Australia has a unque opportunity to help Papua New Guinea reverse declining living standards

While growing vegetables and other food is helping to prevent starvation in Papua New Guinea, living standards are in serious decline because cash income has been slashed as a result of lower producing AND poorer quality in the main export industries, and especially coffee.

Inevitably, lower incomes across the farm sector will affect attendances at school, the survival of regional and rural towns, transport industry employment and small business.

What Australia ought to offer to do is to A. fund the tax it has imposed on fertiliser imports rto reduce the burden on growers and industries overall, and B. Subsidise a significant increase in fertiliser and pesticides imports targeted specifically at the oil palm, coffee and cocoa industries.

North Queensland is Australia's largest fertiliser producer. Supplying Papua New Guinea with increased fertiliser and pesticides will enable small holder producers in particular to replenish crops as a priority. Properly managed it will also boost employment in rural towns and communities – most of which are really struggling today.

The cost? I have been advised that a comprehensive package of agricultural support measures, fertiliser, pesticides, and some advisory services to assist farmers properly apply fertiliser could cost no more than $150 million to $200 million a year.

It needs to be offered for at least three years – so it can be delivered in remote areas as well as areas closer to towns and ports.

With elections due in Papua New Guinea in mid-2022, care will have to be exercised in how the fertiliser is delivered and the subsidy provided. But that is not an excuse to ignore what is a glaring and growing need.

If income producing agricultural production continues to decline, or at best stagnate, living standards and opportunity will continue to suffer. The economic consequences will be disastrous. But the social and living standards consequences will be utterly tragic. The stability and unity of our closest neighbour will really be tested.

Infrastructure is important. But in my view the most urgent need in our closest neighbour today is to focus on the real living standards of the people – their basic health care, school education, safely AND their capacity to earn income especially through cash crops that can be exported.

Australia is helping with health and with education and tentatively with electricity and infrastructure such as ports. But we really need to "step up" with the one sector of the Papua New Guinea economy that can in a short period reverse the decline in living standards of the six million people who live in rural and coastal communities – agriculture for export!