 Hello and welcome to this Lowey Institute Australia Papua New Guinea network event. My name is Jonathan Pryk, director of the Pacific Islands program here at the Lowey Institute. It's a pleasure to be hosting you all online this morning. The Australia Papua New Guinea network is all about people-to-people connections, and our goal today is to keep you connected, even if the travel restrictions mean we can't get together in person. We're here today to talk about how COVID-19 is affecting the business community and beyond Australia's nearest neighbour Papua New Guinea. Let me begin this event by acknowledging the traditional custodians on whose land I'm currently sitting, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. I would also like to thank our sponsors who make these events possible, Bank South Pacific and Coca-Cola Amitul. Let me also thank the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for its ongoing support for the Australia Papua New Guinea network. COVID-19 has been the great disruptor of our time, leaving very few parts of regular life untouched. The six or seven flights a day between Australia and Papua New Guinea have dropped to just one if we're lucky. Businesses reliant on expatriate workforces are quickly pivoting. Supply and logistics chains are quickly being stretched. The impact of reduced economic activity and declining demand for commodities, critical to both the Australia and Papua New Guinea economy, have foot governments under considerable strain. Today, we are here to unpack all of this and have brought together three people with great perspectives on the P&G Australia business relationship to help to do it. I'll now introduce each of them in turn. Peter Itzi is one of P&G's most recognised business leaders. He is Group CEO of Credit Corporation Limited, is heavily involved in community organisations including Transparency International Papua New Guinea, the Badili Club and Leadership P&G. In October, he was appointed Chair of Cummill Consolidated Holdings and is also Chair of P&G FM. Welcome Peter. Peter Good morning Jonathan and good morning to our listeners. Peter Next, we have Priscilla Kevin, who is an entrepreneur and IT guru who's been working in technology in P&G for 15 years. She founded P&G Women in STEM and has been a big part of the digital ICD clusters organisation. And just last month she was appointed to the Board of Bank South Pacific. Welcome Priscilla. Finally, we have Peter Botten. Peter was Managing Director of Oil Search from 1994 to 2020, leading one of the most storied careers in P&G business. Thank you Jonathan and back to the viewers. Thank you Priscilla. So Peter remains Chairman of the Heller Provincial Health Authority and a non-executive director of AGL Energy and has three decades experience in a key role in P&G Australia business relationship. Welcome Peter Botten. Peter Yeah, thanks so much and great to be with you all. Peter So a bit of housekeeping before we jump into the discussion. I'm going to moderate a conversation between our panelists for the first half hour before taking questions from our audience for the remainder of the hour. If you've got a question you would like to ask one or any of our participants, please use the Q&A button on Zoom or leave a comment in the Facebook feed. Now, being a digital event, we are also dependent on the reliability of internet connections from Sydney across to regional west in Australia and up to Port Moresby. So please bear with us through any unexpected technical glitches. And if we lose all three panelists, I have a copy of Sean Dauney's recent low-institute paper, the embarrassed cloning list here. I can read excerpts from. We're going to make sure we keep you entertained. We will finish properly on the hour to let our panelists and you in the audience to get back to your normal day. So without further ado, let's jump straight on in. I'd first like to hear from our Papua New Guinea and panelists, Peter Itze and Priscilla. How is sentiment among the P&G community and more specifically the business community going in the age of COVID? Peter Itze, perhaps we could start with you. Sure, Jonathan. Look, I think it'd be right to say, as with other parts of the world, there's a significant level of anxiety and uncertainty within our community. And that really has probably been the major concern amongst the various parts of our community, both the rural and the urban centers. It's this uncertainty and the uneasiness around the impact of COVID, which I think has probably caused our people the most concern. On top of that, obviously, the restrictions that have been introduced to deal with the threat of COVID has also impacted on people's freedom and movement. So that's a tangible impact in terms of the arrival of COVID. Thanks, Peter. And Priscilla, how about you? How are things looking from your perspective? I'll probably speak on small businesses, micro SMEs that have been really impacted by the COVID-19. And a lot of businesses have been closed due to the state of emergency controls and the lockdowns. So it's affected a lot of small businesses, especially a lot of small businesses also run projects and contracts with the larger corporations. And if these businesses are scaling down, they tend to affect the small business down the chain. So we've seen a lot of impact also for ICT businesses. Where we've seen some of their projects come to a hold. And they have to look for alternatives to actually sustain itself during the crisis. So I think for small businesses, it's been a really, really big impact for them. The challenge we also have is really looking at the data that we have, what's actually happening on the ground. We don't have enough data to assess the situation. So post COVID, hopefully that we can look at some of this data and plan better. Yes, COVID certainly does provide us all an opportunity to stocktake on what's important and where investment priorities need to be allocated. Peter Bodden, lockdown in the capital of the Independent Republic of Western Australia, how does it look from where you're sitting? Look, it is very different. I think this is the longest time since I've in 30-odd years that I've actually stayed home and not been in P&G. So it's a pretty good place to be if you're in the independent state of Western Australia. But obviously, a lot of challenges going on between Australia and P&G in running major businesses, major projects, supply chain, people moving people in and out, managing your rotational stuff, managing the operations and supplying the operations. So it has been combined with COVID, combined with changes in resource pricing, probably one of the most challenging three months that I've seen since I started work. So a really, really very dynamic time. But some positives in identifying new ways of working, some very dedicated people who are willing to stretch their time in country to work in new ways to keep our businesses running, but also all the challenges of infrastructure, of keeping power on, of keeping people supplied with food. So yeah, a very dynamic time and one which I think broadly speaking from various sources from industry to government to others actually, for one reason or another, we've all muddled through to where we are today. The lockdown in particular of travel between Australia and Papua New Guinea seems to have been particularly disruptive. Peter, I'd say how has this lockdown affected both internationally, but also within Papua New Guinea? How has that affected business activity? Well, Jonathan, it's had a major effect. If you look at it in terms of the international restrictions, we're very dependent because of our resource sector of mobilizing and moving people across the borders. So that's had a major impact. Also, many of the companies here, they have a fairly reasonable size expatriate workforce. And so they, you know, their movements have been affected as well. I think in terms of the domestic market, that's also been there's been a significant impact on that. If you remember, you know, the SOE, as it was introduced, the state of emergency caused us to lock down our provinces. So as a result, the movement of produce of items across provinces was limited, as well as people as well, that was restricted. So, you know, the fundamental, you know, business model for us is in terms of trade is people movement. And so as a result, it caused a significant impact in terms of the ability of businesses to remain, you know, to continue to trade and operate. So I think that those are the sort of major sort of impacts of probably of most significant in terms of Port Moresby is the impact on the hotel trade. We've seen two major chains shut down two large hotels here as a result of the limited number of international rivals coming into Port Moresby. So those are probably the biggest visible signs of the impact on the business activity within Port Moresby. Of course, the population of PNG is very dispersed and air travel between provinces is often critical when you know, there are such limited road networks in many parts of the country. So it's certainly disruptive on a number of levels from economic to social. Peter Botten, a lot of economic activity in Papua New Guinea, as mentioned, happens in some pretty far-flung remote places, particularly up in the Highlands where you have a lot of experience operating through your time at oil search. The complexity of logistics to keep these operations going are pretty astounding. How do you see them holding up through this? How is oil search and other operators pivoting in times of stretched supply chains? How long do you think these operations can continue with a diminished foreign workforce and other restrictions? Well, look, I think the planning process is to keep our people safe. Firstly, non-infected and the dynamic of moving people not just between countries, but also around the country are very, very challenging. The workforces had to adapt substantially and they need to be congratulated for being flexible enough to, as I say, go to revised work schedules, go to revised periods of time on break and having breaks in country rather than necessarily to their point of origin overseas, but also our national staff who have been impacted by the processes of lockdowns and travel between different parts of the country. We've had a very substantial process of understanding what can and can't be done, working closely with government and the SOE managers, if you like. At the moment, we're obviously stretching our friendship with our staff and their friendships with their loved ones when they can't get home. Obviously, we hope and indeed anticipate that the restrictions will be progressively lifted and people will be able to move much more freely later this year. We're reasonably comfortable that the plans and processes we have in place now in terms of supply, in terms of managing our people are robust, but clearly the longer this goes on, the more stressed people become, the more difficult it is to be away from home and the more difficult it is to supply and keep our operations going. But across both I think the mining and the petroleum sector, it's demonstrated some creative thinking, but most importantly, it's kept our people safe and non-infected and not infecting the communities in which we work. I think we're okay for a while longer, but the longer it goes on, certainly into the second half of the year, it will become much, much more difficult and more challenging to support. Well, that's a very comforting message I think for our audience to hear and full credit to businesses for being able to pivot so quickly to keep operations running as reasonably as they can be in times of significant disruption. And I guess a further credit is certainly due to the people of Papua New Guinea who are famous for their resilience and used to adjusting to hardship. Priscilla, I'd like to turn to you and ask what kind of entrepreneurial workarounds are you seeing to keep connections going during the shutdown? It's interesting. There are ideas, but because the support systems in PNG are not as supportive of the startup ecosystem, they have to choose between surviving through the COVID-19 crisis as well as trying to be innovative at the same time. And that in itself, it incurs cost, it incurs time. So a lot of our entrepreneurs are left to either create the innovation and solve the problem, or they're left to go through and be in the survival mode. And that's what we've experienced with a lot of small businesses. But in the ICT space, as you know, everything's digital, we use tech tools. But one of the things that we also have a very big challenge in is the cost of internet and the accessibility across the nations and across, sorry, across the nation and across the capitals, which is not very easy for a lot of our entrepreneurs to access at the moment. But that's changing. I think with the post COVID-19 experience, I'm sure there'll be some important dialogue happening in raising the awareness or the importance of internet and making sure that third service is made available to most businesses. Yes, the internet has been a subject of front line, a front page stories here in Australia in recent days with discussion on the Coral Sea Cable that Australia has provided to both Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. And the potential it has to deliver more bandwidth to Papua New Guinea, but the challenges in actually transferring the benefits of that cable on to the consumer and not being caught up in the middle between the service providers using this opportunity to generate more profits. It's a big challenge and I'm sure something we're going to be teasing out or learning much more from in the coming weeks. And hopefully it can all get resolved in order to pass on those benefits to the consumers that desperately need. In today's world, we see much more as a public utility and a need and essential than just a luxury. Peter, I'd say how about you? How are you seeing entrepreneurial work around people adjusting in this time up in Port Moresby? Look, it's interesting. For those familiar with Port Moresby, we operate a public transport system called the PMVs, public motor vehicles. And these are 25-seater buses that generally operate around our various provinces along with some 15-seater buses. In normal conditions, what is normally a licence to carry 25 passengers generally has about 40 in it. So under the COVID conditions, these operators now have restricted themselves to 15 passengers in a 25-seater bus, and I think it's eight in a 15-seater bus. So there is probably an example of the change that COVID has brought on. We now have these types of limitations on these PMVs, which have become, as I said, a little bit of what is called a cultural image of transport around our country where we have people hanging out of buses. So that's been a bit of a change there. And I mean, that's particularly impressive, considering it's such a decentralized network, these PMV systems are all privately owned and operated. So these people are sacrificing income to put those restrictions in place, and I'm sure that income has not been supplemented elsewhere. So full credit to the PMV operators for taking the COVID threat seriously. Now we are getting some questions coming through on both Facebook and Zoom, so I encourage you to keep it up. I'm going to keep dominating the conversation for a little bit longer, though I'm afraid. And yeah, I did want to touch on the role of small business a bit more and the informal sector and PNG. I mean, we all know the informal economy is a huge component of the PNG economic landscape, and its role has been brought into stark view during this crisis. Peter, I see you do a lot of work mentoring young entrepreneurs is what's happening in the business environment helping or hindering that entrepreneurial spirit during this time of COVID crisis? Look, I think initially the restrictions and perhaps the uncertainty in terms of the economic climate has caused people to sort of take a bit of a deep breath and consider what options are available to them. So in a way that uncertainty is causing some perhaps some initial restraints for them. However, from what I've seen in a number of people, young entrepreneurs coming through is just some innovative thinking. We've had a number of them that have set up some door-to-door delivery for fresh produce particularly. And so that's an innovation. And there's been a number that have really taken on the delivery of say takeaway food from a number of the outlets that we've got here as well. So that's also some entrepreneurial thinking. So these are some of the signs that are coming through. And as we become a little more used to the new norm that will come as a result of COVID, I'm sure other innovations will come through in terms of how we are able to operate in this type of environment. There's also the risk during this time that more people from the formal sector are going to slip into the informal economy again. Dane McTaylor did an event last week with Kevin Rudd where she was talking about everyone in her part of Papua New Guinea, just going back to the village, back to the garden, growing their gardens again. And that traditional welfare system of Papua New Guinea is a key component of its resilience. Do you see that playing out from your perspective as well, the falling back on that traditional welfare system? Look, I think it's always there. And I think definitely in this time, I know a number of say people who have been laid off from work are falling back on to that our one talk system or our traditional sort of links to be able to survive. But because of the broad impact of COVID, this becomes stretched because where perhaps one or two people, you know, perhaps 10 people could carry a community now because of the loss of jobs in some areas, that's now gone down to perhaps two or three people carrying that family. So this is really where those traditional social structures will be tested. And also for the communities in Port Moresby that I guess can't return to the village because of the domestic lockdowns. Back to you, Priscilla. We did just mention the internet before. You're saying that it's becoming a more and more important part of successful small business and entrepreneur activity in Papua New Guinea. How important do you see it? And what would you, what do you think can help in the future improve internet connectivity in Papua New Guinea? So the Carlsey project, the Carlsey cable project has landed in PNG. What we're actually lacking is really looking at the strategy for the domestic rich, the broadband rich to the last mile, which is something that, you know, the government and partners are able to start looking at how best that they can bring that service all the way to the last mile, which is right down to the rural setting. We've still, we've got DG cell that's already reached most of our mobile and they're trying to bring other services there as well. But there's opportunity also to partner with local ISPs that are actually located in those provinces that can extend that Carlsey network right down to the last mile, which is really like accessing your internet straight from the Kunai house, as they say. And it's something that's very, very important because now that we've seen opportunities for e-commerce, we're seeing banks going more digital. Then there's the agenda of the digital financial inclusion, which is to make sure that we get a lot of the unbanked as well. And that'll only happen through a really, really good infrastructure such as the internet. And it needs all these other policies and other governance processes to be in place to ensure that that service is very, very effective and that the people of the population actually benefit from it. Well, thanks Priscilla. I mean, I'm sure if internet quality here in Australia over the last two months was the likes of what most people in Papua New Guinea deal with, you'd have a far more frustrated populace here in Australia. I want to pivot just a little bit here and talk about the impact that Corona is having on the health system. As Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape has already flagged investment in the Papua New Guinea health system over a number of years has been inadequate and that inadequacy has been laid bare during COVID crisis. Peter Botton, you've been involved in health through your role in Hela Province as a director as the chair of the board of the provincial health authority there. What do you think about the health response and how will COVID-19 fit in with other competing, many competing priorities in health delivery in Papua New Guinea? I suppose through our foundation, through the All Search Foundation, we support now three provincial health authorities. I'm chair of Hela, Stephanie Copis Campbell is chair of Southern Highlands, Gary Opius chair of Gulf provincial health authority and each of those authorities have different levels of maturity and different levels of efficiency. They total about a million people supported through those various health authorities. I think you can honestly say that the system and health supply, health delivery in the country and certainly rural remote areas is very challenging and even before COVID was challenging. It's challenging to get doctors, challenging to get the right medical services into many of the regions and challenging in terms of funding and this year certainly in Hela, the funding levels to keep normal provincial health authority activities running is well below budget to date and on top of that funding for COVID activities is also very, very patchy. Naturally in communities in Papua New Guinea, social distancing and the education about managing COVID is a very big challenge for our own people in the various PHAs. It's challenging to train up our own people to manage COVID cases should they occur and training in how to actually react to a COVID case is ongoing and is a clear priority right across the areas that we work. Provision of PPE has been a significant issue in the remote areas and continues to be challenging but it has improved over the last four weeks or so managing our own people who are very quite scared of COVID and quite concerned about their own health and managing some militancy within staff around that has also been on the cards. I should say that it's the internet in Papua New Guinea may not be super flashed but we can do zoom meetings with Tari and have done training through Zoom using the WHO training, NDOH training facilities and been training our people in Tari using Zoom. So we are getting and using a range of methods to get out our understanding and management plan on COVID right across the PHAs but I stress funding remains a challenge and is patching, setting up isolation areas, setting up the education processes to educate communities is a real challenge and I like it's hope being helped by Australia and other countries in terms of supplying materials, getting out this out into the country, getting those messages into a village in Korola or wherever, tribal fighting, social pressures are ongoing, it is a real challenge and I sincerely pray we don't get serious outbreaks because it will be challenging undoubtedly for the whole medical sector to manage. Well thank you Pete I mean as you say the health system is already under so much strain from all of these challenges that here in Australia we are at a distant memory you know the malaria, tuberculosis, all these other health challenges I guess it puts COVID into more of a better into a different context than it does here and the response needed to allocate to COVID as opposed to all these existing health challenges that you know are equally stark in terms of the health impacts they can have on our community so it's particularly challenging and P&G and yeah I think we're all behind you and hoping that there aren't any outbreaks in the future. Priscilla how over to you I mean how can technology help to improve health service delivery in Papua New Guinea, have you seen anything interesting going on in that area particularly this year? It's really interesting from experience we've seen that a lot of things are done in silos there's so many people doing bits of solutions here and there trying to address the health issue if there was a issue that came up where they couldn't track the drug supplies across all the rural health centers and there's a you know ongoing existing challenges that the nation face all the time and with with the crisis now on shore it was quite a very difficult time to you know get the statistics on where people were and the sort of services the health services needed to be delivered to those places so I think for P&G there's there's a lot more work to be done especially in the health systems we need to make sure that there is a a direction a clear direction and a mapping setup for the health systems that we have currently in country and the use of technology now we know that we've got mobile technology we don't need to have you know invest in so much IT infrastructure to actually deliver those services we can use mobile technology to actually deliver health systems to those rural places that need it the most and it's not only just the rural we've seen that in the in the major cities in the major capital cities we've seen that they've also had the challenge of keeping track of where things were and how to actually serve the people in terms of the health needs during the crisis that's that's all very interesting Priscilla thank you um Peter I'd see in in your role with transparency international your flagged the need for the P&G government to be open and accountable and how it spends money around responding to COVID-19 what what are your concerns and why do you think transparency is so important um look Jonathan there's probably two two areas of concern here and one obviously is that the health risk and health impact on our communities and the need for us to make sure that whatever funds are released to combat COVID are done so in an effective and an and an accountable manner just so that the public can be assured that they're going to where it'll have the biggest impact um our concern with right through transparency nationally is about the perhaps about the not the transparency but also the the level of accountability around some of the the release of these funds our our issue is that the public needs to ensure that it has visibility and can have confidence around how government manages these funds as it's deployed in the various initiatives that government has within its response to COVID what we've asked for here is to essentially have government regularly report back to to the public in terms of how much money is being released how it's being used and the current status of of that funding and so that's all we've asked for here is to is to put that on a public platform so that people can have real-time visibility of the kind of resources that have been applied to combat COVID um unfortunately what we found is that there are multiple streams of money being released and as a result it's very difficult for the public to really track how much has been released and what level of of funding has actually gone down to to the provinces and to the the health practitioners that need it the most so that's the area of concern for ti well i think transparent request of transparency from the taxpayers of Papua New Guinea is a completely reasonable request and i wish you luck in advocating for it now i'm going to turn to some questions from our audience the first is from lisa teppu and she asks similar to the australia new zealand bubble is there an opportunity for Papua New Guinea to negotiate a similar travel bubble with other countries and i'm sure this has been a topic of conversation within your communities um and she asks what risks would png need to be wary of if uh for such arrangements to take effect i might uh first go to peter botten and then ask peter ietzee to to follow in uh well look i suppose there is a definite need to progressively open up travel open up the economies to be able to interrelate in a more robust way in a normal way um uh clearly png needs to be aware and whoever png is interacting with needs to be assured that that um covid is under control testing regimes and where events happen um the follow-up for for tracking people uh are uh are carried carried out and i think the maturity of of those systems in terms of both testing understanding the prevalence of the virus and the tracking of people that might catch it are critical in opening up in any regional sense though you can see across the pacific a range of opportunity where covid has been well controlled in many ways uh and you can see in australia new zealand that the virus right now is under control so i suppose there is an opportunity down the track to to open up the economy in this region open up travel a little more in this region but uh clearly you've got to demonstrate to a lot of people that the systems and processes to to uh understand where the virus is and track people who have the virus are going to be critical to to that happening and critical to all of us not giving up the the benefits of that we've seen in managing the virus versus economic economic benefits for png hopefully uh with such a an apparent low level of of infection could be part of that um it hopefully is second half this year uh pete i'd say is this something that's being talked about a lot in the business community in port mortuary uh yes it has jonathan um you know look um png and most of our pacific countries have been relatively fortunate not to have large numbers of of covid cases um so we've got to be thankful there and i must say the png government took fairly early steps to close down our international borders so one may assume that that that helped us in terms of that uh in minimizing the numbers um to open up the international borders i think will need a significant level of cooperation between the different countries because you need to then put in place some some regimes that all countries can have confidence in in order for them to ensure this the the safety of their communities as people start to to travel again and so really it's about understanding what levels of freedom and what levels of movement can be allowed under these new conditions um the difficulty for us is that you know we've we've tested 2900 uh cases and so we haven't had broad testing in in our country so i think that's an issue that needs to be addressed in order for us to get to a point of confidence that we can we can comfortably say look you know that there's a you know the cases that were the confirmed cases reported are an indication of a lack of a lack of presence of covert in the broad community so there's a bit more work on our side to do i believe uh thank you thank you peter um i i've traveled bubble with the pacific is something i think we all endorse and hope can happen as quickly as possible and in a piece of shameless self promotion i did do a podcast last week with liberal and australian liberal mp david shama who penned an op-ed in the australian two weeks ago calling for an australia pacific travel bubble to be stood up as soon as possible we got really into the weeds of that proposal and how it might be how it might be implemented and over what time frame and you can find that podcast covered cast on our on the low institute website uh moving to another question from the audience we have do you feel that the state of emergency lockdown has given png national staff more of an opportunity to step into roles that were previously given to expats that's a great question and i might ask priscilla to have a first crack at answering it all right that's a really interesting question um thank you for that um we noticed that um a lot of corporations um depend on a lot of services offshore especially skills offshore so their projects are dependent on those skills and because of the lockdown where flights were able to come into the country a lot of their projects had to be parked or rescheduled again it actually affected their project plans so i mean it got me thinking about the the talent and the skills that currently in country um how we work into its developing um the skills that's needed for some of these very very specialized projects that are needed in country um and it's really affected a lot of project planning for some of these um larger businesses but also um just speaking from larger businesses we've also talked about small businesses they're also impacted by support services that they need that are offshore as well um and a lot of these say for example coders that are working offshore um because of their lockdowns in their country as well it's affected some of the projects that's actually ongoing in country so it's again a good time to really assess and review um the kind of skill sets we have in country in png and how to develop that based on the industry and the market trends uh either of the peters is there anything you'd like to add to that no just i think uh underscoring um what's been said before um there there has definitely been a a greater level of reliance and self-reliance on company getting people and services within png it's highlighted where those services are not available um locally but it also has been an opportunity for for pat the guinean people and companies to step up and generally speaking they've done pretty well so again an opportunity which i think can be built on into the future right uh another question from the audience we have from john burn from the lay chamber of commerce he asks the porga issue and for our audience the porga issue being that the recent announcement by the papua guinean government to not renew the mining lease of of uh newcrest the barric mining to to renew its porga uh gold mine operations the porga issue is putting extra strain on businesses from tari down the highlands highway does the panel have a view on how we can address the porga issue and how we can get to back to a win-win as opposed to a lose-lose uh scenario with regards to porga and uh renewed mining operations so uh peter i'd say perhaps you could maybe have a first stab sure uh look jonathan i mean the government and uh the the operator barrica um have unfortunately reverted to uh through the courts to try and get some resolution on this um i understand that a number of people that are trying to assist broker are way forward here um in in terms of its importance to the economy i mean that's that can't be understated um at this time uh we need as much investment money flowing in and as much operational money flowing into the into the country in order for us to be able to maintain the levels of economic activity that we're going to need to be able to to manage ourselves out of covert so from a bridge from a business perspective um this type of event unfortunately perhaps perhaps um you know undermines a little bit of business confidence uh which the government need to be aware of as as they make these types of decisions um ultimately ultimately there's a number of there's many elements here at play and and some of it is around sort of the the benefits of flow back to state the benefits that flow back to the province and the benefits and impact that that ultimately flies back to those impacted communities so it's a fairly complex environment that that the parties have to deal with peter uh botten you've you've obviously been closed uh to the action in a number of these big resource deals what do you think about the current environment for resource projects both existing and future developments you know there's a lot on on the burner at the moment what we go through the three natural gas in discussion so yeah what are your thoughts okay i think it's a very challenging time for for many projects in pg certainly but also around the world the confluence of covid 19 together with a a price war um from by opic against russia in the us has been a horrible confluence of circumstance which has really smashed the the oil and gas sector in a way to where many places around the world are not making money at all and are very unlikely to have any real ambition to to invest in new projects until there is a greater certainty about the level of pricing into the future and the level of demand for our product as the world hopefully comes out of the covid uh impact on or world economy and world demand so you put that in the light of various projects that uh that are have been muted and are muted in puppety kitty and in reality there's also the the quite right the debate about resource benefits split between the state and developers which i think is a healthy debate as long as it's managed properly and appropriately so you when you look at the environment as a whole for the resource sector although gold is holding up very well many of the commodities that impact png's revenue are struggling and what you want to attract investment into into png and or into to any country through the resource sector predictability and and stability becomes an important part of a discussion when people have stretched balance sheets and and are and are wondering where to put their their dollar or dollar around the world so png has some great potential projects it really does need to strike the right balance between resources owners developers communities provincial governments and state with the developer those sorts of discussions frankly are best done usually face-to-face not through zoom and undoubtedly the distancing that has been necessary over the last few months who's has not made those delicate discussions and negotiations particularly easily easy and i don't think that's necessarily going to change anytime soon but to take a realistic view i think there is there is scope to progress agreements but there really is a necessity to have a much greater level of confidence around where pricing demand is going to go before anybody is going to spend invest any serious money and move these projects into feed and final investment decision and that really does mean time and delay yeah so so that the wind they haven't missed the window but the window may be be narrowing it's um you're right the confluence of events has certainly not been in png or indeed the world's favor this year we've got a number of questions here about the png government's covered economic measures and responding to you know both the health system but also providing stimulus into the domestic economy to help bear this storm do do these economic measures from the png government go far enough are they helping down to the grassroots levels so maybe start with you pd it and then ask priscilla to jump in yeah sure jonathan um look um in terms of the business i'm involved in um we're seeing some of the the impact of the restrictions on the economy and that's translated in term in the form of contractors and and businesses around our country who are really now finding feeling the financial stress that that is that comes as a result of these covert restrictions and so from their point of view i think what what what we need to try and do is to in some way stimulate the economy through either some major some strategic investment in in provinces um i think the the challenge for government is how they deliver that and how quickly they can deliver that i know the government has gone out to the domestic market to raise to raise funds and unfortunately i my understanding is these funds have gone back in to to meet recurrent expenditure within the government itself so that that unfortunately doesn't help in the in the short or long term um so there's some discussions from the business council going uh that the business council is having with government to perhaps better identify some strategic areas of the economy that the government can be able to perhaps provide some some stimulus into and part of that is is is an area that priscilla is probably interested in which is the uh medium to small enterprise area and how we can mobilize funding to go to support that that part of the that that part of our our economy the other is about trying to perhaps provide an environment for our business our business community to be able to continue to operate so perhaps working with the tax office to perhaps look at easing up some of the the payment cycles there so that you know the the businesses cash flow can be sustained and as a result they're able to continue to employ people through a longer period as we start to stabilize the economy and hopefully uh be in a better position to ramp up after the restrictions have been lifted so they these are some of the measures that we're talking to government about to to fully consider in their response well it's uh i don't at all envy the people in puffing any treasury at the moment as they're trying to wrestle through declining uh incomes but also looking at measures to further decline their incomes while in turn trying to maintain recurrent expenditure and also inject more money into like domestic stimulus it's a a really big ask and a big challenge that i wish them well in priscilla how about you how how would what more would you like to be seen from the png government i think when when the stimulus package were announced you know the public was still trying to understand you know how far is that stimulus package going to go and which sectors is it going to assist and i think the challenge really is we don't have that data as i mentioned earlier around our small businesses our s and e's or m s and e's to then assist the government in terms of their planning so a lot of these has been just taken based on on the market that's out there but in terms of the stimulus package reaching small businesses and their employees that in itself a lot of a lot of small businesses have not experienced that and are still asking what even after you know after the covid crisis they're still asking is are we still going to be getting that assistance and i think that again really really depends on having the right data having an up to date data of what small business market looks like and then making sure that the stimulus package that they're developing is actually reaching the real grassroots reaching the real small businesses in assisting them. Peter Bodden is there anything you'd like to add to that question? Just to stimulate the to the shortfall in funding that is for ordinary and recurrent expenditures and certainly in the health sector we're seeing shortfall in funding for for day to day business and i suppose the challenge as you say in treasury is to balance and to find the money not just to do the day to day stuff but also to stimulate the economy further and certainly from my sources i don't see that hitting the grassroots yet. Thank you Peter we have a question from Leslie Bennett on she asks how has social distancing affected schools and other institutions in Papua New Guinea so i'll hand over to our Papua New Guinea colleagues maybe Priscilla? I think PNG is like we mentioned earlier is very resilient i'll give an example of my my son's school when it opened up in on May 4th the school was really well prepared they had all the protocols in place and i think PNG has really taken on instructions really well based on the lockdown and the state of emergency and schools have really responded well as in terms of scheduling you know the different classes and making sure that kids are you know sanitizing their hands before they're getting into their classes so the schools have really gone you know forward and taken initiative to really set up the environment that's safe for the students returning and we've seen that across most of the schools in the capital cities and also in the rural settings so for me as a parent i feel that the response was really good in terms of COVID-19 and how about you Peter? From my interaction with a number of parents but also just some some key people at various schools particularly rural schools i think the one thing is that that's become very i suppose obvious is that the hygiene aspects of it so some of the rural schools don't have the infrastructure of the the city schools so their their reliance is on making sure that that the children understand the hygiene requirements so washing hands has been has been a introduced in all in the schools that i'm aware of which is a good practice i think for the for the you know for the children as we go forward. Peter i did want to touch on a one particular area of the industry that has been really brutally affected by this and that's airlines and Eugenie in your role of and more consolidated holding and Eugenie is clearly it's a critical asset for Papua Eugenie as a local as a public utility really in terms of helping get people around the country but it also has a large international network how is the the national carrier of Papua Eugenie holding up in this time is it going is there enough effort to keep it solvent through this and do you expect how do you expect operations to continue on the other side of this yeah look Jonathan Eugenie is a is a vitally important you know organization for the country it's a national flag carrier so but as we found with you know globally the the airline industry has been the most severely affected so from a government point of view that they're supporting Eugenie to try and to manage through the COVID downturn we've been relatively successful in in sort of getting some I mean some financial injection into Eugenie in order for it to continue to maintain its operation that the board and and the management have been able to work fairly diligently to try and reduce costs where they can and just maintenance but to ensure they maintain obviously the safety levels that that we'd expect from them as of this last week the domestic routes were were able to be operated again and as people that know Eugenie well the domestic part of the business is really the where the profit is for the airline so it's encouraging that domestic routes are back up again and internationally they've been able to to provide some cargo and charters for different clients as well and so that's helped the the organization to be able to generate some revenue and globally as with others they've reached out to their suppliers those that provide leases for the for the aircraft to be able to get some some relief there as well so I think those those initiatives and those measures are assisting Eugenie to be able to to manage through to a point of a high degree of confidence hopefully when the the COVID situation settles down oh fantastic fantastic I look forward to that direct Sydney to Port Moresby opening up again sometime soon we do have a number of audience people have asked a similar question and Neil Chandra and Ian Prentice talking looking at the the border between West Papua and say a part of Indonesia and and Papua New Guinea like how confident are you that the border with West Papua is secure and how significant is that risk for you know any potential travel bubble that might emerge in the future between you know Papua New Guinea and Australia for example you know anyone want to take a stab at that maybe Peter Botten you've you've worked in in the Highlands region close to the border a lot yeah look obviously it's something that operators in the Highlands have been following very closely and obviously it's got a high profile that there's no doubt that the border traditionally is is crossed regularly as is the border between Australia and PNG in on the southern parts of western province so it is definitely a focus area for for the state of emergency military and police it clearly remains a fluid border and it's one that clearly has got more attention but it's an inherently difficult border to to lock down and police but certainly it's got attention and a lot of resources are being thrown at it to to try and control how the border works but it is a challenging border to manage given it's it's the fluidity of communities that go backwards and forwards and an education process for those communities about what the impacts of COVID-19 bring to them and how it's spread just how large that border is Peter I'd see anything to add no look I think as we all know it's a it's a it's a fairly difficult area to police at any time so and you know that we've got some defence for soldiers that have been deployed down there with some police as well and you know I think they're doing their best in here with with the resource that they have in order for them to be able to manage that that you know the the vastness of that border thank you all I'm going to take the prerogative as chair to take the last question before we wrap up here and I want to end on a more more positive note to take out of this difficult situation from each of you I'm really keen to hear what you think you've we've all learned and will benefit from in future business activity and you know in broader society coming out of this experience in particular how it's going to change the relationship on this front between Australia and Papua New Guinea so Priscilla maybe I'll start with you what are some positive outcomes from from this crisis I think we're with the COVID-19 experience we had a lockdown for almost two months I think it started in March and went through to April there's a lot we can learn from what we've experienced as well in terms of our human capital in terms of the environment that we have set up in terms of our policies governance and so forth and these are things that I think for me personally is also about the data data is very important it's important to collect the data make sure that it stays up to date so that it assists in any kind of you know disaster planning any kind of crisis that we may encounter in future so that's something I'd like to see come out from this COVID-19 experience is really the the significance and the importance of collecting data that's very very important for decision making thanks Priscilla and how about you Peter Watten Look I think one of the big upsides of if there is an upside of COVID in any sense is that we've actually learned to work in so many different ways doing this sort of communication with lots of people there wasn't necessarily very common before COVID the fact that we've can work and have an effective process in various offices and operations where people are working remotely from home the flexibility to provide greater levels of autonomy to different workers to improve their skills in working autonomously is something I think we are not going to come back to work and work in a similar way to pre-COVID the setups of offices the setups and use of technology use of Zoom etc is a huge positive I think and we're going to learn a lot from our resilience and the innovation that's come from being able to manage complex difficult issues from a location whether it be a bedroom somewhere or front lounge with I think as an industry across a range of industries we've learned a lot and won't ever quite be the same and Peter I see the final word you look Jonathan I think as with shared with Peter Watten and also Priscilla the you know it has changed the way that we think about our work environment and how we operate it's really tested those in terms of our ability to continue to maintain our operations in you know in very challenging situations where we don't have that ability to physically interact or to be able to travel and move so that in itself I think is the big lesson for us as you know in the lessons that come out of it for our business is going forward I think the biggest thing for me though is I think it's demonstrated the fragility of of the world we live in you know we were so dependent on each other and the interactions that we have for each other and so when you take that away from us you know you do really understand how important that is to us all and and so that for me I think is something that we all need to remember is that you know when we do get that that ability to connect with each other again we need to really treasure it and to look after it in terms of how we the quality of that engagement going forward that's a excellent sentiment to to end this conversation on Peter thank you and well folks while there is plenty more to discuss we do like to finish on time here at the Lowe Institute we hope this will be the first of a number of digital events focusing on the Australia Papua New Guinea relationship in all of its facets but in the meantime keep an eye on all of the Lowe Institute's digital products from our research to our digital magazine to the the interpreter to our podcast and event series to see more analysis on how COVID-19 is affecting the world around us thank you again to all of our panelists to my colleague Shane McLeod for putting this all together and handling everything behind the scenes thank you to the internet gods for keeping everything everyone connected and until we see you all again stay safe stay healthy and have a great rest of the week thank you