A new & meaningful role for the PNGAA

Graham Taylor and I go back a fair way. Not as far as Papua New Guinea – where Graham arrived in 1948 - but as far back as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation 23 years ago when he was General Manager for South Australia and I was running the ABC’s Corporate Relations Department. We both ended up being the main men assisting an especially recalcitrant Board member, whose name we will not darken, to develop a new ‘philosophy’ for the Corporation.

I’ve just had the privilege of reading a contribution (‘think pieces’ we used to call them) that Graham has written for a forthcoming issue of Una Voce entitled PNGAA Quo Vadis? It’s about whether a new philosophy for the PNGAA  - because that is what is implicit in my proposal for new objectives to encourage the Association to do more for the Australia-PNG relationship - is likely to put down a tap root or not.

As Graham sees it: “Some [people] see these fresh breezes as desirable and constructive and perhaps even long overdue. Others see them as potentially divisive and counter-productive.” And, without ruining the article for you, Graham proceeds to examine these polar views.

My own position, of course, is crystal clear. I do not believe the Association should be allowed to wither and decline as its members age. Yet, under its present objectives, which ordain an organisation with a predominant social networking role, I fear this is exactly what will happen.

If the PNGAA is to survive - and if it is to flourish - it will have to change and it will have to define a new role. I do not see this as 'lofty idealism', as some people have described it, I see it as a stark necessity.

The really big change being proposed is to provide, as the first priority of the PNGAA, a role in strengthening the civil relationship between Australia and PNG. The current objectives will all be retained, but this new objective would define the central future purpose of the organisation.

Even after we ‘behains’ are gone (few ‘bifos’ are left), the new objective means there will remain an organisation with a positive and a productive purpose, and with a clear reason to continue to exist. If members agree to adopt a role for the Association in strengthening the relationships between Australians and Papua New Guineans, they will also provide it with a rationale for expanding its activity and extending its membership. This will, in addition, mean that the PNGAA will have a legacy not of an organisation that once flourished and then died, but of an organisation that was able to define a meaningful new role for itself.

The revised objectives are generally more action-oriented than the existing objectives that they will augment. The new objectives will provide a reason for Australians with post-Independence PNG experience to join. They will provide for Australians interested in PNG but with no PNG experience to join – including university students and young public servants. They will provide a better reason for Papua New Guineans resident in Australia to join.

The former Governor-General and PNGAA member, Maj-Gen Michael Jeffery, the PNG High Commissioner in Australia, Charles Lepani, and the Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs, Duncan Kerr, have each responded so positively to intimations of a more active role for the PNGAA. The new objectives have the ability - supported by an energetic committee and a committed membership - to transform our Association in a way that will provide it with a new and, I believe, purposeful direction.

We are currently moving through a process of consultation that will lead to the drafting of constitutional amendments and, probably in April next year, a vote of the whole membership. Even at this early stage, I'm urging you to get behind the changes and to participate in the consultative fraework we have established to allow you to have your say, twice - once in assisting us frame appropriate constitutional changes and then in voting on them.

Keith Jackson

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