MPs want insurance. Their voters want medicine on the shelf.

by PAUL L. KEBAIJA

Within hours of Libert Kapris's casket entering the chamber, members had turned his death into a case for their own entitlements. Speaker after speaker called on Parliament to fund medical and life insurance for its members. A senior MP who entered Parliament in 2002 called the current arrangement inadequate "to say the least" and said covering fewer than 120 people was doable. Another said Parliament should not wait for another coffin before acting.

The grief was real, and so is the toll. The last Parliament lost ten members. NBC counted eight deaths in this one by December 2025; Daulo MP Ekime Gorosahu, who died at the end of September, and Kapris take it to at least ten, with nine months still to run. No one should begrudge colleagues their sorrow. But grief is not a policy argument, and the first policy members reached for was one for themselves.

It is not a new request. At the 2022 induction of this Parliament, after ten deaths in the previous term, members raised the same issue. The National reported then that sitting MPs had K6,000 a year in health cover deducted from their salaries, with no life insurance, and that a full blood test at the parliamentary clinic cost K1,800. The Clerk spoke of plans for an on-site clinic with doctors, subject to approval. Four years on, members are making the same speeches. The problem is not a shortage of ideas. It is a shortage of follow-through by the people who control Parliament's own budget.

Police Minister Sir John Pundari offered the only dissent, and it was useful. He thanked the Clerk, the Speaker and the Prime Minister for the health arrangements already in place, said the support was there for members to use, and asked to be told if anyone had been refused. Life insurance, he noted, pays out to families after death; check-ups are what keep members alive. His point was that the arrangements exist and members do not use them. That is a matter of discipline, not a new entitlement.

The patients MPs represent do not get to choose an insurer. Researchers who surveyed 172 health workers in Manus province found 44 per cent reporting essential medicine stock-outs every few months, and frontline staff widely blamed delays in releasing budgets. In 2023 and 2024, the Health Department reportedly received about a third of its budget. These are the conditions in which most Papua New Guineans manage diabetes, hypertension and heart disease, the same conditions members were warned about on Friday.

One speaker described the pressure on members honestly. Melanesian custom, he said, puts MPs at the front of every funeral, compensation payment and marriage, and saying no to a voter is the worst thing a politician can do. That pressure is real. It is also why members spend on obligations and networks rather than systems. An MP who wants to survive the job could start with the hospital in his district, because that is where he will be taken if he collapses at home.

There is also the question of where MPs go when they are sick. One speaker referred to members needing to go overseas for check-ups and treatment. A Parliament whose members trust foreign hospitals more than their own has already told the country what it thinks of the system it funds.

If Parliament wants a better scheme for members, it should design it in the open, price it, publish the premium and fund it from members' own contributions, as the current K6,000 arrangement does. A taxpayer-funded package for 118 people would be easy to pass and easy to justify at a funeral. That is exactly why it should wait until members show the same urgency for everyone else. Insurance for members should come after medicine on the shelf in Maprik, not before.