Table of Contents
The division of the powers and responsibilities of government between national, provincial and local levels is a critical element of Papua New Guinea’s political and administrative structure, and one which has important implications for governance generally and for service delivery in all sectors of government, as other chapters in this volume demonstrate. It is also an area that has been subject to virtually continuous contestation, recurrent review, and one major restructuring. As such, a study of decentralization might be expected to highlight some of the major issues which arise in policy making and implementation in Papua New Guinea, and elsewhere.[2]
During the Australian colonial period, Papua New Guinea had been administered through a number of administrative districts, each headed by a district commissioner; there were eighteen districts at the end of the colonial period. In 1975 one district was divided in two, and these nineteen districts, renamed provinces, together with the National Capital District, became the basis on which a system of provincial government was established. Local government councils had also been established, commencing in 1949, and in 1970 area authorities, comprising mostly local government council nominees, were created at what was then district level, primarily to serve as advisory bodies to the district commissioner.
In the lead-up to independence in 1975 there were calls for the political decentralization of a system which many saw as highly centralized. In its 1st Interim Report of September 1973, the pre-independence Constitutional Planning Committee (CPC) discerned the emergence of a ‘clear majority view’ that a system of district government should be introduced with greater powers for districts than those vested in area authorities (CPC 1973a, ll). Two months previously the CPC had been presented with a demand for immediate district government in Bougainville and a detailed draft (prepared by the Bougainville Special Political Committee (BSPC)) of the form which it should take. In its 2nd Interim Report in November l973 the CPC noted that the Bougainville proposal had been accepted by cabinet 'subject only to the condition that any agreement which might be reached must be within a general legislative framework to be applied to the country as a whole' (CPC 1973b, 1/7).
Between November 1973 and its final Report of 1974, the CPC received a Report on Central Provincial Government Relations by consultants W. Tordoff and R. L. Watts, which outlined options and offered recommendations, ‘bearing in mind the (CPC’s) firm commitment to the development of a strong form of provincial government (which is a decentralized form of government within a unitary system, subject to political control at the (then) district level)’ (Tordoff and Watts 1974, i). The final recommendations of the CPC on arrangements for provincial government were set out in chapter 10 of its 1974 Report, which also contained a schedule of proposed national, provincial and concurrent powers.
Following the tabling of the CPC Report, however, a government ‘White Paper’ (Proposals on Constitutional Principles and Explanatory Notes 1974), challenged the CPC recommendations on several points. Though it ‘strongly supported’ the principle of provincial government, the White Paper expressed four major reservations:
‘that the C.P.C. proposals could result in an undue concentration of power at the provincial centre’;
‘that the law should also safeguard the interests of local government bodies’;
that ‘The type of near-federal system proposed by the C.P.C. would create many legal and administrative problems if introduced suddenly’; and
that ‘the schedule…dealing with the functions and powers of provincial governments should be used only as a guide….The devolution of powers and the speed and methods of arranging this should be left to negotiations between the governments concerned’ (the government also argued that it was not essential for all provinces to reach the same stage of decentralization) (Papua New Guinea 1974, 35–37).
Following conclusion of the House of Assembly debate on the provincial government proposals, an inter-party Follow-up Committee was created to draw up an organic law. A first draft was completed in July 1975, but the same month the House of Assembly, meeting as the Constituent Assembly, voted to exclude the provincial government provisions from the constitution.
Notwithstanding this reversal, preparations for the introduction of provincial government continued, including the establishment of the Bougainville Interim Provincial Government in July 1974 and the creation of constituent assemblies in several other provinces. Then, on the eve of independence in September 1975, frustration over unsatisfied demands in Bougainville resulted in a unilateral declaration of independence by Bougainvillean leaders. Negotiations between Bougainville and the national government culminated in the Bougainville Agreement of August 1976 and contributed to the decision to reinstate the provincial government provisions through amendment to the constitution and the passage of an organic law. The Organic Law on Provincial Government (OLPG) was enacted in March 1977.
The OLPG differed from the earlier Tordoff-Watts/CPC recommendations in several important respects but retained the broad features of the fully-decentralized-unitary-system model put forward in 1974. The subordinate status of the provincial governments was reflected in several provisions of the constitution and the OLPG, notably in the National Parliament’s powers to disallow a provincial law ‘if in its opinion the disallowance is in the public interest’ (S.37 of OLPG) and to suspend provincial governments (S.187E of the Constitution and Ss.86–98 of the OLPG). On the other hand, the division of legislative powers set out in Part VI of the OLPG (plus the delegation to provincial governments of executive responsibility in areas in which they did not have legislative power) gave the provinces a potentially wide field of operation. This resulted in the development of an essentially political system of decentralized government. The virtues of such ‘essentially flexible’ arrangements were argued by Yash Ghai and Mani Isana (both lawyers who were involved in the implementation process):
The Organic Law intended to lay down a broad framework for Provincial Government and the establishment and further evolution of the system was, in large measure, left for consultation between the Provincial and the National Governments (Ghai and Isana 1978b, 3–4).
Elsewhere, however, the same authors described the OLPG as ‘complex, legalistic and difficult to operate’ and argued that the various provisions of the constitution, the OLPG and the provincial constitutions ‘do not add up to a very coherent picture of the status of provincial Governments and their place in the overall national system’ (Ghai and Isana 1978a, 1, 4).
As late as January 1977, the assumption seemed to be, as described in an information paper from the Public Services Commission:
At proclamation, each Provincial Government is to ... select the particular packages of functions, ministry by ministry, which it wishes to assume executive authority over….The packages can be expected to differ Province to Province. Phasing of their introduction can also be expected to vary. The pattern of Provincial legislative action is also likely to vary widely. So the situation, across all Provinces, is expected to be complex, and changing from time to time as devolution proceeds according to each Province's desires and capacity (PSC 1977, 1).
Faced with continuing uncertainty about how to implement provincial government, and resistance amongst some public servants, in April 1977 the government employed consultants McKinsey and Co. to draw up a plan for implementation. A program based on the recommendations of McKinsey was accepted by the NEC in September; it involved the transfer of functions, uniformly for all provinces, in three stages during 1978. As I have argued elsewhere (May 1981, 16–17, 25), one of the unfortunate effects of this strategy was to tie the implementation of decentralization in all provinces to what was being demanded in that province which was the strongest supporter of decentralization and had the greatest capacity for financial autonomy.
[1] I am indebted to Kathy Whimp for her comments on a draft of this paper.
[2] This chapter will focus on decentralization under the Organic Law on Provincial Government, 1977 and the Organic Law on Provincial Governments and Local-level Governments, 1995. It will not, except incidentally, look at local-level government, nor will it examine the autonomy arrangements under the Bougainville Agreement of 2001 or the operations of special purpose authorities (which are mentioned briefly below). For more detailed analyses of decentralization in Papua New Guinea see Ghai and Regan (1992), May and Regan (1997) and Axline (1986, 1993).