Early policy making in Papua New Guinea placed significant emphasis on equity in income distribution and access to social services, sometimes with full realization of the costs of such interventions to growth. One of the main assertions stated in the preamble to the constitution is ‘ that our national wealth, won by honest, hard work be equitably shared by all’. The second national goal and directive principle requires that ‘every effort to be made to achieve an equitable distribution of incomes and other benefits of development among individuals and throughout the various parts of the country’(clause (3)) while clause (4) calls for ‘equalization of service in all parts of the country, and for every citizen to have equal access to legal processes and all services, governmental or otherwise, that are required for the fulfilment of his or her real needs and aspirations’. On these counts, economic policy making has failed. Morauta’s (2000, 3) statement, that ‘We have not made the most of our resources and our wealth. Our destiny remains unfulfilled’ is most telling.

The first minister of Finance, Sir Julius Chan, noted in his 1976/77 budget speech that:

Papua New Guinea has indeed been overtaken in its pursuit of development, and Chan was in the driver’s seat during part of this period. Much of policy making in Papua New Guinea has been to the neglect of internal balance. Unemployment has consequently received little attention, and the large and rapidly growing pool of labour in search of work demands urgent attention.

The struggle to stabilize the currency and regain fiscal balance was commenced late in 1999 and continues. But the challenge of policy making for sustainable development in Papua New Guinea is more one of rediscovering what worked in the past than of continually trying new initiatives.