Too Close to Ignore

<p. i: half title> Too Close to Ignore <p. ii: verso – blank> <p. iii: title page> Too Close to Ignore Australia’s Borderland with PNG and Indonesia Edited by Mark Moran and Jodie Curth-Bibb MUP <p. iv: imprint page> MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited Level 1, 715 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia [email protected] www.mup.com.au <social media logos> First published 2020 Text © Mark Moran and Jodie Curth-Bibb, 2020 Design and typography © Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2020 This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers. Every attempt has been made to locate the copyright holders for material quoted in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked or misattributed may contact the publisher. Text design and typesetting by J & M Typesetting Cover design by Phil Campbell Printed in Australia by OPUS Group <NLA logo> 9780522875461 (hardback) 9780522875478 (paperback) 9780522875485 (ebook) Contents Preface 00 Contributors 00 Glossary 00 1 Introduction 1 Mark Moran and Jodie Curth-Bibb The state of the borderlands 00 A borderlands theoretical framework 00 The research 00 Conclusion 00 Notes 00 Chapter 2 Socio-historical context 00 Kevin Murphy The people of the borderlands before colonialism 00 The establishment of colonial borders 00 The southern border with Australia 00 The western border with Indonesia 00 Conclusion 00 Notes 00 Chapter 3 The Torres Strait Treaty 00 Jennifer Corrin The Torres Strait 00 Australian law 00 The law of Papua New Guinea 00 Mechanisms in the treaty 00 National forums—Australia 00 National forums—New Guinea 00 Points of contention 00 Bridging the gap 00 Conclusion 00 Acknowledgement 00 Notes 00 Chapter 4 The politics of distribution 00 Peter Chaudhry The Torres Strait border in historical perspective 00 Inequality in the borderlands today 000 Practices of exclusion in the everyday construction of the border 000 Disaffection, desire and the politics of distribution 000 Resistance, legibility and ‘dependence’ 000 Distributional labour and a rightful share 000 Conclusion 000 Notes 00 Chapter 5 Governance 000 Mark Moran and Jodie Curth-Bibb Conceptualising governance in the borderland 000 PNG’s services and decentralised financing 000 Decentralised governance structures 000 Decentralised finances and political accountability 000 Australia’s extrajurisdictional influence in PNG 000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs 000 Building Resilience in Treaty Villages program 000 Australian patronage of Treaty villages 000 Cross-border health 000 Limiting cross-border development 000 Conclusion 000 Notes 00 Chapter 6 Health at the margin 00 Geoffrey Miller A brief history of the TB response 000 Policy and referrals 000 Why people cross 000 Aid posts 000 Infrastructure, equipment and supplies 000 Access to services 000 PNG patients in the Torres Strait 000 Daru and the corners 000 TB, the environment and the response 000 NCDs and the double burden of disease 000 Health security 000 Discussion 000 Conclusion 000 Notes 00 Chapter 7 Fisheries 000 Sara Busilacchi, Kevin Murphy and James Butler Institutional framework for marine resources 000 How local social dynamics adapt to the state-centred institutional framework 000 Consequences for shared marine resources 000 Addressing governance mismatches in the borderland 000 Conclusion 000 Notes 00 Chapter 8 Ok Tedi Mine 000 Sara Busilacchi, Jodie Curth-Bibb and James Butler Customary patterns of movement of Fly River inhabitants 000 The Ok Tedi Mine disaster 000 Ok Tedi role in changing movement patterns 000 Social and environmental impacts of the migration of inhabitants from mine-affected areas to Daru 000 Finding a way out 000 Notes 00 Chapter 9 WWF in the south New Guinea borderland 000 Garrick Hitchcock Tonda Wildlife Management Area 000 WWF: Wasur National Park, Indonesia 000 Tonda’s problems 000 WWF programs in south New Guinea, 1996–2010 000 Successes and failures 000 Discussion 000 Notes 00 10 Conclusion 000 Mark Moran Review of the ‘Guidelines for Traditional Visitors’ 000 Increasing aid assistance 000 Water supply 000 Transportation 000 Village economic development 000 Cross-border trade and Indonesia 000 Labour mobility 000 Connectivity and mobile money 000 Direct payments 000 Shared governance 000 Sharing security 000 Notes 00 Index 000 Preface I first observed Papua New Guinea (PNG) nationals crossing the border with Australia and entering the Torres Strait Islands in 1997, when I was on Saibai island to facilitate community planning for improvements to their water supply, sewerage and housing. My working life at that time was divided between developing countries in Asia and remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia. As I stood on the foreshore, watching small groups cross the short distance by dinghy, I was struck by the clashing of two very different worlds. I knew that many of the visitors were related to the Saibai islanders and that the conditions of their entry was limited to traditional exchanges under a treaty. But I observed an air of supplication among the Papuans that I recognised from the poorest parts of developing countries I had worked in. I knew how disadvantaged the Torres Strait Islanders were compared to the rest of Australia, but clearly in this context the Papuans were much more disadvantaged again. I was struck by a mixture of surprise and trepidation. I remember not knowing which way to look. It was a sight and a feeling that stuck with me, but it would be years before I had the chance to explore what was happening on the other side of the border. Later, I would discover that Garrick Hitchcock (author of chapter 9) was already doing his PhD on the political ecology in the South Fly District along PNG’s border with Indonesia, and Kevin Murphy (chapter 2) would soon be starting his PhD analysing social relations along the border with Australia. Around then I started a conversation that would last many years with Geoff Miller (chapter 6), who went on to take a placement as a health adviser with the Australian aid program in Daru. All the while I kept a close eye on the related research coming out of Torres Strait, especially the work of Bill Arthur and Will Sanders at the Australian National University. After I joined the University of Queensland in 2013, I met Jennifer Corrin (chapter 3), who already had strong ties with the South Pacific as a legal practitioner and researcher. I would also meet Jodie Curth-Bibb (co-editor of this book and co- author of chapters 1, 5 and 8) and Peter Chaudhry (chapter 4), who both worked with me at the Institute for Social Science Research, along with research assistants Tsarie Duthie and Laura Simpson Reeves. By 2015 we had a sufficiently strong team to apply for a competitive ARC Discovery grant, which we won to commence in 2016. Doug Porter from the World Bank and Bryant Alan from ANU encouraged us through the application, then advised us throughout the project’s duration. We also learnt of the long-standing and locally respected work by CSIRO in fisheries, with James Butler and Sara Busilacchi approaching us in an uncommon spirit of open collaboration (chapters 7 and 8). As fieldwork commenced on the PNG side, we were encouraged by widespread support from PNG government stakeholders at village, district, provincial and national levels. We were especially well received by the village leaders and households in the South Fly villages we visited in the course of four field trips. Much of our travel was by shallow-draft banana boats, visiting coastal villages and following the river systems to inland villages, and extending west to PNG’s border with Indonesia. Skilled operators such as Sapi Yo kept us safe along the weather coast. We also did two field trips to the Torres Strait. We found strong support among the Torres Strait leadership, who shared their concern for their close neighbours while maintaining the need to protect the limited resources on their islands. Simply put, we set out to understand a little-known part of the world and to recommend improvements. We collected socioeconomic data, attended community meetings and, crucially, interviewed community leaders and households. Interviews typically went for more than an hour, as people explained detailed and (for us) unexpected aspects of their lives. Together we wrote this book as a means to raise awareness of a little-known but strategically important borderland. The people living on the PNG side want people living in Australia and other countries, and in Port Moresby and other PNG cities, to understand their situation, which is quite unlike anywhere else in PNG and the world. Compared to the Australian side, they experience a marked level of relative inequality and a disparity in public funding and services. They want assistance, but in ways that are appropriate to the unique constraints and opportunities they face. We believe it is in Australia’s national interest to understand the border from the perspective of the PNG nationals living there, and that their ‘security’ and development ultimately determines the ‘security’ of the Australian border. We think that many of the people working for the Australian and Queensland government authorities at a personal level believe this too, if allowed to shed the official line. The other authors and I would like to thank our partners and families for their love, patience and support during the research and writing of this book. We are also very grateful for the goodwill and openness extended to us by the many people who accommodated us and gave us their time for the interviews.

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