Notes for a Speech in Parliament by Rt Hon Mekere Morauta KCMG MP, Member for Moresby North-West and former Prime Minister, on the election of Prime Minister James Marape MP 30 May 2019 Prime Minister Marape, sincere congratulations. Your overwhelming win reminds me of the time twenty years ago when I was elected Prime Minister on the floor of this House. People of Papua New Guinea, today we have a new Prime Minister. But we do not have a new Government. Prime Minister, you c

Prime Minister Peter O’Neill continues to cheat public servants out of their pay and entitlements – he has still not paid the workers the wage rises they were awarded in 2017 or the full superannuation amount owing to all those who retired between January 1 2016 and December 31 2017. “Instead Mr O’Neill uses workers’ money to build roads to nowhere and self-glorifying hotels and convention centres in Port Moresby,” the Member for Moresby North-West, Sir Mekere Morauta, said t

Secret Kumul Petroleum documents reveal that Prime Minister Peter O’Neill has approved company plans for a headquarters building worth almost K1.1 billion to be built in Port Moresby. “This is a scandalous waste of money that should be going to consolidated revenue to help pay for essential services such as health and education,” Sir Mekere said. “Mr O’Neill, as sole trustee for the Kumul Group, ought to be ashamed of himself for approving this while the nation is crumbli

The Member for Moresby North-West, Sir Mekere Morauta, today warned of a looming development crisis in most provinces because of the failure of District Development Authorities to function as intended. “They were meant to bring development decisions and implementation down to the district level,” he said, “but they have done no such thing. In fact they impeding development because of uneccessary duplication of effort, conflicts of interest, a crippling lack of capacity, and r

Prime Minister Peter O’Neill’s failure to set up a Sovereign Wealth Fund, leaving national revenue flows to be plundered and wasted, means any recovery plan by an incoming government will take years to implement because of a lack of money. No money has ever flowed into the proposed SWF – in fact it has not even been constituted and does not have a board of directors despite all the trumpeting by Mr O’Neill and his accomplices. There is no SWF with any money or any assets – it

The secrecy and haste surrounding Prime Minister Peter O’Neill’s approval of the Gas Agreement for the Papua LNG project may be hiding a multi-billion kina problem for Papua New Guinea – the value and viability of the Elk-Antelope gasfield that underpins the project. A report available in the Department of Petroleum suggests that the field has five major problems: the gas may not be anywhere near as extensive as first thought, nor as easily extractable, there is a high water

The Gas Agreement for the Papua LNG project initialled by Prime Minister Peter O’Neill fails to meet the requirements of his Government’s Natural Gas Policy and National Energy Policy and relevant laws in relation to the supply of project gas for use in Papua New Guinea. This is yet another failure of the agreement, negotiated by Peter O’Neill and his shadowy cronies after they sidelined the State Negotiating Team, the Department of Petroleum and other national experts. “It i