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	PAPUA NEW GUINEA: THE CARGO CULT IS ON THE WAY BACK. 22:12:95 PAPUA NEW GUINEA: THE CARGO CULT IS ON THE WAY BACK. By ROWAN CALLICK. Mining is at the centre of new cargo cults developing in Papua New Guinea. ROWAN CALLICK reports THE Pacific War, whose anniversary Australia recently marked so movingly, visited on the region not only tragedy but also excitement. Many people's worlds were turned upside down. And among the ways in which islanders came to terms with this new environment of undreamed-of material wealth and of sudden incursions by incomprehensible cultures, was the cargo cult. Today such cults are enjoying a resurgence, not only in Melanesia but also in darkest Melbourne. In a world previously manipulated only by magic, possession of ritual knowledge was seen in the Pacific as the key to unlocking all riches. Thus close observance and then mimicry of the invaders became the obvious way to acquire their superior technologies. And echoes of such world-views can be detected in the rhetoric of the region's political elite. How do you attract foreign investors? Tell them what you think they want to hear, using their own favoured vocabulary of openness and dynamism. Aid donors? Ditto. This can be a very frustrating exercise when there are polite, as well as political, people on both sides. How can a bluff be called? Will mere rhetoric, however compellingly expressed, expose itself as hollow, or does the time come when inconsistencies need to be pointed out, causing a loss of face and probably triggering payback? Australia constantly faces this dilemma in dealing with its Melanesian neighbours. Our focus is naturally on Papua New Guinea, with which investment and trade remain higher than with Indonesia (and in light of this week's signing in Jakarta, it is important to recall that PNG has had a defence treaty with Australia, and a border treaty with Indonesia, for more than eight years). What has kept PNG in the public consciousness in Australia, is mining, revenues but has long overtaken mining in destroying the environment. The impact of the failure of governments to deliver services, while aspirations have risen fruitlessly, has been softened for the rural few with land containing orebodies or oil by resource spin-offs, and for the elite by capturing a big slice from the main foreign exchange earners: aid, and resource taxes and royalties. The mine has become the prime source of "cargo". Under such an overload of expectations, whatever fences the mining industry puts up - literally and figuratively - around its operations will ultimately be pushed over. The same applies to any single industry on which communities over-depend. At independence, PNG inherited a thin infrastructure base. It still desperately needs capital. And as the sole investment success story, mining is a vital model. Current uncertainties about the sector, exacerbated by the Ok Tedi compensation case, are thus helping to undermine PNG's chances of attracting investment across a broader spectrum - tragic, when 50,000 young people seek to join the workforce annually. In the last couple of years, some Australian NGOs, seeking credentials in the immediate neighbourhood as they go global, have hit on the tailings dam as their own salvation. None of PNG's vulnerable mines have them. It is as if Malaysian lobby groups suddenly pursued a "solution" to Australian salinity as the focus for the bilateral relationship. In one hit, as the Australian groups promote The Dam, they can knock a transnational capitalist enterprise, defend the environment, and reinforce rural PNG's understandable inclination to seek funding - "compensation" - from the nearest likely source. Win-win-win. Thus have both mine and dam, yin and yang, taken on complementary cult status. Inevitably, the Porgera mine and Lihir project are now coming under attack. Glenn Banks of the Australian National University, who has studied mining impacts in PNG for seven years, describes a recent TV documentary on the former's lack of The Dam as "a tangled web of selective science, rumour and culture". It is in such a foetid atmosphere that cargo cults most thrive. And since they emerge from a world of circular thinking, they can never be effectively disproved. SOURCES AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW
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