The security treaty signed last week is the logical next step in the two countries’ relationship. But Australia’s interests in PNG should remain broad-based.
Paramilitary police and soldiers patrol ballot boxes at Tari airport, Southern Highlands, PNG.
AAP Image
In Fiji, 95% of adults have received one jab and 80% are fully vaccinated. In PNG, however, less than 1% of the population is fully vaccinated – and the country is giving away its vaccines.
Having been protected by geography early in the pandemic, Pacific nations are now battling serious outbreaks and struggling to get their people vaccinated.
Fiji’s capital went into lockdown after the Indian variant of the coronavirus leaked out of a quarantine facility.
Photo by LEON LORD/AFP via Getty Images
Tony Heynen, The University of Queensland; Paul Lant, The University of Queensland, and Vigya Sharma, The University of Queensland
As immunisation emerges as the world’s primary weapon to combat COVID-19, much more work is needed to improve electricity access so vaccines can be refrigerated.
Our neighbour’s stability and prosperity is in our interests. Surely, there can be no better example of this than the current crisis: what is good for PNG is also good for Australia.
Decision-makers, locally and globally, must balance management of pandemics with a recognition that fish and fishing communities are essential to local well being.
Visiting women from the South Fly selling their crafts in an informal market on Boigu Island in the Torres Strait.
Author provided
Australia has been tightening the border between PNG and the Torres Strait Islands in recent years, exacerbating poverty and the spread of tuberculosis in villages that depend on cross-border trade.
PNG’s foreign policy to be “friends to all and enemies to none”.
Lukas Coch/AAP
There are the real challenges facing Papua New Guinea, and the current leadership crisis in Port Moresby may or may not not produce a meaningful response to them.
A student does his homework near a solar power kit in remote PNG - apparently charging his phone or looking up something on the internet.
Geoff Miller/University of Queensland
PNG is enjoying unfamiliar global attention after the APEC summit earlier this week, and the rivalry between the United States and China to exert influence in the region.
US Vice President Mike Pence with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden. PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill, Japan’s Shinzo Abe and Australia’s Scott Morrison were among the leaders of the 21 economies making up APEC.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
Summit season is usually a bit of a bore - worthy subjects lost in acronyms and diplomatic niceties. Not so this year as US-China tensions tore at the fabric of multi-lateralism.
Ten-year-old Stanton in the ruins of his home following the earthquake that hit Papua New Guinea in February.
EPA/Thomas Nybo/UNICEF
Fresh earthquakes and aftershocks hit parts of Papua New Guinea following February’s deadly quake. It’s Australia’s slow push north that’s part of PNG’s seismic activity.
A magnitude 7.5 earthquake took place on February 25, 81km southwest of Porgera, Papua New Guinea.
US Geological Survey
Why is Papua New Guinea so susceptible to landslides? Steep terrain, earthquakes and aftershocks plus recent seasonal rains have created an environment that is prone to collapse.
A new study, recently published in the journal Bird Conservation International, will help inform the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.
Rob Davis
A team of researchers led by Edith Cowan University have surveyed the PNG island of New Britain to see how the bird population is faring. There’s good news and bad news.
People protesting offshore detention of asylum seekers interrupted Malcolm Turnbull’s speech to CEDA on Wednesday.
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
It has taken more than three months for the Australian and PNG governments to jointly announce the Manus Island detention centre will close. But the detainees’ fate is now even more uncertain.
Children from a village in Papua New Guinea’s Western Highlands Province stand in one of countless sweet potato gardens destroyed by frost across the country, August 2015.
Kud Sitango
Papua New Guinea is now facing a drought and frosts that look set to be worse than 1997, when hundreds of people died. So how can memories of 1997 save lives over the next few months?
Too many fish in our seas, like this Pacific bluefin tuna, are being lost to over-fishing – but better management can help.
Issei Kato/Reuters
Over-fishing is a massive environmental and economic challenge. Fortunately, there are new solutions being trialled – including in a tuna hotspot in the Pacific.