Wednesday (Jan 23^rd) a little board room in the Institute of National Affairs was humming …if you’d been listening from outside the room that is.

If you were inside, a part of the audience like me, you would’ve first seen the back of a lot of heads at first. Bald ones, frizzy ones, long haired ones and blonde ones too.

As a nation we don't take up that much space in the world in terms of land and sea area but out of the 6900 spoken languages of the world almost a quarter of them are spoken in Papua New Guinea! It's quite uncommon in the world (especially in the so-called 'developed' world) to grow up speaking at least 3 languages.

A story in Radio Australia News today sent tremors of disbelief, horror and disgust all throughout my conscience.

The below report from Radio Australia News goes one step further in emphasizing the point that we have been trying to make. If only those that we appointed to represent us in that prime Haus Tambaran over at Waigani really paid attention and really did their research they wouldn't be fooled so easily.

 Special Purpose Agricultural Business Lease or SABL

In case you are in the dark what an SABL is, as the name implies is a special lease that was provisioned for under Section 11 of the Land Act (1996)

 ‘the Minister may lease customary land for the purpose of granting a special agricultural and business lease’

This lease was supposed to give traditional landowners economic benefits from the rent and employment opportunities created by those businesses that leased land from them.

Source: SciDev.net

by Jan Piotrowski

Seems like the more one tries to look at other issues of national interest, the more the whole 'Illegal Air Traffic Movement' issue hits your over the head and looks at you almost eye-ball to eye-ball!

Today's commentary was supposed to be on PNG's overall performance on the Open Budget Survey which was presented at the Institute of National Affairs boardroom today. VERY interesting discussions that need to be elaborated on further, tomorrow we will elaborate on who was there and what was said.

The continuation of the Suspicious Air Traffic movement saga from The National...

O’Neill, at a media conference at Morauta Haus attended by heads of departments of customs, transport, civil aviation, police, immigrations and other agencies, said according to the investigations by respective agencies, including police, the plane had met all requirements and that there was no illegality about its landing.

Suspicious Air Traffic Movement... Or Alien Air Traffic Movement…better yet – Illegal Air Traffic Movement!