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SECURITY CHALLENGES Contents SECURITY SECURITY IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA Matthew Allen and Rebecca Monson Land and Conflict in Papua New Guinea: The Role of Land Mediation 1 CHALLENGES Ceridwen Spark “We only Get the Daylight Hours”: Gender, Fear and ‘Freedom’ in Urban Papua New Guinea 15 Gordon Peake and Sinclair Dinnen Police Development in Papua New Guinea: VOLUME 10 NUMBER 2 2014 The Need for Innovation 33 Ron J. May and Nicole Haley The Military in Papua New Guinea: A ‘Culture of Instability’ But No Coup 51 Anthony J. Regan Bougainville: Large-scale Mining Security in and Risks of Conflict Recurrence 69 Stewart Firth Papua New Guinea Security in Papua New Guinea: 10 Number 2 Volume The Military and Diplomatic Dimensions 95 Land and Conflict in Papua New Guinea: Joanne Wallis Papua New Guinea: The Role of Land Mediation New Opportunities and Declining Australian Influence? 110 Matthew Allen and Rebecca Monson “We only Get the Daylight Hours”: Gender, Fear and ‘Freedom’ in Urban Papua New Guinea Ceridwen Spark Police Development in Papua New Guinea: The Need for Innovation Gordon Peake and Sinclair Dinnen The Military in Papua New Guinea: A ‘Culture of Instability’ But No Coup Ron J. May and Nicole Haley Bougainville: Large-scale Mining and Risks of Conflict Recurrence Security Challenges is a fully refereed journal. Anthony J. Regan Security in Papua New Guinea: www.securitychallenges.org.au The Military and Diplomatic Dimensions Stewart Firth Papua New Guinea: New Opportunities and Declining Australian Influence? Joanne Wallis About the Kokoda Foundation The Kokoda Foundation has been established as an independent, not-for-profit think tank to research, and foster innovative thinking on, Australia’s future security challenges. Visit our website at www.kokodafoundation.org ISSN 1833-1459 2014 Cover Picture: Police vehicle in a Port Moresby settlement. Photograph taken by Michelle Rooney. Security Challenges Volume 10 Number 2 (2014) Security Challenges ISSN 1833 – 1459 EDITORS: Dr Andrew Carr Dr Peter Dean Dr Stephan Frühling Iain Henry Managing Editors [email protected] Robert Wylie Geoff Hunt Consulting Editor Defence Industry Policy Production Editor [email protected] [email protected] EDITORIAL BOARD: Robert Ayson Sam Bateman Rod Lyon Victoria University University of Wollongong ASPI Wellington, New Zealand Wollongong, Australia Canberra, Australia Leszek Buszynski Eliot Cohen Ralph Cossa Strategic and Defence John Hopkins University, Pacific Forum CSIS Studies Centre, Australian Washington, DC, USA Honolulu, Hawaii, USA National University Bates Gill Gerald Hensley Ramesh Thakur CEO, US Studies Centre, Former Secretary of Defence Asia-Pacific College of The University of Sydney New Zealand Diplomacy, Australian National University Andrew Mack Andrew O’Neill Rizal Sukma Simon Fraser University Head, School of Gov’t and IR, Centre for Strategic and Vancouver, Canada Griffith University, International Studies Brisbane, Australia Jakarta, Indonesia William Tow Akio Watanabe Department of International Research Institute for Peace Relations, Australian National and Security University Tokyo, Japan Project Management and Cover: Qote Canberra (02) 6162 1258 Published and distributed by: The Kokoda Foundation 2/10 Kennedy St (PO Box 4060), Kingston ACT 2604 T: (02) 6295 1555 F: (02) 6169 3019 E: [email protected] W: www.securitychallenges.org.au © The Kokoda Foundation. All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted by the Copyright Act, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, transmitted or disseminated in any form or by any means without prior written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher. All articles published in Security Challenges are fully peer-reviewed. Any opinions and views expressed are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Kokoda Foundation or the editors of Security Challenges. Security Challenges is indexed on EBSCOhost™ . SECURITY IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA Matthew Allen and Rebecca Monson Land and Conflict in Papua New Guinea: The Role of Land Mediation ................ 1 Ceridwen Spark “We only Get the Daylight Hours”: Gender, Fear and ‘Freedom’ in Urban Papua New Guinea .................................. 15 Gordon Peake and Sinclair Dinnen Police Development in Papua New Guinea: The Need for Innovation ................. 33 Ron J. May and Nicole Haley The Military in Papua New Guinea: A ‘Culture of Instability’ But No Coup ........... 53 Anthony J. Regan Bougainville: Large-scale Mining and Risks of Conflict Recurrence ..................... 71 Stewart Firth Security in Papua New Guinea: The Military and Diplomatic Dimensions ............ 97 Joanne Wallis Papua New Guinea: New Opportunities and Declining Australian Influence? ...... 115 Editors’ Note This special edition of Security Challenges on ‘Security in Papua New Guinea’ is guest edited by Dr Sinclair Dinnen from the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia program at the Australian National University. Dr Dinnen has assembled a range of Papua New Guinea and Pacific specialists to discuss critical aspects of security in Australia’s nearest neighbour as it marks the 39th anniversary of its independence. Papua New Guinea continues to face a plethora of security challenges and despite efforts to the contrary most of these defy simple explanation or easy solution. While Australia remains Papua New Guinea’s most significant international partner in areas of defence and development cooperation, unprecedented levels of economic growth associated with the exploitation of PNG’s abundant natural resources and ongoing processes of rapid integration into global markets have inevitably served to diminish the degree of influence and leverage that Australia once had. We are grateful to our contributors for shedding further light on some of these issues, and for participating in what will remain an important and continuing discussion among Australian analysts and policy makers. Stephan Frühling Peter Dean Andrew Carr & Iain Henry Managing Editors September 2014 Land and Conflict in Papua New Guinea: The Role of Land Mediation Matthew Allen and Rebecca Monson Anecdotal evidence suggests that conflicts over land and extractive resource developments are on the rise across Papua New Guinea. These micro-level conflicts have the potential to scale- up and feed into large-scale armed conflicts—such as those that occurred on Bougainville and in neighbouring Solomon Islands—which require costly external intervention. Against this backdrop, this paper examines PNG’s legally-mandated land mediation system in theory and practice. A number of weaknesses are identified and described; and a case study of an apparently successful “hybrid” approach is discussed. The paper concludes with recommendations for further analytic work and interventions that may strengthen the land mediation system and, in turn, the prospects for both national and regional security. Struggles over land and natural resources have been an enduring characteristic of social and political life in Papua New Guinea since pre- colonial times.1 However, extensive anecdotal evidence indicates that land disputation has intensified in many parts of PNG over the past several decades. This is attributed to the advent of large-scale extractive resource industries, accelerating rural-to-rural and rural-to-urban migration, continuing high rates of population growth, and the expansion of smallholder cash- cropping activities. Left unattended, land disputes can boil over into interpersonal and inter-group violence, which, in turn, can scale-up and escalate into more widespread armed conflict. Land disputes have been a major, though not exclusive, cause of inter-group violence in the Highlands.2 Land has also been at the centre of social and ethnic tensions in places where there are large numbers of migrant-settlers occupying customary land,3 such as in the oil palm growing regions of West 1 Bruce M. Knauft, ‘Melanesian Warfare: A Theoretical Perspective’, Oceania, vol. 60, no. 4 (1990), pp. 250-311. 2 Ibid.; Glen Banks, ‘Understanding “Resource Conflicts” in Papua New Guinea’, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, vol. 49, no. 1 (2008), pp. 23-34; Polly Wiessner and Nitze Pupu, ‘Toward Peace: Foreign Arms and Indigenous Institutions in a Papua New Guinea Society’, Science, vol. 337 (2012), pp. 1651-4. 3 Notwithstanding a “double movement” currently underway—which involves the increasing “customisation” of alienated land on the one hand, and increasing legal encumbrances of customary land on the other—a significant proportion of PNG’s land area remains under customary tenure: Colin Filer and Michael Lowe ‘One Hundred Years of Land Reform on the Gazelle Peninsula: A Baining Point of View’, in Security Challenges, Vol. 10, No. 2 (2014), pp. 1-14. - 1 - Matthew Allen and Rebecca Monson New Britain Province.4 Inter-generational disputes within landowning groups over the distribution of economic benefits from the Panguna mine were a significant cause of the Bougainville conflict.5 Intergenerational and ethnopolitical grievances regarding access to and control over land were also central to the violence that took place in neighbouring Solomon Islands between 1998 and 2003.6 Indeed intra- and inter-group conflicts over benefit-sharing have been an important factor in “resource conflicts” across the western Pacific7 and have often been characterised by salient inter- generational