PNG is no Nanny State. It is a minimal state, or what some refer to as a Night Watchman State, meaning the state is barely responsible for people’s safety, but not much more.
Wikipedia tells us:
Advocacy of a night watchman state is known as minarchism. Minarchists argue that the state has no right to use its monopoly on the use of force to interfere with free transactions between people, and see the state's sole responsibility as ensuring that transactions between private individuals are free.
Well, maybe not free exactly. The price of doing business in PNG is having to pay all the costs of government services yourself, with everything from school fees to health expenses and death benefits. When a tribal fight erupts employers all across PNG mobilize their Christmas funds and tea budgets to loan employees part of what they are expected to contribute in compensation, which in turn covers the funeral costs, repatriated bodies and relatives, palettes of beer and later school fees and small business loans to clansmen at home. The cost of entrepreneurship can include everything from establishing a power source to creating housing, transport, water supply, schools, aid posts and markets for staff and their families. You may need to carve out transport to market where there isn’t one, or invest in the ‘public’ shipping or postal services to be sure they operate reliably.
But for those in public office, the cost of doing business is free, absolutely without cost, and almost, we might say, profit-bearing. The State of China builds Sir Michael a castle in Wewak, and his son diverts between 75 and 75 million kina of MVIL funds into a newly-established investment firm down south. A certain member for Maprik insists subcontractors in his SABLs kick back 50% as the price of doing business, and squanders how many million in a Casino Hotel that will never be opened?
But it’s a game of carrot and stick. The latest news is that the Somare government released K136 million ($A54 million) in a single day last year to muster political support to fight off a vote of no confidence challenge. This was money earmarked for the district support improvement program (DSIP) and provincial support improvement program (PSIP). Sam Basil told the Speaker that,
“A total K178 million was budgeted and released in 2010. Mr Speaker, it may amaze you to know that 75 per cent of these funds, or K136 million, was released all on one day – the 22nd July, 2010. On the very same day, 14 provinces and 55 districts each received K2 million in return for their support of the previous government during a motion of no confidence by the then Opposition,” he said.
“Let me add, Mr Speaker, that then Opposition MPs of which I was a part had to wait for months for the release of this K2 million.”
In the Night Watchman State that is PNG, none of that money is traced or acquitted or made known to the constituents of these provinces and districts who continue to bear the cost of absent or dilapidated public services. As teachers stray from remote schools to banks in town to get their pays (because district treasuries have yet to evolve), and another year of students are left without education; as wonky housing drains the base hospitals of all qualified staff; as training programs for midwives and APOs fail to eventuate, while cholera rages through a district and strain church benevolence systems to exhaustion…aid organizations and volunteers provide again this year what they had to provide last year, and in so doing are stymied from investing in next level development…as more humble public servants become real estate barons and diversified investors, with glass and chrome office buildings and new strip malls and beach houses in Cairns.
I propose that a new term be coined for this state of neglect and self-service. Not a night watchman at all, but really a Siggy State---in the real sense of that siggy who used to slep on a broken chair by the front gate, the one in coveralls and a Duna day wig who carries a muruk bone for personal protection.
I further propose a way we can all enjoy this Siggy State to the fullest, but following its antics like a telenovela or an updated Lapun Kuri, maybe a serial sitcom for EMTV. Now, I have long considered writing a pilot for a new PNG serial, and many different formats have come to mind. There are the obvious Fawlty Towers in a bush lodge, and wonderful reality shows (Jersey Shore a la Mt Hagen?),
perhaps Fear Factor in the bush, or a version of Survivor for your village Uncle who finds himself in Moresby. Maybe Neighbours (with homemade firearms), or the classic Are You being Served? (because frankly I don’t care and Im on the phone anyway---can’t you see?),
and of course AbFab which would be rendered anew in the PVA penthouse with MPs and long stemmed glasses (you know who you are). Gilligan’s Island---on Karkar? I have even considered a Jr Masterchef PNG program, with all the core ingredients: sago grubs and wallabies and eels and beautifully decorated coconut rice balls.
The Home Shopping Network (with jewelry)?
Dancing with the Stars?
PNG's Next Top Model?
But this brings us back to a Siggy State series. Consider a Twist on The Nanny, something called Not a Nanny State-- featuring a comely house girl from the Solomon Islands who falls in love with the boss and marries him in a grand State Wedding.
Or something more picaresque, in the spirit of Tin Pis Run.
The Wonderful World of Siggy.
Of course the pilot would be on the cheap, we could just used CCTVs and night vision glasses to reveal after dark activity in Port Moresby streets. Enter the lovable scamp, Dobigi, after a siggy in Mt Hagen from years ago who failed to protect me from rascals literally chopping through the wall of my house, as he was found undisturbed at 2 am on the small rise of the front lawn, spread eagle, bow in one hand, arrows in another, blue coveralls unbuttoned, knit cap askew, fast asleep and snoring.
Our lovable hero gets employed by a mining company, takes on the challenges of angry landowners, finds love in a lineup of innocent teenagers, colludes with the Chinese owners and a favourite politician to confine rabble rousers in shipping containers—periodically traveling home to the lovable wife and kids who unknowingly contract HIV and can’t seem to understand their failing health. Episodes would include tambus who roll PMVs, default on loans, get chased by bank managers and other creditors, flee girlfriends and accumulate wives. Meanwhile a kooky Malaysian timber baron in round glasses will convince well-meaning Dobigi that the landowners of his lucrative SABL being clear-felled for oil palm have all formed a consensus and that those crazy individuals screaming with banners outside the chainlink are just activists under the influence of foreign agendas.
In an updated version of the hackneyed yarn about highlanders checking for genitals under the first aircraft, Dobigi would not see the forest for all the trees being shipped overseas, and the slight raise in his pay packet (or the cheap Chinese boom box the company gets him for Christmas) as he releases gas canisters on those crazy activists. And in the close of one season’s drama he can be seen boarding the Rainbow Warrior and asking the captain what the fares are to and from Kimbe.
Of course we all know where the series will go in a few seasons. Dobigi our beloved Siggy will himself become a security consultant with an overseas bank account, and a pass key to the Cairns Casino, while still making occasional junkets back home to the bush house where his faithful wife Betty raises a phalanx of little Dobigis as she slowly grows weakened by a series of ambiguous health complaints.
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