Commendable moves at lands

Editorial, Normal

NEW ministers often come with new ideas.
These ideas are not necessarily bad in themselves, but they disrupt the living daylights out of work that has been done by the previous person.
It is, as they say, back to the drawing board to fit the minister’s new directions in existing policy. Or, if there does not exist an applicable policy, then to draft new policies. These normally take civil servants a lot of quality time, time which could be better utilised.
In this context, it is most pleasing to note the attitude taken by the new Minister for Lands Lucas Dekena, who is all praise of his predecessor Sir Puka Temu.
Dekena said the programmes initiated by Sir Puka would be continued under his stewardship.
“This is the same government of Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare,” he said in a brief conversation yesterday.
“The people might have changed because of politics, but the policies and programmes must remain.”
And so they should. And so they should.
Dekena is himself far more perplexed about a certain peculiarity in the PNG economy which he feels is deeply responsible for deep misery, and a perception of poverty among working people in the urban centres of PNG.
He is concerned that the price of shelter, or housing in the urban centres, is far too high. He is wondering whether land has anything to do with the high cost of shelter, which is now well beyond the ability of most working Papua New Guineans and many expatriates to pay for.
We would venture that land is half of the reason why housing is so expensive. Almost all housing in urban centres has to be built on alienated land. As the economy and the population expand, the pressure increases on available alienated or government land.
Demand for land to build accommodation or industrial sites remains very high but the commodity, which is land, grows more scarce each year. From there, you have to apply high school economics to arrive at why the price for land is so expensive.
Over the years, the government has been loathe to free up the huge 97% of PNG land space.
A simple allocation of money under the annual budget each year would have ensured the government is able to buy land from those landowning groups that are willing to sell part of their land. Such a programme, over a number of years, would ensure the amount of land available to government is growing in tandem with the economy.
Instead, the reverse has happened over the years. Instead of the government moving out to the people, the people have been encroaching on government land.
From throughout the country, as one successful court challenge comes through for traditional landowners claiming money for alienated land on which some public infrastructure or township stands, it provides precedence for a cascade of similar cases.
It has got to be such that, presently, the government allocates a substantial amount of money annually to pay for such claims instead of buying new lands to expand public state-owned land around the country.
As a result, much of the land remains in the troublesome and unpredictable hands of landowners.
Government policy on land, and particularly how to free up customary land for development and to involve the customary landowners in development aspirations, has been a vexing problem that most administrations dared not touch, and for good reason too.
The only government that dared to suggest registration of customary land got a massive, nationwide reprisal which removed it from office quick smart in 1997.
It is this government, and particularly under the stewardship of the former lands minister, that some headway has been made, but much of it is still at the academic roundtable stage.
That the new minister is cognisant of the past efforts and wishes to continue down that lane is most responsible.
With the advent of the LNG project, it is time such policies were in place to ensure when the money does arrive, a policy framework and workable programmes and land are available to use the LNG money to kick-start the agricultural sector and reinvigorate the government’s Green Revolution which is dying a slow death.