By Roderick Kanama

The Commission of Inquiry (COI) into Special Purpose Agriculture and Business Leases (SPABL also referred to as SABL) will commence its provincial visits as part of its preliminary hearings on Monday 24/10/2011. The COI is yet to commence substantive hearings and the time it was allocated to complete and make known its findings is almost over. 

By Jo Chandler

Developers hover as 5 million hectares, and national pride, are signed away in 99-year leases that have raised fears of corruption, reports The Age.

A LAND grab of 5 million hectares of Papua New Guinea, 11 per cent of its territory, has taken place quietly and apparently bloodlessly since 2003, half of it being signed over in the past two years.

The time frame of three-months for the Commission of Inquiry into SABL ends on October 21, but so much has yet to be done, reports the Post Courier.


The enormous number of irregularies discovered in many of the SABLs during preliminary findings as part of Terms of Reference (TOR) has seen 75 cases now before the Commission of Inquiry.


Since files were opened for mention two weeks ago, submitted evidence from all interested parties in the 75 SABL’s files revealed activities of; 


More than 500 emails have been sent to the Papua New Guinea Police Commissioner from the ACT NOW!  website demanding action over the case of Joy Wartovo, who has been the victim of numerous serious assaults by her policeman husband.

ACT NOW! set up the email action on its website last Friday after seeing the huge response when a group of concerned volunteers established the Papua New Guineans Against Domestic Violence group on the social networking site Facebook. The group has attracted over 5,000 followers in just a few days.

By Judy

The mama law stipulates that we women have much right to be heard and treated as any other Papua New Guinean; we need your help (PNG man) to make us feel safe at home, on the streets, on the way to office, at the office environment, in the settlements, in the villages, at the market; infact everywhere,wherever we are..


By John Perkins

As I prepare to give the keynote address at a conference of more than 4,000 Eurasian leaders in the information and communications fields (ICT Summit Eurasia), and as I walk through this very ancient city of Instanbul, visiting sites that date back thousands of years, I'm struck by these 3 facts:

For the first time in human history:

By Jerry Tandawai

IF the government is really serious about combating corruption at all le­vels, then an Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) must be set up immediately.
 

Setting up the ICAC has been mooted many times before in various public forums but nothing substantive has resulted.
 The main reason for inaction is that successive governments always lacked the political will to stamp out corruption.


By Dylan Welch*

Australia may be sheltering hundreds of millions of black dollars funnelled out of South Pacific countries by corrupt politicians and public officials, with the money laundering being tolerated by a disinterested federal government.

Papua New Guinea, in particular, is believed to suffer from the avarice of some of its officials and politicians, with a senior police officer recently claiming the country loses as much as 50 per cent of its budget - about $1.9 billion - through fraud and corruption every year.

By Roderick Kanama

Rod will be providing daily updates from the Commission of Inquiry on this blog from October 10, in this article he provides an overview of SABLs and the issues confronting the CoI.

Land acquisition for developmental purposes has been a Government policy since 1979 when the instrument for Special Agriculture and Business Leases (SABL) was established, later incorporated into the Land Act in 1996. Its application had honourable intentions and was designed to achieve two main objectives;