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In the continuing debates about the relative importance of conservatism and liberalism in the history of the Australian Liberal Party, one important dimension remains absent. Liberal developmentalism as an important anti‐conservative strand of thought was critical to the party's formative years after the Second World War as a party of government. The importance of this facet of liberalism is illustrated here by reference to the role of long‐serving Minister for Territories Paul Hasluck in overseeing development in Papua and New Guinea (PNG). Hasluck and the Australian Administration formulated policy intended to secure the indigenous population on rural smallholdings at higher standards of living before industrialisation's anticipated effects of proletarianisation could take effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Papua New Guinea's (PNG's) road system is in a parlous state after decades of neglect. More than half of the roads in the country require urgent rehabilitation. The PNG Government sought from 2003 to address the problem through the establishment of a Road Fund designed to earmark revenue for road management. Development partners supported these efforts, which were similar to reforms implemented in other parts of the world. This article examines the establishment of an independent road fund and road management agency in PNG. It finds that these reforms have not markedly improved road conditions, and that they have been undermined by a lack of support from political leaders and parts of the civil service. The article's conclusion, that the establishment of a road fund is no panacea against political obstacles to road maintenance funding, is relevant to a broader literature concerning the establishment of independent institutions to address governance challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sorcery in Buka, Autonomous Region of Bougainville, is understood as reprehensible in most present contexts, but it is also believed to have once played a constructive role in maintaining social order. This mytheme is important both to the analysis of how traditional systems of sorcery come to be rearticulated in postcolonial contexts, and as a means of understanding how villagers conceptualise social order itself. Here, an analysis of the selective means by which vernacular forms of sorcery are assimilated to the Tok Pisin term poisen is presented together with an examination of the history of institutions of social control in which sorcery is remembered - and forgotten - to have played key roles. In the past, sorcery would have been gavman blong peles, a 'village government', a power over and from people, accumulated by the hierarchical integration of lineages within houses known as tsuhana. Sorcery has been privatized and commodified, slipping out of control of traditional authorities, who now pursue a strategy of achieving power over land. Power from people entails, in the Buka context, sorcery or other forms of internalised violence; power over land entails the assertion exclusivist genealogical claims. The pursuit of such claims is mediated by courts, and frequently creates rifts in communities. Sorcery, once freed from its role as government, returns to haunt traditional authorities as the spectre of their former power, and as the spectre of resistance to their current power: to the extent that they emphasize the historical role of poisen, the more they are suspected of it; imagined as the anarchy of jealousies, poisen multiplies in proportion to their success in parlaying forms of traditional authority into economic and political advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary Melanesian communities face difficulties both because of the withdrawal of government services and the continued influence of clientelism within the politics of the distributive state. A notable reaction to both these problems is the organisation of a broad class of groups that may be termed 'parastatal': informal organisations, often evanescent, which form around the state and its absence. These may often appear as 'mimetic' of recognisable state forms. Characteristically, the analysis of such 'mimesis' in Melanesia is framed by doubt that the emulation of state forms extends to the alleged rationality or 'interiority' of the state. Here, a case in which villagers in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville undertook to prosecute themselves for non-payment of school fees is discussed in order to expose the substantial difficulties with understanding parastatal organisation in terms of 'copying'. The case suggests integration of the villagers into the actually existing state system is much deeper than is often assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY Many anti-corruption organisations work from the notion that both petty and grand corruption axiomatically results in negative consequences. However, few studies have asked citizens to evaluate the effects of different scales and types of corruption. This article investigates how rural people in Papua New Guinea associate dysfunctional or functional consequences to different types and scales of corruption. It draws on findings from focus groups conducted in four provinces of the country. The article finds that most examples of corruption considered by respondents were perceived as dysfunctional; however, marginalised respondents considered small-scale corruption as functional-if the acts described benefitted marginalised people. These findings suggest that it is critical that anti-corruption organisations understand and respond to the constraints faced by poor and marginalised people when operating in weak states. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1970s the Motu-Koita, traditional inhabitants of what is now the National Capital District of Papua New Guinea, inaugurated a yearly cultural festival thematically based on traditional coastal trading voyages known as hiri. Contestation over the location and commercialization of the festival in the capital city developed in the new century as one distant village claimed to 'own' the hiri. The Motu-Koita view of their past and their identity has been affected by their encounter with Christianity, colonialism and its aftermath, and the rhetoric of the villagers' claims drew on criteria of authenticity, cultural purity, and exclusiveness which are arguably contemporary rather than 'traditional'. This article reviews Motu-Koita history, the story of the origin of the hiri, and the local politics of the cultural festival. It attempts to understand the way the past, which was formerly mythopoeically invoked, is being historicized and thereby fixed in new local discourses of cultural and heritage rights and ownership, as Melanesians come to terms with the effects of global processes on their traditions and other resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today academic debate and public discourse about the Pacific often focuses on the collapse of government – on failed nation-states. Yet ever since Self-Government and Independence, Melanesians have experimented with developing their own alternative forms of local government, which have often embraced but also side-tracked official governmental schemes, structures, and practices. Using the Pomio Kivung movement in East New Britain, this article explores how government, together with its projects and promises of sovereignty, civilization, and development, is displaced and re-mediated through the world of the dead. The customary shamanic worlds of dreams and possession are redeployed and merged with the pastoral practices and disciplinary schemes of civilizing projects originally belonging to Western churches and governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1969, Speaker of the House Assembly of Papua and New Guinea John Guise, spoke of a “quiet decision” to limit the activities of “Native” Local Government Councils in the Territory, so that “they seem to be much more like those of Australian Shire Councils”. The present essay suggests that this “quiet decision”, contrary to conventional wisdom, was not simply part of a colonial policy designed to serve “assimilationist purposes”. Rather, the restricted role finally accorded to local councils was a corollary of the enhanced, post-war capacity of the metropolitan state. Early local government policy never envisaged councils as a first step toward self-government. Rather, councils were to be vehicles for securing the “systematic development of native agricultural potential”. The decision to limit the scope of local government policy reflected not a rejection of this initial intent, but rather agrarian reform after 1956 was re-constituted as an object of direct government control. The legacy of local government in Papua New Guinea is not so much one of ‘white’ colonialism, but of ‘development’ entrapped in trusteeship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. The patrol system of bringing government to the people, of suppressing inter-village and inter-tribal raiding, and of penetrating the remaining remote restricted areas was continued. Education was encouraged, a national code of laws drafted, and gradually the PNG people were prepared for self-government, which was accorded to them in 1973. PNG is a parliamentary democracy. It is under the nominal rule of a governor general elected by Parliament to represent Queen Elizabeth II of England, the head of state. PNG's adoption of site-value property taxation (or rating as it is called there) had its origin in Australia's pre-independence administration, and the proximity of Australia to PNG. Companies operating major mining projects pay a corporate tax rate of 35 percent, while petroleum companies pay 50 percent. An unusual aspect of PNG's tax system is the concept of prescribed Infrastructure Development. Mining and petroleum companies can devote a portion of the money they would have paid in company tax (currently 2 percent of their assessable income for tax purposes) to infrastructure projects (such as schools, hospitals or roads) designed to benefit residents of the areas in which the companies benefit.

Since 1977, after pressure from secessionists, Papua New Guinea has, with both boldness and hesitancy, sought to decentralize its unitary state. Nineteen elected provincial governments, which are financially dependent on the centre, now control the former colonial districts and the national government public servants within them. National parliamentarians, while competing with provincial governments, have gained strong influence over some of these nominally autonomous bodies. The hoped-for popular mobilization and the intended sensitization and improved co-ordination of the public service have not occurred widely, but rather abuses of position, waste of resources and a decline in the legitimacy of the state have resulted. This scheme, which was ill-suited to the political culture, the country's economic and financial balance and the available human resources, is being re-assessed at the national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]