Fighting for a Voice

FIGHTING FOR A VOICE The Inside Story of PNG Attitude and the Crocodile Prize Philip Fitzpatrick Copyright © 2016 Philip Fitzpatrick All rights reserved. ISBN-10: 1533616906 ISBN-13: 978-1533616906 Cover by Joe Bilbu Clockwise: Lapieh Landu, Keith Jackson, Francis Nii, Phil Fitzpatrick, Martyn Namorong & Michael Dom CONTENTS Introduction 1 1 Papua New Guinea Rediscovered 4 2 Connecting with the New PNG, 2006 17 3 The Arrival of PNG Attitude, 2007-2008 25 4 Smartening Up and Toughening Up, 2009 36 5 Welcome to Controversy Corner, 2010 59 6 The First Crocodile Prize, 2011 78 7 Battling the Bureaucracy, 2012 126 8 Problems of Transition, 2013 157 9 Back on Track, 2014 181 10 The End of the Beginning, 2015 224 Appendix 1 - Prominent PNG Attitude Contributors 261 Appendix 2 - Winners of The Crocodile Prize 2011-2015 366 Appendix 3 – Pukpuk Publications Titles 368 We give our best To the rest of the world We fight for a voice That is to be heard Tho’ we may not be many We are here We are writers {Diddie Kinamun Jackson} Introduction When Keith Jackson asked me to put together a history of PNG Attitude I didn’t think twice about accepting. For me, like many other old Papua New Guinea hands, the blog had long been essential reading and, more importantly, a medium to express our opinions on a range of issues. More than that I had become complicit in Keith’s campaign to promote a home-grown literature in Papua New Guinea through a joint project we concocted called the Crocodile Prize. Where I had reason to pause at Keith’s invitation was how I might write the history. A number of possibilities presented themselves. These included a purely academic approach, where I could place the blog in the context of regional social media and draw comparisons with other blogs operating in Australia and Papua New Guinea, eventually pronouncing on its relevance and value. There was an obvious problem with this approach because the rate of change in social media is moving at giddying speed and PNG Attitude is evolving with it. Another idea was to produce a rollicking, good natured yarn, playing up the colourful and intriguing characters involved with the blog and the stories, tall and otherwise, they had to relate. There was always irreverence and a wry humour associated with the blog no matter what subjects it broached and expanding on this had certain appeal. But while this approach was attractive because, among other things, I am a writer of fiction, it didn’t seem quite right for a project that had a rationale of being more than entertainment. Always visible just beneath the surface of the blog was a serious intent. I sat back and thought about the project for a while longer and 1 Fighting for a Voice eventually asked the obvious question – who would read such an account? The answer, of course, was plain; it would be mainly the people who had contributed to the blog or who were amongst its ten thousand regular readers and who had made it what it was. Further, while needing to record and organise what had been written about I also needed to address the core purpose of the blog and that is the essence of the Papua New Guinea-Australia relationship as it exists in this century. What was this relationship – and what made it tick? In late 2012, when he renamed the blog Keith Jackson & Friends: PNG Attitude, Keith had acknowledged that this social media outpost was more than his work alone. The ‘friends’ in the title was apposite. The problem for me was that those friends are an incredibly diverse and disparate group; as is the subject matter they write about and comment upon. To capture all those elements in a cohesive history would be next to impossible. The narrative would be too multi-faceted. That’s when I came to the conclusion that the best way to record the history of PNG Attitude was to let the contributors and commentators, along with Keith, tell their own story. Beyond that, within the ten or eleven million words in 40,000 separate articles and essays and poems and commentaries they had written, lurked the makings of an historical snapshot of a crucial period in Papua New Guinea’s history. And it told of a country where there has been little effort to record, let alone pass on, the nation’s history. The book that I was structuring in my mind must not only be readable but it should be a source of information on an experiment to encourage a nation to write about itself in order to provide its people with the opportunity to read their own story. So, while what follows is essentially a history of PNG Attitude, it was impossible to ignore the social and political issues that formed a vital part of its progress. Of course, I have not been able to cover all the issues the blog reported on, for this would blow the history out to several thousand pages. Thus it has been necessary to be selective and bring forward for examination only 2 PNG Attitude & the Crocodile Prize those commanding issues that resonated within the blog and that PNG Attitude, in its own way, impacted upon. Therefore, while Papua New Guinea desperately needs its post-independence history recorded, the reader will not find it here. The nature of the blog and the short ten-year span of its life so far, whichever way I tackled it, would require a rough chronology. With my background in academic writing and also in the complicated plotting of fiction, this seemed to be a bit of a cop out. But, then again, I didn’t want to make the story convoluted; it had to be easy to read and not too long and it had to cover the important bases. Whether I have been able to do this is up to you to judge. I have a feeling this won’t be the last thing written about PNG Attitude and its influence on a nation’s social and political – as well as literary – culture, but at least it’s a start. Phil Fitzpatrick Hervey Bay, Queensland June 2016 3 1 Papua New Guinea Rediscovered The PNG Attitude story begins in Mosman at Middle Head on Sydney Harbour in 1962. In late January that year, seventeen year old Keith Jackson arrived at the Australian School of Pacific Administration to begin a two-year Cadet Education Officer course designed to train him as a primary school teacher for service in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea. It was the beginning of an unexpected journey. ASOPA, as it was known, was established in 1947, replacing the School of Civil Affairs, to train officers for service in the civil administration of the then separate Trust Territory of Papua and Mandated Territory of New Guinea. After World War II the territories came under the joint control of the Commonwealth Minister of External Territories and were governed as a single entity. Originally concentrating on the training of Patrol Officers, ASOPA expanded its remit and began training teachers in 1954, first at Bathurst Teachers College in mid-western New South wales and, from 1958, in the middle of a military zone at Middle Head. Although ASOPA’s main emphasis was on Papua New Guinea it also trained men and women for service in Australia’s other territories; mainly the Northern Territory. There was a minor focus on indigenous affairs within Australia; some officers of South Australia’s Department of Aboriginal Affairs were also trained there. 4 PNG Attitude & the Crocodile Prize By the early 1960s, responding to the rapid global waning of colonialism accompanied by substantial pressure from the United Nations, the Australian Government realised Papua New Guinea would become independent a lot sooner than originally anticipated. The training of patrol officers, teachers and other professionals at ASOPA was accelerated to match the need for an increased pace of development. In 1973, just before Papua New Guinea’s independence in 1975, ASOPA changed its name to International Training Institute and shifted its focus to training Papua New Guineans and other South Pacific professionals. Not long after, the institution broadened its scope to train middle managers from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. For a period in 1984-85, Keith Jackson became acting Principal of the International Training Institute. It 1997, after yet another name change to the Centre for Pacific Development and Training, the old ASOPA closed its doors 5 Fighting for a Voice for the last time. But in its 26 years of existence as a colonial training institute, ASOPA saw hundreds of mainly Australian students educated in its old Army huts. Despite its modest appearance, ASOPA developed considerable prestige for the quality of its academic staff, its innovative approaches and the excellence of its teaching. Time there also engendered a lifetime sense of pride and camaraderie among its graduates. Many of those young men and women, who later and often reluctantly drifted back to more mundane lives in Australia after independence, maintain a strong sense of this shared experience and a continuing interest in the affairs of Papua New Guinea. Service in ‘the Territory’ had somehow set them apart from the Australian populace, which these days is largely unaware of Australia’s previous role as a colonial administrator. Indeed, most Australians remain uninterested in the nation of eight million people that sits on Australia’s northern border. While this sense of attachment to Papua New Guinea is often passionately held by the people who served there, it is a difficult feeling to convey to people in Australia who lack the rich experiences, and even dangers, involved.

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