Mission & Justice

Editorial; 28/4/08
The announcement by representatives of Papua New Guinea and Australia on the future of the Kokoda Track is already generating disagreement. There was a sense of relief when the environment ministers for PNG and Australia issued a joint declaration about the Kokoda Track, one that ensures the future of both the wartime icon and of the people who live nearby. Reports were carried in The National last week; suffice it to say that it has been agreed that there will be no mining exploration in the Owen Stanley ranges. The issue threatens to become controversial because an Australian mining company, Frontier Resources, has declared that any refusal by PNG to renew the exploration licence would be viewed as “expropriation” by the company. Frontier’s stance on the issue is predictable but deeply unfortunate.

See: http://www.thenational.com.pg/042808/lead_editorial.htm

Exactly where is the Track
Steve Marshall; 28/4/08
This time two years ago I presented a documentary on the Kokoda Track for the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent Program. Given the tracks surge in popularity with Australian tourists, I posed the question as to whether the track was in danger of being loved to death. Back then villagers were gearing up for a new season that would see close to 4000 people pass along the WW2 trail. This year more than 6000 will set out on the week long walk with a staggering 800 timing their pilgrimage with ANZAC day. The increase in traffic is placing the track under incredible pressure and stirs up fears about its long term sustainability. At the time of writing, a Kokoda Track task force is preparing to table a report at the Ministerial Forum that was held in Madang earlier this week.

See: http://www.thenational.com.pg/042808/wkender6.htm

Uri Avnery; 1/4/08

War with Syria? Peace with Syria? A big military operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip? A cease-fire with Hamas? Our media discuss these questions dispassionately, as if they were equivalent options. Nobody cries out: War is the height of stupidity! Carl Von Clausewitz, the renowned military theorist, famously said that war is nothing but the continuation of politics by other means. Meaning: War is there to serve policy and is useless when it does not. What policies did the wars in the last hundred years serve?

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Editorial; 28/4/08

The announcement by representatives of Papua New Guinea and Australia on the future of the Kokoda Track is already generating disagreement. There was a sense of relief when the environment ministers for PNG and Australia issued a joint declaration about the Kokoda Track, one that ensures the future of both the wartime icon and of the people who live nearby. Reports were carried in The National last week; suffice it to say that it has been agreed that there will be no mining exploration in the Owen Stanley ranges. The issue threatens to become controversial because an Australian mining company, Frontier Resources, has declared that any refusal by PNG to renew the exploration licence would be viewed as “expropriation” by the company. Frontier’s stance on the issue is predictable but deeply unfortunate.

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Babette Smith; 26/4/08

Once again, Australians have gathered in their thousands at Gallipoli. Some opponents of this annual pilgrimage by a younger generation claim it glorifies war. Others blame politicians for overemphasising the commemoration of Gallipoli. Young Australians remain steadfast in their determination to mark Anzac Day with the journey, however, despite claims that their faith and their interest is misplaced. At Gallipoli in 2006, one young Australian explained quite clearly what it meant to them, telling a journalist, “It’s not about empire. It’s about us.” And they are right. The qualities that this generation identifies with in World War I Diggers run deep in Australian society, right back to the convict era. No connection is generally recognised between the colonies’ prisoners and their military heirs, but evidence for the link is not hard to find.

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Alana Buckley-Carr; 26/4/08

A Perth copper and gold company, which wants to mine part of the historic Kokoda Track, will head to the courts after the Papua New Guinea Government rejected a bid to renew its exploration licence. Frontier Resources said it had already spent more than $3million on the exploration licence for the Kodu project, which the company describes as “proximal to and east of the Kokoda Track”. In a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange on Thursday, Frontier said it had not received any notification from the PNG Government that its licence renewal had been rejected. But managing director Peter McNeil said Frontier would ask the PNG courts to review the decision. He said if that legal avenue were unsuccessful, “Frontier will seek adequate compensation, including recoupment of expenditure to date plus lost potential future profit”.

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David Campbell; 23/4/08

My father fought in the hellhole that was New Guinea in 1942. But although he regularly kept in touch with a couple of his close army mates after the war, he didn’t march on Anzac Day. Not once. The war was not a popular topic for discussion in our house. Although he was outwardly fit and healthy - he died more than 20 years ago - my mother has always insisted that New Guinea killed him. Not with a bullet, a bomb or a knife, but with something far more insidious. Even if there are no physical wounds, combat leaves deep-seated mental scars. For some who return from battle, it is a crippling condition. They simply cannot function and their lives, and those of their families, are destroyed by drugs, breakdowns and suicide. Others, like my father, manage to repress the memories and get on with their lives.

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Greg Roberts; 23/4/08

Papua New Guinea has admitted its forestry sector is riddled with corruption as a high-powered delegation of Australian frontbenchers arrives in the country for talks that will focus on deforestation. Nine Rudd government ministers and parliamentary secretaries will front the first PNG-Australia Ministerial Forum since 2005, in Madang, PNG’s second city, with the new forest carbon partnership between the two nations the main topic for discussion. The parties are expected to reach an agreement to protect the Kokoda Track at today’s forum in what will be billed as recognition of the sacrifices made by Australian Diggers during World War II in PNG in the lead-up to Anzac Day. In the first admission of its kind by a PNG Government, the country’s new Forest Minister, Belden Namah, has told the PNG parliament in Port Moresby that logging companies routinely flout laws with the help of corrupt officials.

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Peter Ryan; 19/4/08

As another Anzac Day approaches, we will hear again and again the name of an obscure village in the mountains of Papua New Guinea: Kokoda. And as the Anzac Cove and the Gallipoli of 1915 recede further behind the mists of time and legend, Kokoda may come more to be the emotional focus of Australia’s military heart. The story of Kokoda can well bear that heavy weight. But it is extraordinary that so few Australians seem to have even a broadly accurate perception of what actually happened on the Kokoda Track between July and November 1942, and of what those events mean. Kokoda’s smallness is the first reality one must grasp when relating it to the huge scale of the Pacific war. This does not demean it or cut it down to size; it heightens the distinction. It is not at all silly to compare Kokoda with the classical heroism of Leonidas and his 300 Spartans, who defended the pass at Thermopylae in 480BC; nor with the gallant 600 who, in 1854, made immortal the Charge of the Light Brigade.

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12/4/08

George Bush has admitted that senior US officials including Dick Cheney had approved CIA’s use of harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, on key al-Qaeda suspects. The US president told ABC News there was no problem with using the methods and that legal advice the government received allowed the interrogations. “We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it. And, no, I didn’t have any problem at all trying to find out what Khaled Sheikh Mohammed knew,” Bush said on Friday. The CIA has admitted using waterboarding on Mohammed, reportedly al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, who later confessed to planning the September 11 2001 attacks on New York.

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Justin Norrie; 12/4/08

Its title means “peaceful country”, but the award-winning documentary film Yasukuni — about Japan’s notorious shrine for war dead — is expected to draw a furious response from ultra-nationalists at its big-screen premiere. Militant groups have already sent death threats to the Chinese-born director, Li Ying, and vowed to attack cinemas, where management and police are preparing for protests. All five cinemas in Tokyo and Osaka that had planned to show the film about the Yasukuni shrine from today cancelled the sessions amid a campaign of intimidation by the ultra-nationalists, who have a track record of violently avenging “anti-Japanese” sentiment.

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