Papua New Guinea - taxation of land and resources - Statistical Data Included

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Dec, 2000 by H.J. Manning, Ciaran O'Faircheallaigh

H.J. MANNING [*]

CIARAN O'FAIRCHEALLAIGH [**]

PAPUA NEW GUINEA (PNG) comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea, the second largest island in the world. Size it undoubtedly has, for from the country's western border with the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya to Rossel Island and the Pacific Ocean in the east, the distance is 1,500 kilometers.

Within these limits lies a country of 462,840 square kilometers. This includes the large islands to the north in the Bismarck archipelago, viz. New Britain and New Ireland, and the many lesser islands of the Admiralty and Saint Mathias groups as well as those to the east including the large island of Bougainville, the most northerly of the Solomon Islands chain. Indeed, a total of 1,400 islands is within its borders.

But to think in terms of size only is not to grasp a true understanding of PNG. It is a harsh and rugged country. About two-thirds of its land area comprises an immense chain of overlapping mountain ranges in which 28 mountains exceed 3,700 meters in height and Mount Wilhelm, the tallest, rises to 4,509 meters.

Moreover, this rugged and mountainous country, including most of the larger islands, is scarred and intersected by steep-sided valleys, riven by turbulent rivers and streams all constantly fed by heavy persistent tropical rain, which also nurtures thick, sometimes impenetrable rain-forests. To this unprepossessing melange, add some 100 active volcanoes. As could be expected in such a rugged country, air transport is essential. So there are 452 airfields, varying from steeply sloping mountain airstrips to seven international airfields.

Within this harsh environment live only some four million people, mostly in widely scattered village communities, each, at least in the past, seeking by means of hilltop locations fenced with high palisades, protection from inter-tribal raiding.

When to this fragmentation and among such a relatively small population is added a multitude of separate and often mutually unintelligible languages, it can be seen that PNG, socially, is a very divided society. But, with the slow spread of education, the old inter-tribal language of pidgin English is being replaced by widely spoken and understood standard English. Indeed, it seemed possible to discern the emergence of a "togetherness" so that, for example, the Motuan of Port Moresby were beginning to think that the Kukukus of the highlands or the Tolai of New Britain were not, after all, far distant in kinship.

Unfortunately, these fragile and tentative approaches to unity were not sufficient to preclude a secessionist rebellion on Bougainville that started in 1987 and lasted for a decade. Charges of corruption in connection with the hiring of mercenaries to suppress it, led to an investigation of the then prime minister, Sir Julius Chan, and leading members of his cabinet. Those charged stepped down from office pending a decision by the Commission of Inquiry, but were duly cleared. However, after a period in which the acting prime minister refused to stand aside to permit Sir Julius to resume his post, the latter lost his seat in Parliament. Bill Skate, himself still fighting a bribery charge, was elected prime minister by the new Parliament in July of 1997. He remains in office as of this writing.

The earliest known connection of PNG with world history followed soon after Vasco da Gama's epochal 1498 voyage to India, for, as early as 1520, the name Papua began to appear on Portuguese maps. Papua (a Malay word meaning "frizzled") because its dark, fuzzy-haired people so reminded the early Portuguese navigators of the people they had encountered when sailing down the west coast of Africa. Not long after, in 1569, the name New Guinea appeared on Mercator's world map.

From then until the south-eastern portion of the island became a British protectorate in 1884, and the north-eastern portion the German Territory of New Guinea, the people of the eastern half of New Guinea, disturbed only by some scattered religious missions and gold seekers, continued their centuries-old stone age life. Then in 1902, British New Guinea was transferred to the then newly-established Commonwealth of Australia and became the Territory of Papua.

Next, in 1914, on the outbreak of World War I, an Australian naval and military force, in order to preempt its use by German naval forces then operating in the Pacific, invaded and occupied German New Guinea. This occupation of German-claimed territory was changed in 1921 when Australia was given a mandate to administer the area tinder a League of Nations Covenant.

Slowly then, under Australian auspices, a system of national control and development began. Only in the Trobriand Islands could administration be pursued through traditional tribal chiefs. For the rest of New Guinea, territorial government was exercised through district and sub-district offices mostly by young Australian officers bringing by long, arduous, lonely patrol, pacification, medical aid, and administration to some 11,920 villages. The kiap system, as it was called, appointed to each village a luluai, through whom control was administered, and in Papua a village constable.