PNG to approve fruit picking at forum

PAPUA New Guinea is this week expected to endorse an agreement for its people to work in a fruit-picking scheme launched in Australia two years ago.
Australian foreign minister Stephen Smith is due to arrive in Alotau, Milne Bay, tomorrow for the annual Australia and PNG ministers’ forum.
A department of foreign affairs and trade spokesman said the meeting, to discuss and advance key issues of bilateral concern, would be attended by fewer ministers this year because of a problem in finding suitable dates.
The forum will focus on the beleaguered aid programme under which Australia had spent about A$400 million a year over the past decade with few “wins” in AusAID’s goal of providing good governance and social development improvements.
As outlined in the recent PNG-Australia Development Cooperation Treaty review, PNG has called for an overhaul of Australian-supplied aid, especially the role of ineffective and highly paid consultants.
PNG is also expected to announce it will soon start vetting locals for Australia’s seasonal workers scheme which, so far, had only employed 56 Pacific islanders.
When agriculture minister Tony Burke launched the pilot in August 2008, he said the 2,500 visas available for the three-year scheme would be mutually beneficial by creating revenue streams for the Pacific while helping Australian farmers get fruits to market.
But the scheme had been plagued by setbacks blamed on the global financial crisis.
Meanwhile, the New Zealand seasonal workers scheme, on which Australia has modelled its pilot, is reporting numerous successes.
Australia’s handling of PNG, a former territory that gained independence in 1975, has always been difficult for Canberra which had tried numerous approaches to help get the resource-rich country on track.
The Sydney-based Lowy Institute think-tank had repeatedly called for more beneficial trade, not aid, with regard to PNG. – AAP