Boost foreign news coverage
WE don’t often have reason to praise the Australian media or its representatives in today’s Papua New Guinea; the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and their long-serving correspondent Sean Dorney are exceptions.
The role of the ABC in establishing credible news coverage in our country is now a matter of history; first to have a residential presence here, the ensuing years have shown their coverage remains the best.
Not that their hard-pressed resident journalists have not had to fight the ABC hierarchy every inch of the way; Mr Dorney when ABC representative in PNG, provided one of the best examples.
Aunty ABC has always had one eye on quality and the other on the balance sheet and in pursuing the latter, she has committed multiple global sins.
But the PNG correspondents have battled on through official cynicism, apathy and outright hostility; Mr Dorney’s successors have joined him flying an often-tattered Aussie flag and the Corporation today remains the most reliable overseas funded source of in-depth news coverage in our country.
Last Wednesday night the veteran PNG correspondent, whose backyard is now the South Pacific, gave another of his charismatic addresses to a Holiday Inn audience as part of Australia Week.
In the manner of such long-standing correspondents, he made no attempt to hide his disgust with Australian media managements that have almost totally withdrawn from PNG.
Quick to acknowledge the continuing Port Moresby-based presence of the ABC and of the long-standing wire service Australian Associated Press (AAP), Mr Dorney noted that no Australian media correspondents have been based in PNG since the late 1980s.
In the sixties of the past century, we can recall legendary journalists such as Gus Smales from Melbourne’s Herald and Weekly Times and a series of correspondents for The Sydney Morning Herald.
He made reference to another celebrated resident journalist active in the region, Mary-Louise O’Callaghan, winner of Australia’s highest journalistic award, the Gold Walkley, for her outstanding coverage of the Sandline affair in her book, Enemies Within. The gifted journalist and The Australian that employed her as Pacific correspondent parted company soon afterwards.
The media coverage of the region remains the poorer for another silenced voice.
We agree wholeheartedly with Mr Dorney that the helicopter journalism practiced by the bulk of the Australian media is completely unacceptable, and as he says, indicative of that country’s abdication of its self declared role as a watchdog over Pacific affairs.
We acknowledge that technology has come a long way since the flying boats drenched pedestrians in Cuthbertson St, Port Moresby, and the ABC correspondent occupied a two bedroom house perched on a precipitous hill above Airvos Avenue downtown.
Yes, there are significant costs involved in establishing resident journalists in our capital but there are even higher costs in funding Australian media correspondents in Asia, the Americas and Europe.
Young Australian journalists and their grizzled managements appear to have little knowledge and less interest in the Pacific; many seem to find the intricacies of our way of life beyond their limited comprehension and therefore, dismiss it, taking the easiest way out.
We suggest that the Australian media coverage of events in this country, in Fiji and in the other island states of our region is too often superficial, inaccurate and an insult to our governments and peoples.
As Mr Dorney noted, many Australian journalists and media managements acknowledge the differences between their own culture and ours; they know the differences exist but find the greatest difficulty in understanding what they are.
Not so many days ago, when giving the new Australian PM a cordial welcome to our country, we noted that any return to the combination of ignorance and arrogance that too often distinguished the Howard administration – and muddied its often positive attempts to assist PNG – would collapse the new PNG-Australian rapprochement like a house of cards in a sharp wind.
That’s where resident overseas media representatives still have a role in PNG.
By exposure to the workings of our country with both its virtues and faults and through an understanding of our diverse peoples, the Oz media could help steady the new and tenuous relationship between our country and its southern neighbour.
 
Not everyone in Bangkok is an angel
By PHILIP GOLINGAI
WITH exotic Bangkok as the setting, the US-led arms sting had a plot that imitated a Hollywood thriller.
Victor Bout, a 41-year-old Russian businessman who inspired the character Nicholas Cage played in the 2005 film Lord of War, was closing a deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in a five-star hotel.
The Colombian rebels turned out to be agents from the United States Drug Enforcement Agency, and Bout, one of the world’s most notorious arms dealers, found himself taken into custody on March 6.
Bout, Chhota Rajan and Kumaran Padmanadan, what do they have in common?
All were arrested in the City of Angels.
In 2002, Indian underworld don Chhota Rajan was shot in his Bangkok apartment. And in a scene that could be inspired by a Bollywood movie, the wounded gangster, held in a Bangkok private hospital, escaped by climbing out the window using knotted bed sheets.
On Sept 10, 2007, Kumaran – or KP, the chief procurer of arms of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam – was believed by many, including the Sri Lankan government, to have been arrested in Bangkok.
However, while in Thai custody KP allegedly “disappeared”.
Why does Bangkok attract criminals such as Victor Bout?
“Easy to blend in (the large Bangkok population helps), easy access to transferring money and finding accommodation, cheap cost of living and good transit hub,” reasoned Bangkok Pundit, an anonymous blogger who comments on Thai politics and the insurgency in southern Thailand.
“People base themselves in Bangkok for its friendly local environment (more importantly, questions are not asked) and access to others in their local community,” explained the blogger in an email.
(This is because of the large number of tourists, leading to a sort of multiplier effect – once you have criminals here, and others see it is good, more and more come ad infinitum).
“Bangkok is a logistics centre and air hub, there is widespread corruption, there are many ways to get out of the country, and it is a centre for counterfeit currency and fake passports,” an analyst familiar with security issues and intelligence circles told The Straits Times in Singapore.
“Thailand is a laissez faire country with many land and sea borders. For a price, you can do a deal, so long as you don’t touch the locals or harm the country. It’s a haven.”
In a recent editorial, The Nation in Bangkok wrote: “It’s not difficult to figure out why men such as Bout, along with international freedom fighters, terrorists and smugglers of drugs and people have a tendency to fall in love with the splendour of Bangkok.
“After all, we have lax financial regulations, dubious immigration regulations and plenty of outlets for top mafia bosses to lie low and be entertained in all sorts of ways.
“Too often, Thai officials turn a blind eye to their activities until pressure from some foreign government becomes unbearable. Bout is a case in point. If the US didn’t ask for him, the Thai police probably wouldn’t have moved in on him.”
The Nation continued: “While it is easy to blame foreigners for putting Bangkok on the international map as a major destination for criminals, the Thai government is not entirely blameless.
“We need to overhaul the entire system, starting with immigration to the police officers on the street, as well as strengthen the entire justice system to ensure enforcement is applied uniformly across the board.”
On whether stereotyping Bangkok as Asean’s criminal capital was unfair as other cities such as Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta or Singapore also have their fair share of visitors with criminal links, Bangkok Pundit, whose previous job had a great level of interaction with those who got into “trouble”, said no.
“Thailand has a greater number than almost any other country. You have people working as drug couriers, escorts for people smuggling gangs, and document forgery including credit cards and travellers cheques.”
In its editorial on Bout, who is also known as Merchant of Death, The Nation wrote: “He was not the first and he won’t be the last of his kind found in Thailand.”

Note: The author writes a weekly column in The Star newspaper in Malaysia.
Editorial