By Warren Dutton

Acting Prime Minister Sam Abal has established a Commission of Inquiry into the SABLs [special agricultural and business leases], which is a good and I believe well intentioned step.

However there are definitely forces within the system, and perhaps even within the process itself, that will be working hard to maintain the status of the bad SABLs, so the ECPNG [ecumenical council of PNG] really needs to present the strongest possible submission to the Commission of Inquiry.  

This will cost time and money, but it should be less expensive than having to mount a full blown Judicial Review in the National Court.

Those who are intent on keeping their SABLs are already mounting publicity campaigns, masquerading as news, in the PNG papers.  The ECPNG would be well advised to do likewise, both on behalf of the Church and its parishioners.

Concurrently the Secretary for Provincial and Local Government Affairs, Manasupe Zurenuoc, has ordered his department’s lawyers to act on behalf of the dispossessed landowners of New Hanover and to have that SABL declared void.

I have asked him to similarly assist the people of the Western Province and he is considering coming to Kiunga himself to assess the situation.

Last week at a public launch of a report by the National Research Institute, I accused the former Secretary for Lands of being guilty of "criminal negligence" in his duty to protect the interests of customary landowners, by not satisfying himself that the landowners, from whom he was accepting land to be leased to the State, had sufficient land left for their subsistence purposes.

As all the former customary landowners of the 2.1 million hectares included in the four SABL's in the Western Province, have absolutely no land left, how can they now "legally" subsist?  (Only as squatters on what was their land.)

Unfortunately to date my accusation has not been reported.  Probably because no thinking person could believe that any PNG Secretary for Lands could possibly contemplate taking away every last square metre of land from a customary landowner, let alone from thousands of customary landowners.