Once upon a time PNG-Australia relations was predicated heavily on rice sales in PNG. For a long time, Australian rice sales to PNG was maintained in the vicinity of $300 million, making it one of the largest single commodity export to a single country on consistent basis. PNG provided the blue print by which Australia replicated this model throughout the Pacific. Even in Fiji, the home of Sun Rice, Australia managed to use political and other connections to kill that indigenous rice industry to establish it as one of the distribution point of the Australian rice products. That is largely the case today for Fiji.
Australian rice industry is about Australian politics. It is about the rise and fall of the Country/National Party, where rice is grown in the heartlands of the Riverina and the Murray/Darling basin past the cotton country. So it was not a surprise when Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fisher once flew in to confront Sir Julius Chan over PNG Government move (spearheaded by Haiveta as Finance Minister) to tamper with PNG's rice equation with Australia. Chan quickly learnt who was Master.
At one time, Trukai had all the major law and accounting firms in its payroll so that no intelligent person could meaningfully take them on in this country. It also under the reign of late Utula Samana as Secretary for DAL entered into Agreement with the State to acquire all the arable State land (including Markham, Bereina and Abau) so that the State could not have the land capacity to grow rice in competition with Trukai, and indeed it obtained from the State a commitment in those terms. It was a great win for Austrade Port Moresby office.
Trukai also used the Vitamin enrichment condition to keep a lot of cheaper rice out of the PNG Market. It used lawyers to ban American rice entering PNG via an entrepreneuring Highlander. The Highlander was frozen out of the market. This is Australian government interest, and despite signing APEC and WTO, it has always been keen on controlling this market.
Then you ask, why? Why does Australia fight tooth and nail to maintain this market?
The answer is very simple, and is twofold: 1. It keeps the Leeton Rice Growers Cooperative in Country NSW happy and they keep voting National/Liberal Party; 2. It is the way Australia gives Aid on one hand and takes it back through rice.( see how for many many years Australian Aid has been at the $3oo million mark?)
This was a monopoly that has created a dependent people in Papua New Guinea. We had the Taiwanese come in and tell us we can grow it ourselves, but we didn't listen. We had the Chinese, Thai, Indonesians, the Koreans and even the Japanese come in and tell us to use our good lands and grow it. But we kept buying from Australia.
WHY: Because we have had weak Political leadership.
When Moses Maladina became Agriculture Minister- he visited Thailand and met the Agriculture Minister, and Thai Rice exporting Houses. It was through this official trip that he organized for his family rice importing business now based in Lae. He defied the Australians using his position to break the Australian monopoly. he is a strong leader and he used his strength to his own benefit.
Now we have Mr Ano Pala and Peter O'Neill, both Business Partners of Tjandra Family in the Naima Rice Company. They have used keen and strong Leadership appropriately lubricated by the Tjandra family to drive this project to the point where they have the courage and the audacity to ask for tax holidays and import duty exemptions and the list goes on.
It is one thing to decry the long years of slavery, enslaving our hip pockets and our taste buds to the Australian Rice Industry. It is one thing to lament to the lack of local rice industry and our own lack of know how. It is one thing to welcome someone to come in and use mechanized means to develop a large scale rice project. YET it is another thing to enslave our selves to be labourers on the paddy fields of Peter O'Neill/Ano Pala and Tjandra's conglomerate in our own country.
I believe the governments land use policies are nonsensical. The development of one major monopoly in rice in PNG is a stupid thing to do. We know all about monopolies from paying Air Niugini fares, Telikom phone bills and PNG power electricity bills. They are the sole supplier and you cannot argue the price nor the efficiency by which the product is produced.
Monopolies are a thing of the past and most only exist in semi-command economies like China where it is strongly supported by the State with a very wide industry base. The idea of creating a monopoly shows we have not learnt from our mistakes with Hala Cement and Interoil.
A RICE MONOPOLY IS NOT IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF PNG.
We must conserve our lands in the hands of our people and encourage our people to form landowner companies who will pool the land and jointly own the project with an investor. The local people must own at least 50% of the business in return for contributing their land. The Naime Rice project will at the end of the day benefit only a few people. No one has published for our benefit the cost-benefit analysis of this project.
Should the State grant them all these incentives they want worth hundreds of Millions of Kina? The answer should be no.
Why do they need us to pay for their project? Why should the people of PNG bankroll a project that will only benefit a few people who own the company? Why should I deprive my children of their land and their right to become rice entrepreneurs only because the Pala/O'Neill/ and Tjandra families control that commodity in this country. What right have they got to control this market? Why should we buy from them only and not from others or our own farmers?
I believe this idea of granting Rice Monopoly to Naime Rice Company is illegal. It is illegal because it is contrary to the ICCC Act. The granting of monopoly will have the effect of substantially lessening competition in the market place, and therefore it is an illegal proposal.
Furthermore, I believe Rice Monopoly is against PNG's international obligations under APEC and the WTO.
I say let them come, let them grow the rice. We have already given them enough of our land. We have harboured international criminals and fugitives. We have already given them ourselves as their market place. Now we don't have to finance their project too! Where is the money in the billions they said they had to spend when we first read about the project? Where is the money now? Is it all clean money? Tell the Tjandra family to go to Indonesia and ask their government for the same incentives, and see if they will get it.
Haven't the Tjandra family made enough money out of us, and continue to do so from us, and yet they don't give much back to our society. Eliana for example has been making so much ( hundreds of Millions)from our city land by bribing lands officers. We all know what she does. And her brother bought his knighthood from the Queen for a tidy sum.
Respectability has its price, and contentment its benefits. But if the Tjandra family want to insult us with such projects like the cocoa processing monopoly that the family tried to get us to allow, and now this rice using weak and ill constituted plebs like Ano Pala, a very poor excuse for a national Leader and a total waste of food and space, then listen and read the lips of a nationalist...do you want to destroy your gains so far in this country?
Dont be greedy. Haven't we been generous enough to you? You take us for fools and idiots Sir Tjandra, Eliana, Tjoko, TjAno Pala and TjO'Neill?
Do you believe God created us in PNG for people like you to tremble over on your way to your up to your guided castles and ivory towers in the sky? Think about it....and back off!
