The distraction is not only in the West, for those who want to be distracted, there is distractions everywhere, not only in the West. And not just today, even a thousand years ago, people were still distracted, believe me. Don't think thousand years ago everybody was focused and fantastic. No, they were just as good as you or as bad as you. They were also hanging out in small groups. Now we're hanging out globally. So, what is that one thing I have to do to be focused or to be able to receive what is offered? Very simple. Just remind yourself, tomorrow morning, when you wake up in the morning, just check. Still alive, because every day over a million people die on this planet. You woke up tomorrow morning, over a million people did not wake up tomorrow morning, will not wake up tomorrow morning, believe me. You woke up, just check. You're still there? Great, isn't it? You're still alive. Can you at least smile? Oh, I'm still alive. Great. Just check. Those three, four, five people who really matter in your life, check if all of them are alive. Because if one million people die, at least ten million people lost somebody who's dear to them, isn't it?  Fantastic today, it's a great day, isn't it? Don't take this lightly, this is not a joke.  And not me.   Sadhguru, I'm asking a spiritual question, reminding me of morbid things. No, nothing morbid about it. Death is the one common denominator among all of us, isn't it? Yes?  Look at the universality of death. Only when you remind yourself that you're mortal, wanting to know something beyond the physicality of who you are becomes an active process. You will become receptive. Only when you know the body that you carry, the psychological drama that you're going through, all this is going on, but one day, poop, it'll end. Very easily it'll end, believe me. You just have to wait. See, you don't have to do anything to achieve death, just have to wait. Both for yours and others. People come and say, sattguru, this guy, my enemy, I can't bear it. I said, just wait. You don't have to take the trouble. Just wait. One way or the other, you will get rid of him.  So do this every hour. Right now, seven thirty. Oh, I'm still alive. Great. Live from six thirty to seven thirty. You know how many people died on the planet? But it's not me right now.  Only because somewhere, it's not that intellectually you do not know, but experientially you're immortal, you know? Because when I look at the number of shoes you who bought, it looks like you're going to live for ten thousand years. Number of clothes and shoes, when I look at them, it looks like a lot of people are planning for thousand, ten thousand years of life. No, no, no, it's a brief life. If you know it's a brief life and you're definitely mortal, we will try to stretch it with yoga.  If you are conscious of this every moment of your life, it may be little struggle in the beginning. Just remind yourself every minute that I'm mortal. I'll die someday and maybe it's today. Come to ease with death. Then the longing to know what is beyond this physical nature will burst forth within you. Once this longing comes, you are one hundred percent receptive to everything that I represent.


All right, good afternoon, everyone. We need to make a start because we're live streaming this event and everyone who's watching us live on their screens will get discouraged if they have to wait, so we will make a start. And welcome to everyone. Thank you for coming. It's great to have such a good turnout and it shows the interest in and the importance of the issues that we'll be discussing today. My name is Stephen Howes and I'm the director of the Development Policy Center and we are co-hosting the event today along with the Low Institute. Let's begin by acknowledging the first Australians, the traditional owners of the land on which we're meeting and let us pay our respects to the elders of the Ngunnawal people past and present. I'm not chairing today's event, so I am really just here to introduce the chair and to say a few thank yous and then I'll sit down and I will hand over to Sally Moyle. So thank you very much. Sally is the branch, the head of the gender branch within DFAT and it's really great to have you here and have your support, so thank you. I'll let Sally introduce the other speakers, but I'll just give a few thanks. First of all, to our speakers, thank you all for coming. You all come a long way to be here and we're really looking forward to hear what you have to say. I wanna thank the Australian Aid Program. They provide significant support to Family PNG, one of the NGOs here and in a range of other ways to organizations such as ourselves here at the Development Policy Centre to make events like this possible, so thank you very much. I don't think the Deputy High Commissioner is here, but Sakai Ustimeo visited us last night and maybe coming here, so thank you to the PNG High Commission for their support. Thanks a lot to Jonathan and Anna from the Lowe Institute. This is a joint effort and it's a speaking tour there off to Sydney to speak at the Lowe Institute, so it's great to have that exposure. To my colleagues at the Development Policy Centre, it's a lot of work to put on an event like this, but also we provide a lot of ongoing pro bono support to Family PNG, so Kath and Ashley and Husnia, I can't see you all now, but thank you very much for all that you do. I wanna especially mention Stephanie. Stephanie Coppers Campbell, she's involved with from in numerous ways with the event today on the board of the Oral Search Foundation. She's on the board of Family PNG and she's on the board of the Howard Mitchell Foundation and the Howard Mitchell Foundation provides our core funding for Development Policy Centre, so without that we wouldn't be able to have this event, so thank you very much, Stephanie, for all that you do. That's enough thank yous from me, but I am gonna make one more remark, which is a pitch. We don't normally do this, in fact, I think in the like five years of events and I'm sure a couple of hundred events, I've never made a fundraising pitch before, but I'm going to now, we support Family PNG. It's not just a research exercise for us, it's also an extension of our support and capabilities and we do get funding from the aid program, but we also raise funds for the organization. We raise funds in PNG, but it's a partnership with Australia, so we raise funds here and it so happens that on Sunday, I'm gonna run a half marathon with my wife and my wife is here, so I'm just gonna embarrass her by pointing her out there, Claire. Yeah, and one of our sons, Matthew, we're all gonna be plotting around the lake on Sunday morning to raise funds for Family PNG, so if you'd like to sponsor us, we have a F-Post machine outside. So if you're inspired by what you hear, please stop on your way out. There is actually, there are refreshments afterwards, so we've given you an incentive to stay back and linger. Unfortunately, I won't be here because I have to take Dengar off to a media interview, but Ashley will be here and she'll be very happy to help you, there she is with the F-Post machine, so please do consider sponsoring us in our half marathon on Sunday. All right, that's enough for me, over to Sally. This lapel might have worked, so thanks, Steven, for that kind invitation to speak today. It's fabulous to have the opportunity to speak about an issue that's long been at the forefront of our mind in thinking about PNG and its development, but is at a particular time in the development of responses to it, and we're really privileged to have here, Rebecca, from the government, I've been Anna Solomon, from community sector, and also from the private sector, and I think absolutely we've been to recognise that no one sector is able to respond to violence against women on its own, that we need all of us pulling together in unison, so it's great to have the opportunity, and we thought the best approach for this would be to treat this as a conversation, and so I'll coordinate a few questions to our panellists, but we should treat this as a conversation, and I'll pause at relevant times in order to give speakers at the audience the opportunity as well to participate. So if you've got burning questions, put your hands up, and when a moment comes, we'll make sure we give you the opportunity as well, and I think we've got a good time for this conversation, so nearly an hour and a half. So let me introduce our speakers. Anna Solomon's the Secretary of the Department for Community Development and Religion in PNG, based in Fort Moresby, of course, and is a bureaucrat of long standing and experience, and so it's fabulous to have you here with all of your experience, having worked across all of the social policy departments in Papua New Guinea, so thank you, Anna. We've also got Dengar Ilawi, who's the Operations Manager for Family PNG, and clearly a member of the community sector, so it's fabulous to have your perspectives about what's happening on the ground and at the forefront of the response to domestic violence, so thank you for coming to Dengar, and of course, Kimberly Kapoor, who's the Chief Executive of Oil Search Foundation in Papua New Guinea, and has only been in the position for a couple of months after traveling and working for DFID in Kenya, I understand, but having been in the private sector for a long time, and so we'll bring particular perspectives, and as you've only been in this position for a couple of months, it reflects the situation for the private sector, which I think is really only just beginning to engage on violence against women as a critical business issue, so your journey is the journey of the private sector. So I might just ask... I mean, I feel quite positive, actually, about the way where violence is positioned now in PNG in terms of the recognition of it as a critical issue for development, for growth and for community development as well, and let alone as an issue of gender equality, so I feel that we're coming to a different stage in the development of the response, and wondering what your thoughts are about where it's at, where the trends are going up and down, whether there's any changes and opportunities to think differently about this issue. What about you, Manor? And can you put your little mics on and turn them on, because I think we'll need them for the streaming. Yeah. From a government perspective, and being a woman, and knowing where we come from, the villages we come from, and seeing some of the gender that we've taken, it's an individual, and it's a government, and it's a country too. I would start with... I was recognizing in Papua New Guinea our social safety network, which were really our family and our clients of our tribe, and before we had any social protection policies or laws in place, we found safety and comfort in a family environment, and so if there was violence, there was safety home right there in the community. Without having to look for a formal safety net known by everybody, a home shelter, or something else. It was right there in the family, or in the extended family network. And that's how families operated, not only in gender-based violence areas, but where disabled children or people were concerned, we didn't have to look for an institution where we could house them. Families automatically took care of their own. We also had, when it came to an orphanage, parents died, we didn't have to look for an institution. Automatically, a family member took on board the responsibility. So as government now, we want to still recognize that strength that we have, and not be influenced by anything else that's happening around the country, but recognize that strength. How do we still strengthen that? But with the recognition of economic growth, increasing modern technology, and also just trying to find a balance between that and our safety net that was always there, which is why you will see that the government still has not talked about too strongly on institutions and orphanage, having those available to place those that need help. Instead, we've looked at all our family laws that we have in place. We also noted that many of them were outdated. They were not responsive to all the changes that happened. So as a government, we looked at the legislative environment. We looked at all the family laws, and we tried to make sure that we updated and we brought it to current. And I'm happy to say that we now have family protection and we repealed the sorcery act, and just look at it as a criminal matter. We also have the McCarthy's Piccinini Act that focuses on the best interests of our child. And we have also our national disability policy that we have a lot of honorable women and acceptor that needs to be represented well when they need legal representation or any other matter. So we've looked at all of that together. And now it's ensuring that people are aware of the globe. We are in a country where we have different levels of government. We have different levels of education. We have people who are still learning to read and write. You still, some are still illiterate. So how do we get this message, not just keep it at the national level and the provincial level, but how do we get it right to the district and to the village level? How can we translate some of these laws and policies and good projects into community language? So that's the journey we're here that we have seen happening from government. It's a great summary. Thank you for that. And I might ask Dengar, Dengar, how do you see it on the ground in communities? Are people aware of the issue of violence against women as an offense and as a human rights breach? Or is it still seen as a real normalized part of family behavior? What I can say here is an individual engaged in the frontline implementation of services and delivery to family sexual violence survivors in the communities is that there are increasing number of women and children who are having to report cases now to the service provision outlets, like reporting to the hospital, reporting to the police, to the welfare, which means that there is increasing number of actors now involving fighting against this. Awareness is reaching the communities, women and children able to recognize that violence is not acceptable. And so they're having to report to where services are available. So what I can see is that there is progress in this area. People are made our way. And there are also many actors now compared to before that we have the non-government organizations coming up to work with the government actors in this area, as well as there are community-based organizations, faith-based organizations. So there are at the moment many actors involving the fight against gender-based violence issues. The actors are working in the same direction or are you finding that the people are coming at the issue from different perspectives? And if they are, is that helpful sometimes or is it, are they cutting across each other? I mean, is there a strong gender equality understanding in the range of actors approaches? In fact, looking at BNG as a very, a country with diverse culture that also gives us that these issues in itself so complex. And so, yeah, they may be cross-cutting in terms of service provision, but we need all these actors to work together. And that's when the coordination is very important. The coordinating body plays a very important role to ensure that actors are playing the role that they should play in terms of delivering services. The issue of coordination and the diversity in PNG. But just to get the complete picture, I might ask Kimberly whether you can tell us about something of the journey that the private sectors made in PNG coming towards an understanding of violence against women and grappling with a response? Absolutely. Well, my career in the private sector in PNG began in 2005 so I can speak to my experience over that period of time. But what I can say is that the difference in just, in how private sector acknowledges and addresses these issues now towards just a couple of years ago is massive. And I think what's happened is that we didn't really have, business always recognized domestic violence and family and sexual violence and how it affects female and male section of the workforce as a cost to enterprise. And sorry, I just saw my friend crying. And sort of having sort of isolated approaches that really depended on the very specific individual circumstances, how an organization or a particular situation was dealt with that didn't have a language or the tools or corporate response or the desires definitely there. And I think anybody that runs an enterprise in PNG can see the cost to business in lots of different ways. Now, there's a lot more awareness and acknowledgement with the language and tools that are available and a desire, this is a stick desire to be able to incorporate measures in a functional practical way so that you can address those issues within the limitations of what a corporation can do. But in such a way that you will give the women and it's mostly women who are affected by this problem in PNG, the tools to be able to develop responses to their own situations at home and equally men are tools to be able to lead change in their own homes and then eventually in the workplaces. So I think we're sort of at the precipice of something really exciting and interesting and this conversation is all part of that and if you ask the same question at six months time, you'll see even more growth and development. It's fascinating to see how the private sectors engaged on this issue particularly so over the last couple of years, what changed? Do you have any vision about what changed with their particular person or the legislative framework or what was the catalyst for bringing the private sector along? Was there a later in the private sector that did that change? That's an excellent question. I actually think that you probably better of answering that one but from my perspective because I was out of things over the last couple of years, there was something that happened with this sorcery case with the Lemiata and that just sort of created a huge outcry and there's just general sense of revulsion to say we've just let things get so bad that this is normal and it's completely unacceptable and we just have to change, this cannot happen again and so there was a real forum discussion started to be created about this and they were small but they've had a ripple effect that sort of created a lot of platform for discussion and I think one of the things about Manonnesian society is the way that we sort of discuss and resolve issues was really sort of very structured and ritual in a lot of ways for better or for worse in some instances women just didn't participate in that process at all as we have increased population growth and urbanization, those traditional ways of managing conflict or stress or social stress don't really, aren't really functioning the way that they used to but we didn't have really a public conversation about how to manage those issues together also because, I guess we became Papua New Guinea in 1975 but we're still a country where we're provincially minded, very locally minded and the sense of nationhood is one that's developing now is also a new thing and that's partly because of urbanization and a whole slew of children who are growing up in centers away from where their parents say they're from, they identify themselves as being from, or from lay and not from the place that the parents originally came from so all of the social changes happening at this time this is a very major issue, it's only one but it's a very major issue we need to create new forums and ways of being able to discuss those things and you see that happening now that's only from what I know I think Dengue probably has a bit more. Look, I will ask you but just to say I think that in many times in the past this is absolutely true, that an issue bubbles up to the surface in a community and the community discusses that community sector gets engaged, the government takes the lead hopefully and the private sector continues to sit on its hands but in this case we've seen the private sector really stepping up in P&G but also I think we're seeing it internationally so Australian companies are now having domestic violence policies in ways that are really beginning to be progressive as well so it's just interesting that the way the private sector is seeing itself as a play. Well, just to speak to that, I 100% agree with you and we just came from, I don't know if you were there but we just came from the Cairns history, excuse me, P&G Business Council meeting in Cairns and I was, that was the first one that I went to but I was really impressed because they gave the same amount of time and focus to economic issues and business development as they did to women's issues essentially and also youth and entrepreneurship which I thought was wonderful and so that basically Frightened Centre said that one of the most important things that we need to start thinking about in doing business in P&G for Australia and P&G companies is this really critical social issue and at one stage in the sessions I think it was close to the final sessions all the men were called upon to stand up well actually everybody to help men to take ownership of this issue and everybody stood up and it was just a really powerful moment and if you had asked me two days before the event if this was something that I would have perceived happening where you have all the heads of industry gathered not really Yeah, that's it Yeah, there is a powerful feeling of change People are inspirational and I saw people there who I've known for a long time just standing up very sort of emotional taking ownership of the issue leaders in business and I think that's amazing Dengar, from your perspective I mean it seems to me like we're a bit of a turning point in the way of violence being dealt with and addressed and as you say there's a lot more and various actors coming into the space now do you see you know that there has been that level of change and if so what do you see as being the catalyst for it? How did it build up that head of team till it got to the time when we could see change happen? Well like my friend said I was really impressed during the P&G Australia business forum when the business collusion for women presented it was really a way forward that the private sector would engage in this and we never had this in the maybe if you ask me two years ago or yeah so this is a way forward and in lay specifically where I'm working we are engaging extending our partnership with the business houses and I see their openness and they're welcoming the idea to when we write letters to them that we want to raise an awareness they're organizing their staff for this and this is a way forward because most of our women have either they come leave their job and come and seek the service that they need or they're caught in between either to keep the job or to seek the service that they need and a lot of times working class women don't have the opportunity to access service because they need to keep the job to take care of themselves and their children and to have private sectors to have this engagement and to expand the partnership and the support in this work and there are also companies that are also having family sexual violence policies in place for their employees and this is really a way forward for us to make the change in our country Can I ask the coordination issue that you raised and do you see that at least in the cities that you're seeing the various actors working together in a coordinated fashion or where are the dropout signs where are we meeting and I think you might have an opinion about that too where do we need to strengthen our partnerships and coordination? Yeah, thank you I think that's a question that everybody likes to ask the government and so I'll answer that I'd agree with the two women here because in the last three years we've seen a lot of changes a lot of changes have happened in terms of reforms in sexual approaches in how we can work together to move forward and we've done a number of things and one of the things we recognize in the department is how do we coordinate better? The government focus is on addressing gender-based violence but not just gender-based violence we also want to focus on human economic empowerment as an approach to addressing gender-based violence we also want to focus on women in leadership getting more women into parliament getting more women into leadership roles so they speak and they raise their voices on how they are we also want to see that there's more girls going to school and we've seen that with the free education a lot of our girl children are going to school but NRI is doing a study at the moment and we see that the issue is not about the increase now a lot more girls are going in it's about retaining them in school and there's a number of factors contributing to that but we also have women in health and so of those different areas how do we better coordinate and know who is working on what in Papua New Guinea and so we have our gender forum which is headed by our minister and the head of UN and in that forum it's focused on it takes its cue from our women and gender equality policy and on the focus areas so we have a technical working group on GBV technical working group on women in leadership and also women in economic empowerment now that is where we have all the partners coming in and reporting on what they are doing in that space if they are about GBV what exactly are they doing how are they implementing the government policies and the laws that we have and if they are in the private sector they are also invited to that table and yes we've seen a lot of partnership in that area I think the private public partnership policy gave a lot of teeth and strength to pulling all our partners private sector partners to come in and work with us on that, yeah but that's the forum where I have seen personally that I now know what everybody else is doing and I can see who is a good partner and a strong partner that government can rely on to help implement in this area who is a strong partner in the area of providing care for women or children or referral systems and so forth absolutely isn't it it's absolutely multidimensional in the sense that you've got all of government you've got government community sector, private sector annual across a range of sectors it's a really tough role for an organisation for any national women's machinery to have that kind of multidimensional coordination role and recognising how difficult it is what do you think of the strengths of that coordination now and where do you think needs to further work well I see that the strength is we don't just live it as technical working groups and forums we have to think higher how can we empower them more through a law where they are recognised their functions and their roles are defined properly their call to meetings are not just on adult basis but because the law states it and I'll just give you an example just seeing what we meant our Jenny has been looked at our child protection laws and we looked at the local team picking in the egg because that's a big area of concern for us and I went ahead where I have all these individual family groups that come under my departments I can see what works best in this area and try to utilise in this other area so with the children's law we have called for the National Council through law and the council is represented by my department the police the law enforcement agencies health education so you can see all those actors also from the NGOs and churches we always make sure that churches are there because they reach places where we have enriched many a month and so we make sure they are part of that conversation and I see that that is the best approach to having a stronger coordinated point for to coordinate all these different activities that are taking place it's a massive job and thank you, how do you see that coordination happening? Standing outside of government are you feeling the benefits of it or are there partners involved or government agencies involved that are letting the site down if you like that don't get the gender equality implications? What needs to be strengthened do you think? Well let's the front line implement the I think pretty difficult for me to answer while the secretaries while the secretaries sitting just next to me but I mean we just beginning to address these issues in the recent years and like our secretaries said there's a forum in place and we're hoping to support these as partners implementing partners on the ground to work with them to help ensure that this is coordinated well in the way we address this issue. Are you engaged or do you find that you're engaged in conversation? Not directly at the moment with the secretary and her department but implementing stage family PNG is very much supporting the coordination of services basically in the center that I'm working with so what's the range of actors around family? Well family PNG basically work directly with a lot of partners and actors in those who are directly delivering service and that involves the hospital family support center and the police and we work with the range of police units like the family sexual violence unit of the police for family violence cases and also for family sexual violence cases the sexual offense squad of the police unit for those criminal cases also the criminal department of the police we also work with the district court and also the national court for cases that get prosecuted and through the national court so we work with all the wide range of stakeholders there who are actually delivering service to survivors of gender based violence and we also coordinate meetings where we call all the stakeholders to come together at this I'm speaking at the provincial level in the province where I work in so all the we have quarterly meetings where the stakeholders come together and we identify issues and we also have discussions around recommendations on how to work with those issues that identified as service providers on the ground so we very much kind of coordinate the services that are delivered to stakeholders I mean the survivors but recently we have the family sexual violence action committee and the FSBAC secret area that has been rolled out and we are very much giving that coordinating role to the government and also trying to support them to function in that area. Excellent so you've got your coordination role and hopefully we're growing an organic approach to proper coordination and from your point of view Kimbley I know you're only back recently but what's your perspective so far on the level of coordination between sectors and dimensions of society and also on business coordination and coalition? Excuse me essentially in every aspects of the work that we do at the foundation which is principally in health leadership in education women's protection and empowerment we take our lead from the national government in partnership with the national government and our current development of our policies and approaches in all of those things and also then with the provincial government and the provinces in which we work so I also acknowledge that there's been a huge amount of growth and development in the national government's responses especially with the guess you call it policy which I think is excellent and that's the sort of documentation that we take our cue from when we're developing our approach for us partnership is just as important as coordination and with the development of our women's protection program we really see ourselves as positioning ourselves as a leader in terms of the private sector response and working very closely with our private sector partners again it's early days because a lot of people are trying to a lot of organizations are trying to use the best practice approach which is really refreshing to see to this and so there's a lot of discussion going on at the moment we're a little bit ahead but there are a lot of other organizations that are following us closely behind our approach is essentially we sort of have four streams that we look at when in our women's protection program the first is the policy side and that's where we look at international best practice and then what's the national government doing and how can we work with them in developing our policies and standards internally first to making sure that we streamline policy approaches and then make sure we bring that awareness of those things across the board to all of the staff whether it's a global or I should say across the company gender sensitization program or developing hubs with information with all of our sites those sorts of activities the second stream of approach is developing tools and access to knowledge and that can be and that's where a partnership a partnership hopefully with organizations like then with P&G really come into play so equipping the staff that we have with the tools to be able to acknowledge or to see the issues that they're facing and how can they address those, how can we help them to address them through partnerships with people like the names escaping me now but Warrior Warrior program Warrior culture thank you so the idea principally is that we at Oil Search but also our other compatriots in business have this captive audience with our workforce a highly educated group of Papua New Guinea men and women and probably mostly men in your most senior positions who we can access them to give them a lot of training and information about this issue and hopefully they will take those messages home and be able to influence and they will have a great deal of influence just by nature of our society where it takes care of a lot of people and to take that information home and create forms for change in the very local places where they live and work and if we can do that then ideally eventually that feeds back into the business we have a much more secure and safe environment something that the legislation has brought us is the requirement that companies are to create safe workplaces for their employees and that extends to do as much as we can for that gender based violence reduced and hopefully eliminated so that women feel safer in the workplace and also that whatever whether they bring the sense of safety whether there's the danger to that safety is occurring in the workplace or elsewhere there's so many leads in that bit of conversation that I'd like to pursue but before we do I might see if there's any burning questions out there and do we need a microphone microphone? Sorry, just bring that over there while we're waiting for the microphone Anna, could you quickly explain what the Jesse's policy is with the Jesse's policy that's the gender equality and social inclusion policy in the public sector one of the biggest big goals for government is to ensure that we mainstream we mainstream where relevant sectors are taking care of the women in their sector and an example of this is the Jesse's policy that if I said the personal management in company is the driver of that policy and they are in charge of women in the public sector so all things out in gender equality are lost and policies are GBV they address the true women in the public sector so one of the things one of the ways in which they made sure we had those positions in our structure in my structure I had to have an officer focused on women in the public sector and so when I said my structure organizational review and structure to the secretary who is a male and I call him a male advocate for women before he even approved it he had to make sure that that he called for the needed to be in every public office had to be on the structure so he did approve and sent them just like he did to other government agencies so we had to redo our structure and ensure that we had those relevant positions on and send it back for his approval so we are talking mainstreaming we are also talking institutionalizing it and proper resourcing so that's the same call we are doing to every other sector we've got the private sector working strongly on their side as well and I think if we continue this well that's a big step forward and our work will become easier exactly Claude, Jane Thanks, I wanted to ask about the churches last month the seven mainstream churches have a genealogy of gender document which they are very proud of but I guess I wanted to ask the panel whether they thought that in general the churches were playing a constructive role in this area or could they do better or how that was going For your question for Papua New Guinea we recognize that before any government was said we had the churches there in Papua New Guinea we call ourselves a big Christian country and we recognize that churches are there in the communities and villages and the most rural areas where we have not reached it's for this reason that a lot of funding I mean I commend the Australian government for studying the funding with the same mainline churches and because of that it pulls the government in so we also co-fund a lot of our churches that are providing health and education that have church ward schools and hospitals as well and we recognize that so a lot of funding has been given to churches over the last three years I'm sure you wouldn't deal with me on that and what other roles that I from the department can see them also going to is the big focus on early childhood learning you know there's a lot of creative approaches we are taking but we need to be focused more on private people and a lot of our young boys school boys and because churches played a big role in our lives we need to start teaching respect and no violence is a moral practice we all that should play a big role you know if the churches focus on that I was also saying some of them are already addressing gender based violence many of them are addressing global issues conflict resolution, safe homes and that's the recognition I want them to call out from government and from donor partners that are coming into the country and because of the recognition my office had a number of vacant positions that have been dissolved removed and put provisions for church state publishing positions such as a donor coordinator a donor government fund coordinator that's the basic the registry of churches and the NGOs and the kind of services they provide we have the English care there who do a really good work in HIV AIDS we also have the Catholic church there who have colon services services for the disabled people and that's in the 22 provinces so we have churches doing fantastic out there we just need to again the coordinating point and sustainability so that any new government that comes into play if it's just a project hanging on the side you can be forgotten so the focus on making sure that we have structure can I just ask your perspective that sometimes churches play a more or less helpful role in addressing violence against women depending on their understanding comprehension of gender equality issues how do you see the churches that you're dealing with engaging on that well church are a partner in implementing and we work directly with churches and like from my perspective like the secretary said churches are in very remote places in PNG where you cannot find even government services and so to get these services on gender-based violence issues right to the villages of the remote villages of Papua Nikini partnership with church is very important they're already there did I listen to you in discussing the approach to gender equality are they moving from very traditional approaches to more progressive ones they do, we are working directly and it's a fantastic job that the church is doing at the moment thank you we might have one more question to go back to the conversation Lisa Martin from Australian Associated Press Secretary Solomon I was curious what impact do you think the issue of gender-placed violence will have on the Papua Nikini election next year and does the government have a time frame on when it expects to have safe houses built in all provinces not just the major centres thank you for your question with the elections coming up Electoral Commission has also its gender equality they recognise that in certain areas of Papua Nikini it's difficult for women as well to vote just to get to vote so they've worked from not only at that level where they're trying to address women having an opportunity to vote but also a disabled community they've been through this as well and they've got a lot of women working at the pool boats which was not there before so hopefully that will help with a lot of women getting the opportunity to vote that's on the side of voting but on the side of having women candidates they've worked closely with us on especially the local level government election at the national level we had three women at the local level government we had 45 women and the strategy we used with assistance from DFED and also UNDP is really getting the women candidate to understand the role of being a member of the assembly what is your role even if you plan to spend what year are you going in with to the election if it's 5000 when are you going to focus it on is it going to be on your campaign posters or is it going to be on everybody in your community that's part of your campaign group or where do you form the transportation because you're going right into the villages so where to do a reality check with them there was a group that decided they're not ready for that so that's the strategy we'd like to do a national strategy to get more women to the national level you have a question on safe houses with safe houses when it comes to government we are putting pressure on members of parliament governors and members we have district development authority where all the funds are going directly to the district it's no longer a national level so how do we take it to them how do we get decisions at the national level where anything is giving direction for safe homes or for and what I'm happy to also announce here is we have five prior terriers of law and other infrastructure and so most of the funding had to be out there there's now a community development which covers all the other important areas that you and I are passionate about that's where we're pushing many of these agendas so when you see safe houses maybe the leader is committed the leader is committed to helping to find a couple more yes I need to acknowledge the fact here well I'm here thank you for inviting me in fact you have really made that start for us with safe houses there's a number of them on the country which is in Manus we have seven or eight and I've paid a visit there and had a look at the safe home itself and it's even we're better than many of the homes in the villages and settlements I thought oh no we're going to want to stay here for a lot longer and by looking at Bukka we have Bukka and Goroka so we have a number of safe houses there what we need in PNG is really professional counseling our health welfare offices we are counseling and social workers there's mothers there's fathers but the professional counseling that is really needed for traumatized individuals is lacking and this is another way of complexity the education system and delivering the skills that you have made how are you going with that and so when we raised these issues we are looking at a whole sort of sector of their own and so you have the university there we raised these issues so they can look at the curriculum what can they improve in there that can address those they're sending out from the university so that they are able to work in organizations such as ours and address some of these issues I'm happy that UPNG now has gender studies as one of its electives at the university so that's a big class for my country but we recognize that there's still more that we need to do but those are some of those areas that they've shown that we are moving thank you Duncan do you have difficulty finding people with the right skills to work in your organization is that still a real break on the potential for addressing violence effectively yes there are a lot of gaps in the skills that professionals needs to have in order to address family sex or violence issues in the country like the secretary said that our education system need to also address and improve its curriculum in order to ensure that people are trained and have the skills that they need and the knowledge to provide the services that people need so I mean for me I think we've talked about a lot of the complexities and the different dimensions that are involved in addressing violence effectively and some of them are common across all countries and Australia certainly hasn't cracked the complete picture particularly in terms of coordination across different levels of government but UPNG has got out of complexities and one of those is the ethnic diversity in the remoteness I wonder if you can tell me what your ideas might be for the future how should PNG approach the response to violence differently to other countries to respond to the diversity and the remoteness of some of the communities in PNG how can you ensure that we can get services out to everybody yeah I think from the government then gone especially recognizing the churches that are there because besides the family that's the second group they run to for safety and so strongly recognizing the churches is a big step forward another is when we have partners coming into country it's not one size fit all kind of help we have to recognize and understand that many of us women families we come from a village in that village we all have our different standing in society as women I'm not mine she would know her if you go talking very feminist they totally push you away some of the awareness that we're doing like now when you go home and talk about it if it comes from you as a woman would it be accepted by the villages of the community should you start it in your home and educate your husband or do that awareness around your sons and your husband so they do the talking for you to the rest of the community would that have a lot more impact than you as a woman so just knowing that and having that balance is a really big step forward for us as women and if we can do that then right we'll be okay sometimes we take the wrong approach and it pushes us right back and we have to work another how many years to just get it right again so just knowing our place and where we come from in the villages we represent is a big step forward I know my own story and where I come from and where I am in my village and how they slowly recognize and accepting that I'm not just a woman I'm a professional too and I'm a leader in my own right so that's slowly being appreciated and it makes me happy that I didn't push it the way that I was taught at the global level and international level so it works in the context of the social cohesion that's a really important point what do you reckon how do you personally say the issue of diversity in women's school how does oil searching go to the private sector I think first of all we recognize there are a lot of innovative and successful approaches and learnings that are apparently being developed in P&G and family P&G is an excellent example of that and it is definitely true to say that different locations and specificities will require different approaches probably true for P&G than almost anywhere else in the planet and what makes it interesting but also incredibly challenging having said that there are a lot of commonalities and I think focusing on those probably makes things easier but in relation to the different approaches I was just having a conversation this morning about this and saying for example just if you use the family P&G model it's not that one model is so successful here that we should apply it there but rather than that we should really focus on this coordination and discussion aspect how did you do it let's go back and see how we can do it because there will be learnings to be made that can make an approach more efficient and reduce the need to reduce the possibility of making mistakes as you go along as you will necessarily but there's common factors that I will just reference firstly that men maintain a very strong voice and leaderships are focusing on what can we do with men having men identify their issues in the ways that they can take control of this issue and mentor other men and boys in their families and workplaces to think differently in terms to the issue of GBB and family and sexual violence also supporting survivors access to services and the Secretary was just saying in the private sector we have the resources to be able to afford counselling services for our community of people and that's a wonderful thing how can we then extend beyond that to provide those services and develop nationals that can be councilors for the survivors of violence and then also I think the third thing is that a commonality is being able to work with partners that's going to be absolutely critical for two areas one of those is case management and also awareness on one side in men accompanying like all search will have the resources and expertise in lots of different things in business operations and one of those issues around GBB in the workplace and beyond and then the other and final one which is a really big area of focus for us is empowering women and girls and I think you raised that point before that's absolutely what we would focus on is a very critical aspect education education education especially literacy and financial literacy and there are things that you can do quite quickly to start alleviating some of those pressures and giving women tools to be able to have choices in their lives and to have security and those are the sort of responses that we are sort of taking as a two-tiered approach what can we do now what can we do to ensure that there's a long-term sustainable approach That's really useful there's something that needs to be location based of the best commonalities and we need to think about them in their context and that's really useful and just before I ask Dengar the same question could I ask you about the male employees of the approach but also just taking how do you respond to male employees if you come to know that they're a perpetrator of violence even outside of work is that something that you are participating in or are you saying that it's beyond your bridge No absolutely not I mean I hire men so I work with men and I answer to men so I don't think it's beyond my brief at all the company itself and when I was talking about the policy approach making sure that we align internal policies for both the company and the foundation towards best international practice has policies which take these kind of matters quite seriously we have a code of conduct which is of which can result in very severe consequences including dismissal and also a policy of diversity and inclusion and also safety and health and awareness policy safety, health and environmental awareness policy has gender aspects to it so there's only three of I think five which specifically address gender equality and inclusion and breaches of the or any of those can result in consequences it's the HR function of the business that manages those sort of separate instances male perpetrators even outside of their employment that's a very good question I would have to cite specific examples that's a kind of an area that's still under conversation I think anything that impacts the business and if you've got the HR specialist skills that you need to manage this sensitively that's probably an area of the business that we would need to look at but I wouldn't be able to answer that question no problem can you tell us what you think of the issues of that specific diversity of P&G and if Feminine is going to be new centres elsewhere how do you reckon you'd need to change the approach if at all to take account of the cultural differences the approach that we are currently implementing is working the model is working and I guess sharing that will be a way forward also for a lot of provinces and yeah okay I might see if there's some more questions I'll leave it up to you this is a fascinating discussion I have just two questions the first one is on the perpetrator that's a really hard one and before Kimberly arrived I was quite involved in looking at policies on this and at first it was if you are a perpetrator of violence we don't want you in the company and then we started thinking what does that mean for the families and all of a sudden he might do something dreadful to his wife, he comes to work, he's fired and then he doesn't have an income and he's really angry and he's part of the employment contract and so how do you then are you better off than having a culture that there's zero tolerance but then working with perpetrators to see that that's wrong and then helping the family to access services etc so that's still something that is under debate the second one secretary you really struck a chord with me when you noted you decided not to take advice from all the international organisations and follow your own advice as a woman in Papua New Guinea and if I ever do a PhD it's going to be entitled the unintended consequences of aid and how we've stuffed it up giving advice in many different areas and I think this is one of them that and where I got really excited for Papua New Guinea was when you really saw the shift between these women being a donor pushed agenda and it became a Papua New Guinea one and that's where I thought yep this is going to change and you now see that in spades that was the turning point for me but I guess do you feel more and more that Papua New Guineans now have the confidence to sit down and say to donors that is just wrong you need to listen to us you have it wrong that policy is not right are you feeling that you have the voice to be able to do that because I think with the safe house issue I mean you know we learned the hard way as well coming in and saying yes you need a safe house here it is and it lasted five minutes because we didn't discuss with the community how that needed to be developed and I think our second time around we're really thinking about it and asking the community what do you need and how do we support this but I think there's a lot of lessons that you can give to donors and how we can do things better because that seems to be the issue of the national government yeah I think we've got a lot of help from donors already in terms of you know having those initial initial policies they've lost and then you know you have really thought us well now we need to see what is the best practice that we need to give or what do we need to maintain and what are some of the new things especially where you will not fully realize at the village level the province and the village level that we need to afford and make it part of our policies and I think that's where we are coming out stronger and we are coming out stronger and saying no let's leave this fair for I think let's focus on this and let's see how it works and I think we will really help Papua New England that will really help Papua New England Papua New England before don't talk too much we accept a lot yeah we accept how churches came that torrents we accept you know how correct my my apology if you feel offended but how white people we say came we don't we accept we feel embarrassed we don't feel confident to raise our voices and talk back that was us then but now we feel like you can blame yourselves for really empowering us to to speak and I think we are you know in that time now and so Susan Feggelsen was the advisor so well together and we have the Pacific Women's Shaping Pacific Program which Family Treaty is a product of that as well and yeah we talk honestly like I tell you you need to be honest with me I need to be honest you can see it from my face when I am like many Papua New England might not look at you straight in the eye and you might see it as disrespect for them they see it as respect you know that they don't look straight into your eyes and speak to you but you're going to listen to what they want to say that's very very important and I think we are in that area now and that's why we are moving a lot of the things that we want to do we just need to get a lot of still a lot of that government commitment and our partners commitment that the provincial district level and we work together on this because I mean just imagine when you went out there parents then will not believe that girls now played rugby in the pacific games they won't because that's not a game that we girls play so to have girls play rugby is something and then to have an old girls female crew playing that is unbelievable you know but you have to get them to appreciate that information you must get them to appreciate it otherwise they see it as us wanting to become men absolutely agree with you particularly in the gender space absolutely important that we follow the layman because the violence is so often a backlash against pushing too hard in one direction we just want to be very careful we are pushing in the right direction in the right time and using the right levers in the right way so that's absolutely important my question goes to the secretary Solomon the first one is how involved and responsible members of parliament on the issue of gender based violence for example how what sort of budgetary locations do they do in their provincial budgets and what sort of implementation strategies do they have and the second question is it is true that churches, institutions such as the churches and family PNG and the private sector are being involved on the site but my question is what is the opinion on community driven action and is there any room for that question in the national framework thank you PNG right well I'll answer your second question first on community driven programs and our department of national planning in Papua New Guinea has worked really hard and we have tried to not only the department of national planning also in my department tried to see how we can recognize partners recognize partners properly through laws and policies and the food projects that are already running and national planning has also just launched the national development cooperation policy which clearly talks about our partnership with our partners and how we should have in PNG and so with that that gives us a lot of strength in our exit strategy some of these programs are good and then it's given to the communities trying to drive it but then there's no government recognition there because they're not aware of that program they're not aware of that good project that's running there because we maybe had partners that came speak with government or tell us what they were trying to do and went directly to the district of the province and so you get that issue where governments change and then probably the former head knew about this project and was supportive but the new governor comes in and he's not supportive of that program because he was not aware so just continuously having to include governments in their roles and continuously including them where I was just sharing with family PNG and some of the things that we can do together so that you are continuously recognized I'd like to share some of these good programs and stories in the parliament I'd like to get my ministers to share that a good program is there in Wavel and run by so and so because I see all the members you know trying to they have funds I want that can you come and do it in my village I'd like that too come and do it in my village but when we are not working together and when you leave then that's not sustained so that's where we really need that approach and another example for community development project is from the other side again is we have Chica for example and I know that many partners who come want to help us at the national level with reviews and reviews of policies and legislation but I think we are we've gotten smarter now with working on those things so where else can we drive the funding now so with Chica we said okay can you send us some your technical people on just how to make a well, what a well you know simple things so they sent some of the experts we took them all the way to the village they saw that we had done our TNA our feasibility study so there was nine villages there without water but they have to walk how many miles just to fetch water so Chica was there training all the young boys in the village this is about community participation young boys in the village they themselves did the land survey they dug the ground they mixed the brick they dug the drain all the way to the water river and at the end of it all they had nine water taps running now there was not people are getting used to being paid before they do something that the community needs there was none of that because it was an area where they really needed water in the village so those are some you know community development projects that communities themselves to hold a shield and I keep telling others if you need experts to do your water well don't look for test these nine villages here they have experts not to you know they have been trained Chica gave them certificates so they can come and do yours so I just thought I should share an example sorry you are members of parliament you also asked you know it's very challenging sometimes when you have you need to there are different levels of people that get elected you know and you need to get them to understand that with science we have to comply you know how do we domesticate our laws and our legislations how do you as a leader influence them at your community level but lately the response has been good and why it's been good is because we are giving the direction to the policies that you submit for the endorsement you get some little clauses in there where NSE members are directed to do so and so from the district of the authority funds make a 5% or 10% to women so that's the way we are pushing it at the national level again the ownership is still with the province and the district thank you secretary no time is running short I do want to ask if all of our speakers thought what your last one idea or innovation is what's the last the biggest gap that's facing in response to violence in PNG at present but I think already we have traversed a lot of ground and I'm hearing the complexity of responding to violence is in many cases similar around the world but PNG of course has extra dimensions and extra complexities and I think we've heard a lot of innovative ideas here today and the fact that PNG is coming somewhat late to the response to violence means that you can take account of best practice internationally so particularly engaging men and supporting men particularly engaging the private sector I think that's the way best practice is happening now the coordination issue the systems you've got in place at government level and community level to promote coordination and make sure that there's no wrong entry point for women I think these are some of the best practice issues internationally and the recognition of the need for people to come in a coordinated fashion but also recognising that diversity of PNG is absolutely important and the particular approaches to gender issues in PNG I think it's an absolutely important piece for me and what I've learnt today is that you're really grappling with that and advancing gender equality knowing the context knowing how far you can push in one sense and when you need to step back and try another line and of course engaging with churches who are amongst the front lines as we say family first then churches then governments in many remote parts of PNG it's important to build on and recognise so I think we've already heard a lot and the issue of partnership is absolutely I think another issue that PNG's hearing is working on well so for me I've heard a lot of innovations but I might just ask you Kimberley can tell us what you think is the next frontier or the biggest innovation that we need to do from a private sector perspective that's a really huge question for that I think essentially it is for us it's focusing on partnership where I think people who are business people in PNG will be the first technology that they're not social experts and won't have necessarily tools in house to develop a specific or accurate response to quite massive social issues in which this is a front-runner in them so for us it's definitely developing partnerships and the right kinds of partnerships for us specifically the women's protection empowerment program essentially we're focused on ensuring that we deliver gender equalities realised in the workplace firstly and secondly overall that in PNG we empower women to live lives that are productive and free of violence we're motivated by those two goals and our approach whether it's innovative or practical practical might be innovative in a space where not very much has happened before is really internally what can we do locally with our partners and nationally with the government and our goal is to be a leader and a partner in all of those things as it's early days it's really one where sharing information I think is really critically the key it's not something that comes naturally to corporations that compete but I think this is one area where different companies are learning to lower their barriers and it's a powerful opportunity to maximise our resources to create an efficient and global response as possible what we would really like to see as sort of borders of a national effort would be a national response and I've referred to the question before about the churches as being a really integral part of that a unified response with a common message needs to be developed at a national level not just that we can follow it but that we really do have a global approach to a very common problem across the country that would be sort of what we could contribute to that work would definitely obviously want to do that would take our violence from the national level I have to say in my experience engagement of the private sector and working together as a sector and with other sectors is actually really innovative not something that goes without saying anywhere else so it's a great step forward thank you what about you do you reckon is either the big new innovation that we need to pursue the gap that we need to fill or what's the biggest win you think that's happened in the past a lot of change have happened in the recent months and years like we've discussed earlier on but a way forward like I see is a real partnership a real partnership with the government sector before we had the private sector churches and other entities working working in isolation but now there's improvement in partnerships so we continue to grow that networking and partnerships strengthen that a lot more with coordination from the government from the national level that people can feel that you know there is some kind of accountability for the services that they are delivering and also there are men and boys behavior programs that I see working but we need to also increase the amount of that program on behavior change of men and boys and also like our secretary pointed out professional counseling for both men and boys so I know there are many churches that are providing counseling services but we need professional counseling in this area to address the issue of family sexual violence from a more general perspective so those are the areas that I see that we really need to work and strengthen in order to move forward with this conversation and chance that we can support your sector to develop some really innovative responses to build on some of the work that's happened already I agree with you I think that's absolutely an area of need and secretary Yes for me from the government angle we sit and we look at what's happening out there with our partners and what kind of awareness strategies are they using that we know we can replicate that right done and I must say different for using rugby a lot P&G loves rugby they love rugby they can miss other things when it comes to books and miles and until they are watching how can we make use of rugby as advocates on gender-based violence how can we use television because they use they watch this right in the villages how can we better use that to show programs on GBV stories about champions in the community not from another country not from the national level but champions in the community that are making a difference especially male when they show programs of male trying to make a difference talking about gender-based violence addressing these issues it makes a lot of difference to many other men that are sitting there and watching so that's a big area for us as well also modern technology has taken part in GBV and where some countries are right they are actually using mobile they have learnt to text so that's our literacy literacy teacher then so how can we better make use of modern technology now how can we better make use of modern technology we've focused a lot with our censorship office on effects and reviewing the censorship but what are all the positive things that we can use that for my last one would be the standardized and institutionalized data data we still don't have proper data to support many of the things that we are saying we see it we see many things but we still don't have data so that's a big area that we would need a lot of focus on I think we need to keep talking about that particularly in the context of the sustainable development goal which we now have it targeted around incidents and prevalence of gender equality so we need to be able to report effectively for no other reason but certainly it will help inform policy so absolutely agree I think actually we're out of time aren't we so I know there's a lot more questions but I think we can people stay and talk in their refreshments and thank you very much to actually thank you very much and also to Lely thank you for your support for this and thanks to our speakers Gimbali Degla thank you very much for being there it's been great to have the opportunity to talk to you I've really enjoyed it thank you


Let's sing a song you don't hear every day It's your old friend calling again Hello sweetheart, it's smiling Ed Mcconnell, the Aladdin lamp man again Have you heard this one lately?   You know, gals, I'm no scientist, but I tried a little experiment the other day in our store I took an inexpensive economical Aladdin electric lamp and put it beside a very, very costly lamp Then I asked several ladies which was the most expensive lamp And here's the joke, do you know they couldn't tell me? And I think that proves one thing, the Aladdin folks put real quality and pains Taking care into the manufacture of their lamps And they've got to be good to stand up to the 40 years of quality manufacturing Aladdin is famous for Which just goes to show, when you stop in our store and buy an Aladdin lamp with whippelite shade to match You're getting a wonderful buy for your money, honey Now, I may not be a scientist, but I know a wonderful buy when I see one Just as you will when you stop in our store And now for our him On life's pathway I am never lonely My Lord is with me My Lord divine Ever-present guide I trust him only No longer lonely For he is mine No longer lonely For Jesus is the friend Of friends to me No longer lonely Jesus is the friend Of friends to me And that's all for today, honey This is Smiling Ed McConnell, the Aladdin lamp man saying bushels of love And thanks for listening Don't forget us next time cause we'll be back to sing a song You don't hear it every day When we all come calling again


What would you say is your biggest regret? Well, my biggest regret would probably be my years I spent as a hardcore Christian and hating people who were others, not being completely inclusive of everybody and loving everybody.  Hate is definitely not the way of Jesus unless it's hatred towards sin. Unfortunately, our modern culture has equated love with unconditional approval of every behavior and lifestyle. But this is fundamentally absurd. There's an important difference between my acceptance of someone's. I can demonstrate my acceptance of someone, my love for them as an image bearer of God with dignity and worth and yet disagree with some of their choices and behaviors. Yes, there are definitely people who speak words of hate in the name of Christianity. Standing on their high horse neglecting the wickedness of their own soul, but they don't speak for Jesus, who invites each of us to find freedom from sin and new identity in him.