Poor old Jeffrey, can’t see the woods for the trees.

Who would you trust Jeffrey, as a PNG significant, a slippery Australian politician with an outstretched hand bearing lies or a strong Chinese government with outstretched hands full of money to grease the wheels of progress of the local criminal element posing as politicians?

Dan.

The most positive thing the Australian Govt. can do for PNG is to keep Australian bureaudroids & consultants out of PNG !
They had God knows how many years up there & look at the outcome !

"I have three suggestions Minister Wong might consider…."

Is Jeffrey going to be able to put them to Wong? There's not much point in telling a few posters here about them. Will Jeffrey be consulted by Wong? Will government foreign policy be affected by these opinion pieces of Jeffrey's?

I'm not sure that Jeffrey's advice to a PNG politician in the past now makes his opinions relevant go anyone, including Australian politicians, who have their own advisers.

Restructure! You mean throw more good money after bad? And with money we must first borrow even as interest rates rise as they must. And make servicing the trillion plus dollars of current debt even more difficult to service. As well as maintain our own social services.

I say let the massively overextended Chinese pay for that dam. And put even more pressure on a clearly failing debt riddled Chinese economy! Jeffrey, take yourself and the perpetually extended begging bowl elsewhere, you're wasting your time and ours, here!
Alan B.

China has a massive head start in the province. Australia probably has just 12 months to try and catch up.
Jeffrey Wall,
Australia was there for how many years ? I'd say they were the ones with the massive head start !
What happened ? Couldn't have been the Socialists by any chance ?

Indy. They were handed their independence way too soon and have wasted boundless opportunities since then. Including the world's richest goldmine and gas resources others can only dream of. They could and should have become the source of most of our rubber and cabinet timbers.

Yes, I think a socialist government was to blame, with an average IQ little better than the ambient temperature? Not much seems to have changed in those ranks since?

The fly has greater water flow than the combined total of all Australia's rivers. And the topography would support a dozen or more sizable hydro dams on the fly. And all the above done before independence and the cargo cult corruption that seems to have followed?

What independence has seemed to have created is a failed state with the begging bowl permanently extended. Let China fill it and keep on filling it until their own economy crashes! In the interim, let's do what we must absolutely do to turn our own economy around with cheap, clean, and ultrasafe, nuclear energy, i.e., MSR thorium. See LFTR in five minutes.
Alan B.

Alan B,
Talking about the Fly,I find it rather interesting how Google Earth conveniently shows the polluted waters of the Fly not extending beyond the delta ! I wonder which Govt and/or mining company is paying for the Photoshop work at Google Earth ?

Indy. Maybe so. And compare that to our major river the Murray sometimes doesn't even make to the estuary let alone beyond the delta.

Even the amazon the river with the greatest flow in the world doesn't appear to make it beyond a delta. Yet miles out to sea some of the water is still fresh.

That said, water whether polluted or not, still good for hydro projects. And makes me wonder what was the actual point you were trying to make? Perhaps you didn't know what water flow numbers were in the fly?
Alan B.

Alan B,
I'm fully aware of the immensity of the Fly. The point I'm making is that either a government or two or some big company must have been in Google's ear about not showing the pollution plume dispersing into Torres Strait to be washed east-west in the tides & more likely than not being a major factor in the decline of the GBR.
Freeport Mine in West Papua & Ok Tedi & Porgera in PNG are probably the single biggest polluters on the northern GBR. A huge dam in the Fly could possibly help reduce polluted sediment going into the Strat. I haven't heard of any effect as yet on the Papua & PNG glaciers so, a hydro scheme could possibly go for many ore decades there.

An adjacent development

https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2022/08/23/masig-statement-torres-strait-islanders-unveil-voice-deep1