and education ills, or its chronic lack of economic growth, but object to the minimal measures taken by the Somare Government to curtail egregiously wasteful expenditures.
Worldwide research shows that aid is only effective where governments introduce and vigorously implement social and economic growth policies. In Papua New Guinea, such policies would require reforming communal land tenure, reducing and simplifying business regulations, reducing protection and freeing up labour markets, investing in transport and utilities as well as dealing with education, law and order and health.
If the more than $2 billion aid funds to be spent by Australia in Papua New Guinea over the next five years are to see results, Papua New Guinea will have to introduce reforms that can deliver steady growth of some seven per cent a year that will double GDP every decade and so bring Papua New Guinea back from the brink. This is the issue that should be dominating Parliament's attention. Professor Hughes is a Senior Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies, Sydney. Her report, "Can Papua New Guinea Come Back from the Brink?" is available at www.cis.org.au
