1. Usually, my commentaries focus on Political affairs in this country but let’s make exceptions, perhaps, for a few minutes.
2. On the fourth of March 2011, the Post Courier newspaper reported that the whole island of New Hanover (or Lavongai) in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG), was sold by a company called Tutuman Development Ltd (TDL) to a Singaporean company called Palma Hacienda Ltd in June of 2009 for the princely sum of USD1.6 million.
3. The source of this information was apparently a man called Ishmael Passingan, who was described in the report as the secretary of a landowner company called Central New Hanover Ltd. Then, on the tenth of March, the Post Courier carried another story, reporting that Central New Hanover Ltd was one of three landowner companies that had acquired Special Agricultural Business Leases (SABLs) over different parts of the island in October 2007.
4. The article said that these companies had subsequently issued sub-leases to TDL, and these were commodities that had since been sold to Palma Hacienda Ltd. According to this story, the Secretary for Provincial and Local Level Government Affairs, Manasupe Zurenuoc, had asked his lawyers to investigate the sale. What is the outcome of that investigation?
5. On the eleventh of March, the Post Courier carried two more stories about this case. One of them (which does not appear in the online version of the newspaper) reported the content of a media release sent to the newspaper by Young and William Lawyers on behalf of the directors of TDL, including its chairman, Pedi Anis, who was the Premier of New Ireland Province from 1987 to 1990. In his statement, Anis claimed that the allegation made against his company had come from “a minority group of Central New Hanover landowners” acting in concert with a foreign logging company called Growmax Ltd. By this account, Growmax Ltd had previously been operating under a contract with TDL, but this was terminated when it was found to have engaged in illegal logging activities on the island.
6. In the second newspaper story published on the same day, Anis claimed that criticism of his plans to bring foreign investment to “the forgotten island of New Ireland Province” was motivated by the knowledge that he would be standing as a candidate in the 2012 national elections, and as such uninformed criticism had already caused “bloodshed” in some villages.
7. I refer to this episode by reference to what I call “land poaching” in Papua New Guinea (PNG). This account and many others indicate of the way customary land has recently been grabbed in New Ireland Province and is a very serious matter for the Government of Papua New Guinea to investigate and put an end to this sort of cases.
The New Land Grab
8. The new land grab in PNG involves the use of legal mechanism generally known as the “lease-leaseback scheme” to convert customary land rights into formal entities which are then allocated to private companies. Section 11 of the Land Act of 1996 says that the Minister “may lease customary land for the purpose of granting a special agricultural and business lease of the land”, while section 102 states: ‘…a special agricultural and business lease shall be granted: (a) to a person or persons; or (b) to a land group, business group, or other incorporated body, to whom the customary landowners have agreed that such a lease should be granted.’
9. Section 11 also states: ‘…an instrument of lease in the approved form, executed by or on behalf of the customary landowners, is conclusive evidence that the State has a good title to the lease and that all customary rights in the land, except those which are specifically reserved in the lease, are suspended for the period of the lease to the State.’
10. The lease-leaseback scheme has been used and abused in a variety of ways since it was first devised in 1979, but the recent surge in grant of SABLs to private companies began in the period between the national elections of 2002 and 2007, and has accelerated over the past four years. In the eight years from 2003 to 2010, the total amount of customary land alienated to private companies through this scheme was just over 4.2 million hectares, but four new leases already gazetted in 2011 have brought the total to more than 5 million hectares, which is more than 10 per cent of PNG’s total land area (about 46 million hectares).
| Year | No | Total area (ha) |
| 2003 | 1 | 11,800 |
| 2004 | 2 | 365 |
| 2005 | 3 | 44,094 |
| 2006 | 6 | 125,901 |
| 2007 | 16 | 475,618 |
| 2008 | 15 | 444,140 |
| 2009 | 10 | 1,154,842 |
| 2010 | 16 | 1,959,307 |
| Total | 69 | 4,215,848 |
Table 1: Leasebacks to private companies 2003-2010 Source: PNG National Gazette
11. Table 1 show that the land grab has gone much further than in some provinces. The National Government needs to seriously look into this matter and come up with remedial strategies to tackle this problem head-on and in a manner that takes into considerations the sensitivities surrounding this land grab in such provinces as New Ireland, Central, West Sepik, Western, East Sepik, Gulf, Morobe, Southern Highlands, Western Highlands, and so on.
12. A full inquiry into the leases need to be issued by the National Government, how they were issued and why there has not been consultation with the provinces and landowners….so that those in the Lands Department are held responsible for these irresponsible and probably illegal activities must answer for their actions and be brought to justice.
* Anere, is the Senior Aid Coordinator, Transport and Law & Justice Sectors AusAid Branch - Foreign Aid Division Department of National Planning and Monitoring
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