Papua New Guinea Needs a Break
By: Hon. James Nomane, MP I Port Moresby, Sunday, 1 November 2026.
The people of Papua New Guinea have shown patience, resilience and faith. They have given this Government seven years, two mandates and every benefit of the doubt. In return, they have received announcements without follow-through, promises without urgency, and a situation that has gone from bad to worse. Papua New Guinea needs a break.
Consider the burden our people now carry. Our nation has been grey-listed by the Financial Action Task Force since February. We are now in the thick of El Nino causing havoc to food security, water supply, and health indicators nationwide. The kina keeps sliding, and protracted inflation has doubled the price of food, fuel, and medicine. Our people cannot afford the cost of goods and services.
A youth bulge meets an economy that cannot create jobs. Violent crime and social tension are spreading. Hospitals lack medicines, schools are failing our children, and corruption continues unabated. Ask the mother in Goilala who walks for hours to an aid post with no medicine. Ask the school leaver in Kimbe holding a certificate and no job. These contemporaneous crises are the symptoms of one failure: leadership.
Peter Drucker taught that management is doing things right, and leadership is doing the right things. This Government has done neither. It has run out of ideas, shown no urgency, and demonstrated an inability to follow-through.
Then comes the icing on the cake. For years, the Government has preached fiscal consolidation, a balanced budget, a falling debt-to-GDP ratio, stronger domestic revenue, and “Take Back PNG” through greater returns from our resources. The Papua LNG agreement contradicts all five. By Treasury’s own draft assessment, as publicly reported, the revised terms could leave a net budget shortfall of K28.33 billion by 2035. That is not partnership. It is capitulation to corporate giants.
Papua New Guinea needs a break. Not more slogans, but sound management. Not surrender, but strategy. Not excuses, but results.
The way forward rests on three principles. First, fiscal integrity: every resource agreement tested against the National Budget and tabled in Parliament before it is signed. Second, delivery: clear targets, named accountability, and published results for jobs, health, education and law and order. Third, clean leadership: complete the FATF action plan and give our anti-corruption institutions the independence and funding to act without fear or favour, and restore the confidence of our people, partners and investors.
To every Papua New Guinean preparing for NGE2027: register, organise and decide. Do not reward failure and corruption with another term. Papua New Guinea needs a break, and in 2027 the people must give themselves that break by changing this Government at the polls!
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