Anna Solomon, a Papua New Guinean journalist and editor with 40 years experience, is now providing training for journalists at the Wantok Niuspepa.

Wantok is a weekly newspaper and the only Tok Pisin language newspaper in PNG.

Solomon, who spoke during last month’s public inquiry on Media in Papua New Guinea, asked if the Parliamentary Committee could work with the media industry to set up a Complaints Tribunal that could address issues affecting media in PNG.

Anna Solomon talks about the media role to “educate people” at the public media inquiry.  Video: Inside PNG

She also called for better Tok Pisin writers as it was one of two main languages that leaders, especially Parliamentarians, used in PNG to communicate with their voters.

At the start of the 3-day public inquiry (21-24 May 2024), media houses also called for parliamentarians and the public to understand how the industry functions.

The public inquiry focused on the “Role and Impact of Media in Papua New Guinea” and was led by the Permanent Parliamentary Committee on Communication with an aim to improve the standard of journalism within the country.

Republished from Inside PNG with permission.

Indonesia is pressuring Papua New Guinea over an illegal group East Sepik claiming to form an army unit to help West Papuan pro-independence rebels fighting against Indonesian forces across the border.

Calling such armed groups as “terrorists”, Indonesia’s Ambassador to PNG, Andriana Supandy, said his country respected the sovereignty of its neighbour, PNG, and called on the PNG authorities to act over the threat.

A video of a group dressed in military fatigues and brandishing automatic rifles has gone viral on social media, prompting the Indonesian response.

• READ MORE: Other Asia Pacific Report coverage on the West Papua conflict

The men in the video, speaking in PNG “tok pisin”, claim to be from East Sepik. They say they stand with the West Papuan rebels and are ready to cross the border to support the West Papuan cause for independence.

Supandy said the Indonesian Embassy had been informed that PNG government officials were in Wewak to investigate the viral video on the social media post.

“The Indonesian government honour[s] the PNG government as a sovereign nation and leave the response to the alleged militants to the relevant authorities in PNG,” Supandy said.

“Both governments have the same understanding about the challenge and opportunity in managing the formal relations through the spirit of friendship and mutual respect.”

Gratitude over safety
Supandy said that despite the video causing uneasiness, the Indonesian Embassy would like to convey its gratitude to the government and the people of PNG for “ensuring the safety and wellbeing of Indonesians” working and living in PNG.

The embassy said the Indonesian government and people were reciprocating the gesture for PNG citizens living in Indonesia.

Supandy said the video of a vigilante group would not affect the strong relations between Indonesia and PNG.

“These armed groups in Papua and West Papua have resorted to acts, methods and practices of terrorism aiming at destruction of human rights, fundamental freedoms and democracy while also threatening the territorial integrity and security of the Republic of Indonesia,” he claimed.

Right to ‘reliable information’
Supandy said Papua New Guineans had the right to “reliable information” relating to this issue.

He said Indonesia was committed to taking measures aimed at “addressing the root causes” of the situation in Papua and West Papua provinces.

He said in this context, Indonesia advocated humane, prosperous and inclusive development approach, including:

• Respecting the basic rights of the people in Papua and West Papua provinces;
• Establishment of good governance in Papua; and
• Opportunities for Papuans to shape and direct local development strategies and regional policies.

SBS News reporting on the West Papua conflict.

For a Tolai girl growing up in Papua New Guinea between 1960 and 1970, career options were very limited. Forty years ago, that was part of the story for now veteran broadcaster Caroline Tiriman for the Australian public network ABC.

“My mother wanted me to get married,” Caroline says. “It was an arranged marriage. I didn’t know the guy. He was from the next village and I went to school with his sisters.”

Caroline Tiriman had just completed high school at the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart and her mother insisted that she ditch any plans for a job outside of the East New Britain Province.

LISTEN TO THE ABC: Caroline Tiriman talks to Tahlea Aualiitia on Pacific Mornings

While Tiriman was under a lot of pressure from her mother, her dad, George, was quietly supportive. George Tiriman was a cook who worked for the small community of foreign Catholic priests.

He encouraged his daughter to follow her heart.

“I was so unhappy and I ran away back to the school. I told the principal that my mother wanted me to get married and I didn’t want to do that.”

Through the school’s help, Caroline was assisted by a careers officer who found her a job with the old government Post and Telecommunications company as a clerk.

Found a job
George Tiriman was very happy when Caroline told him that she had found a job in Port Moresby.

“He helped me run away to Port Moresby. He took me to town and then to the airport and saw me off.”

It wasn’t long before another opportunity presented itself. Caroline Tiriman applied for another clerical job with the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), later corporation, which was set up by the ABC in 1973, two years before independence.

Her path towards broadcasting was largely due to a childhood fascination for radio broadcasting.

“I used to wonder: ‘Who were those people talking in the radio? When I was in grade eight or nine, the NBC had a programme called Ring for Record and it was wonderful. We also listened to news and current affairs in class.”

If there is one important lesson from Caroline’s life, it’s the willingness to seize opportunities even if the possibilities are seemingly impossible. While at the NBC in Port Moresby, her colleague and fellow veteran broadcaster, Kenya Kala, encouraged her to apply for a job with the ABC Tok Pisin service in Melbourne.

The job was advertised in The Age newspaper. She applied and within four months, her new boss, George Sivijs, called her up to welcome her to the ABC.

Tok Pisin translation
“During the interview, he gave me a 10 minute bulletin to translate into Tok Pisin. And in Rabaul, we didn’t speak Tok Pisin. I learned a bit of Tok Pisin in school but I didn’t speak much of it.

“Here, I was expected to translate English into Tok Pisin. It took me about an hour to translate the bulletin.”

Within the next few months, Tiriman prepared for the biggest transition in her life – her move to Australia permanently. As she was about to leave for Melbourne, she called her dad who was in Lae, ill with cancer.

“I said I got a job with the ABC and I am going to Australia. He said: ‘That’s alright. You can go.’”

But within weeks, her brother called and asked her to delay her travel to Australia because her dad, her greatest supporter, had passed away. Instead of traveling to Australia, Caroline Tiriman spent the next month being with her mother and her family.

Over the next 40 years, Caroline Tiriman became one of the most recognised Melanesian voices in PNG, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands.

Along with the small family of Australian-based PNG broadcasters, Caroline Tiriman, was among several others who set the standards for PNG’s Tok Pisin broadcasters.

Now, when she is asked what she was going to do after 40 years, she says: “I just want to take it easy… listen to the birds, go to the bush and look for galip nuts and just talk with family late into the night.”

• Scott Waide’s EMTV News report
• More Scott Waide articles

I am a citizen of Australia who has spent 40 years living and working in Papua New Guinea. I have worked mainly in rural areas.

I was based in Angoram District of the East Sepik Province for 20 years, and I have for all of these decades collaborated with rural teachers, village leaders, including women and youth leaders, community-based Village Health Volunteers.

(After my 20 years in Angoram, I spent a further 20 years in Wewak, the provincial capital of the East Sepik Province – where I continued to work for rural development across all districts, and in partnership with other provinces)

I have trained hundreds of community-based development workers over the years and admired their conviction to service their people through thick and thin, often working in difficult, dangerous and seriously under-resourced circumstances.

Together these thousands of people have brought health care, education, community peace and harmony, hope and optimism, to hundreds of rural villages and organisations. They have also helped to combat HIV and AIDS, teenage pregnancies, drug and alcohol problems and have been able to educate their people about the Constitution, laws, and the PNG government’s accountability to fulfil its global commitments to do the best for all of its citizens and the development of local communities, district, provinces and the nation as a while.

My work and the work of most people I have worked with has addressed specific development issues across a range of sectors and has aimed to support active citizenship for stronger governance at all levels of society and government.

Radio has always been vital to our work. It serves to reach, connect, network, inform, educate and more.

Source of information, education
Radio Australia was a source of information, education and entertainment to me and all of my networkers, friends, adult educators and service providers who stayed with and served the people.

Radio was a lifeline and comfort to all of these wonderful people. Radio always was and always will be important for the rural people of PNG.

For many years through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, Radio Australia was often the only reliable radio station reaching rural villages. They got their news through shortwave radio as that is all that they could receive in their villages.

Radio Australia’s Pacific team – in particular The Tok Pisin broadcasters: Caroline Tiriman and Kenny Kala, Pius Bonjue and others were extremely popular and beloved. If I came home to Australia to visit family, I would always connect with them and they would always include our stories and news in their programmes.

During my many travels out to rural areas give moral support and deliver resources to my friends and colleagues, they would often recount their thrill to hear about their development programmes that the Pacific team kindly broadcast on Radio Australia.

During my decades in Wewak, there was a long period when the provincial radio station was closed or on and off. It was unreliable and became so commercialised, that people’s participation and stories were no longer put on air

Radio Australia’s shortwave programmes are qualitatively different to local radio. They provide a vital window on the wider Pacific and Asia-Pacific region and the world.

Part of the nation
They made the listener feel part of the nation, region and the world, and not forgotten, isolated and neglected, as they now often feel.

Radio Australia shortwave broadcasts were objective and encouraged people to communicate locally about development and governance in their young nation. The broadcasts enabled people to know what is going on and to talk, debate, reflect and think critically.

There really has been no quality substitute. Local radio content news is dominated by people who have power and money – or who are partisan to that.

Radio can achieve as much or more than Australia’s heavily-funded current development programmes.

DFAT spends so much on consultants for so many different development programmes. Their reach is limited and confined to selected program areas.

Many of them don’t speak language that is comprehensible to the majority.

PNG citizens, communities, leaders, health workers, teachers, adult educators, animators, activists and resourceful people who contribute so much to the quality of daily life in their home communities, need Radio Australia as a moral and educational lifeline to their nation, region and the world.

Quality news, views
They need and deserve quality news, views, information, education and entertainment that is tailored to the priorities, needs and concerns of the majority of people of PNG – who are currently starved of such access and services.

Bring back Radio Australia. Ensure it reaches all rural areas.

Provide Tok Pisin broadcasts. This is one of the best forms of aid you can give PNG.

A revitalised Radio Australia will give the PNG and other international audiences a chance to shape content and direction – it can be linked to social media and inform and lift the quality of much of the local political conversation.

The new Radio Australia should be a global friend and ally, not a coloniser or converter. It should encourage debate, conversation and support critical, independent and objective opinion.

Use the technology that is most accessible and affordable for the majority. It could become Australia’s most cost-effective gift towards the progress in human rights, equality, development, democracy, good governance, peace and justice for all people in PNG and in all other parts of the world, that a newer and even better Radio Australia can reach.

• Other PNG stories