by BRIAN GOMEZ
PNG uncomfortable with ‘bully’ Downer

Australia’s foreign minister Alexander Downer has made it explicitly clear how he expects the PNG Government to deal with the PNG Defence Board of Inquiry report on the Moti affair.
His warning, expressed at the just concluded 23rd Australia PNG Business Forum in Cairns, was that unless the Australian government was happy with the eventual outcome, future government-to-government relations would remain at stake.
As reported in The National on Tuesday, Mr Downer said unless the recommendations of the tribunal were implemented and those implicated in the affair were charged, this year’s Australia-PNG Ministerial meeting would be cancelled for the second successive year.
Mr Downer is very adept at playing the role of a “bully” when dealing with smaller Pacific island developing nations such as Papua New Guinea.
It seems that in the Downer view, the PNG Government does not have the final prerogative of deciding whether to accept the inquiry’s findings.
Papua New Guineans at the Cairns meeting are some of the country’s elite in business and government and, definitely, there is a vast array of views about the Moti affair.
Most expressed a sense of frustration and dismay that the alleged child sex offender had managed to escape PNG’s justice system by flying out of the country in a Defence aircraft.
Various theories about how and why this happened abound.
Even though many are very annoyed at what transpired, there was certainly also a very strong undercurrent of feeling that Downer’s actions were a put-down of Papua New Guineans generally.
A number of Papua New Guineans at the conference voiced their sense of frustration by suggesting that PNG’s ability to perform as a sovereign country that is the equal of others on the world stage, and in particular Australia, can only be achieved by ending the large amounts of Australian aid they receive.
One high ranking head of a major company, one who is very much a part of PNG’s new generation of highly capable leaders, said to me he was convinced PNG could get by without the A$300 million aid provided each year by Australia.
With life and living conditions so difficult for so many of PNG’s six million people, such a decision is really hard for most people to contemplate.
But the obvious sense of hurt from personally listening to Downer virtually lay down the law on how PNG should handle the Moti affair also brought other Papua New Guineans into the discussion on the aid question.
References were even made to the incident when Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare had to go through three security checks at the Brisbane airport and eventually to have his leather sandals removed for checking.
In that same year, Sir Michael had been to various Asian capital cities, including Tokyo.
He went through New York airport in an unofficial capacity as well, and on every occasion, he didn’t go through any security checks.
Because of the massive amounts of Australian
aid coming to PNG, Downer certainly expects Australia to get its way
on the Moti affair.
Similarly, PNG did not seem to have much choice when Australia wanted to set up a refugee processing centre in Manus.
The latter caused an erstwhile PNG foreign minister to lose his job.
Australia’s role as a bully in the Pacific has been coming across in other ways in recent times.
I am certainly no expert on the situation in Fiji and the recent army coup there, where Downer says Australia and PNG speak with one voice in wanting the coup ended as soon as possible.
But there are certainly some grey areas in the Fijian situation given claims about corruption under previous regimes and very sensitive questions regarding the race situation.
We certainly have not seen the same strident demands made in Canberra about the recent military coup in Thailand, where it is very much business as usual.
In Fiji’s case, Australian tourists are being discouraged from visiting that country, a reminder of the regular warnings given to prospective Australian tourists to PNG.
The Australian role in the troubled neighbouring Solomon Islands is in some respects even more worrying even though the Regional Assistance Mission on the Solomon Islands is doing an excellent job in restoring normalcy.
The previous Australian police chief in Honiara was said to have kicked down the door to the Solomon Islands Prime Minister’s office at one stage during the Moti investigations even though Manasseh Sogavare was not even in the country at the time.
More recently, Downer has shown some of his true colours when he recently bypassed the Solomon Islands government and made a direct appeal to the people of that country through media advertisements.
It must be a really nice skill to be able to speak softly and wield a big stick.