By Norm Dixon
Powes Parkop is a lecturer in law at the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby and a member of the radical Melanesian Solidarity (Melsol) organisation. Together with progressive lawyers and other grassroots activists, he is working towards the establishment of PNG's first human rights and legal aid organisation. Parkop was in Australia to attend Community Aid Abroad's "Papua New Guinea and Australia — Towards 2000" conference from September 4 to 6 in Melbourne. He also participated in a mining industry seminar in Sydney. He spoke with Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly about some of the issues raised.
PNG is on the brink of a resources boom. Minerals and energy projects are set to generate as much as $3.25 billion in gross export earnings in 1993-94, compared with $880 million in 1990.
Many of these projects are being funded by Australian big business, which has well in excess of $1 billion invested in mineral and petroleum projects. Despite the closure in 1989 of the giant Panguna copper mine in Bougainville, these projects have lifted PNG gross national product by 14% over the past two years.
Yet PNG's people are receiving few benefits, Parkop says. "Of course these projects are making a lot of money but it is not being retained in PNG to provide services as the PNG government claims. This form of development through transnational capital is not benefiting Papua New Guineans. It is depleting our resources, transferring them out of the country.
"The capital we are promised is not being retained to provide services and employment ... That this form of development has failed as is very evident in Bougainville."
Public services are not improving. "The main hospital in Port Moresby is a reflection of what is going on in PNG. Basic drugs and antibiotics are not available. There is only one or two antibiotics that they use to treat all the different diseases and viruses ... Doctors have recently gone on strike because they can't work in these conditions."
Resources industry employs just 1% of the work force while the rural sector, where few benefits are apparent, accounts for 85%.
The people of PNG need to be empowered, urges Parkop. "In PNG, the state ... represents the interests of foreign investors.
"Increasingly, people are challenging this although it is being expressed in various ways ... One extreme is in Bougainville.
"People in PNG look to their tribes and clans rather than to e what needs to be done, I believe, is that landowners must be brought to the centre stage of development. People must be given a choice over development."
Australian aid is helping to prevent such empowerment, says Parkop. "Australian aid has, in the main, been directly linked to the economic and political interests of Australian business in PNG. That has meant putting money into the military, the police and the state structures that protect foreign and, particularly, Australian investment.
"We are seeing the consequences of this in the dirty war being waged in Bougainville."
The PNG government, at the urging of Australia, is shifting the military's emphasis from external to internal security, Parkop explained. "It has created the Rapid Deployment Force, which will be almost exclusively at the disposal of the mining and petroleum companies. Now they want build a military barracks in the highlands. They want to build a joint training college for the police and military ... They are suggesting that senior public servants would also be trained in this institution so they will be 'better administrators'."
This sort of aid "will be used to suppress Papua New Guineans, and as the situation worsens, aid will continue to increase and therefore it will be costly for Australian taxpayers".
Australian aid must help empower people, Parkop insisted. "Landowner groups are not ideal, but I think this can be solved if we use Australian aid to educate Papua New Guineans to understand what are the objectives of development and what price must be paid for development. This will allow them to choose whether they want resource development or other forms of development.
"If it is their choice to go for a major resource development, aid could help develop their structures so that they can be equal partners in development."
Parkop doubts that the new government led by Paias Wingti can bring about any fundamental changes, despite promises to increase PNG's economic independence: "From day one the government has acted contrary to its [pre-election] statements. For example, the government has passed a bill that will enable the state to sell off public services like postal and communications, electricity, the national airline and so on. Recently, the minimum wages board deregulated the wage structure, cutting the minimum wage by 60%.
"These are the provisions of the IMF/World Bank structural adjustment program that has been in place since 1988-89 ... so we have a situation where we have a new driver, but the brakes, accelerator and the gears are controlled by the IMF/World Bank."
Neither does Parkop expect progress in ending the Bougainville crisis. long run, on the wishes and concerns of transnational capital and the IMF/World Bank. They would not like Bougainville to be an example to other landowners or Papua New Guineans generally. The Bougainvilleans need to be defeated so that landowners in PNG get the message that if they dare to challenge the state and the transnational companies they will meet the same fate."