One of my favorite values here in week two is at the tight end position and it's Logan Thomas who's $4,700. Look week one Logan Thomas finishes as a top 10 tight end. He ranked in the top 10 in routes run He ranked in the top three in target share There's a lot to like about what Logan Thomas did in week one against Philadelphia Not a lot of alternatives in this Washington offense outside of Terry McLoran So Logan Thomas should be able to maintain a pretty high target share in this offense Give him the fact that he's the 24th most expensive tight end on this main slate. You have to get him into your lineup I also like Paris Campbell, who's $5,300. He's going up against Minnesota a team last week They gave up the most receptions and the third most yards to slot players Paris Campbell in week one ran 95% of his routes from the slot I think you can have a really big game and pay off that $5,300 price tag and then finally there's Jonathan Taylor in that same game against the Vikings Taylor is only $5,800 Obviously, there's no Marlon Mack after he tore his Achilles and when Marlon Mack went down in that game against Jacksonville last week Jonathan Taylor had ten carries and I hime heins is three and Taylor had a 13% target share in that game which gave him six targets I like Jonathan Taylor moving forward as a top 10 running back in fantasy football The fact that you can get him under $6,000 this week is awesome. You've got to get him into your lineup


and value all the things that teachers need. If I could write a blight, if I had a blight check I'd get every one of the things that all my fellow members have just mentioned. I think Mr. Schluckman said it, we're in a unique position. We need to be able to support the mental health of not only our students but our teachers and administrators going forward or whatever that takes. We're in a position right now that we don't know how much money we're gonna get. So maybe this question should be put on an agenda item in another two weeks when maybe the money gets a little bit better. Thank you. So I wanna talk about two years ago when we tried to hire it was either two or 2.5 FTEs of assistant principals and we're unable to do so. So I, given that I anticipate our FY22 budget is not what we might hope for it to be I do not want, I'm fine with doing some of the assistant principals for next year. I'm not okay with doing it at the level that at three and a half FTEs. First of all, I think it's unrealistic to hire those people within one year. I don't think that we're gonna get the best people. And we didn't, two years ago, we tried to get one for the Thompson. We didn't get anybody. We ended up hiring a social worker sort of in that spot which is fine. Nobody said to have a social worker but we still never got that position as an assistant principal. So we still don't have somebody. So I just wanna be realistic given that, I don't think we're gonna have a ton of money to spend. Then I wanna make sure that we put in the budget a realistic FTE number for vice-prins or for assistant principals and don't try to do the whole kit and caboodle this year and then find out in August that, oh, we couldn't do it so we don't have these people but we have this money that's allocated. So I wanna be really realistic about it. And I don't think that a full wholesale bring everybody to 1.0 is reasonable or realistic but I'm fine with doing some of it. I think that social workers are probably my number one especially six through eight but also nine, 12 and K five. Class sizes need to be kept as small as possible. So I want to provide both Dr. Bodie and Dr. Holman Dr. Bodie until the middle of the summer and then Dr. Holman in the late summer the flexibility to have reserved teacher positions that can be deployed as things shift and move. I think Mr. Thielman's comment earlier about families looking to see what's going to happen and whether our schools are going to open for kids full time either this spring or in September is a real consideration and I wanna make sure that our superintendent has the option to deploy teachers to make sure that we don't get into a really tricky situation someplace. And then I also wanna make sure that we can reasonably settle our contracts that are up this year in whatever way our negotiating teams end up sorting those out. So those are my priorities. All right, any other feedback? Yep, Dr. Allison Ampey, go ahead. Thank you, sorry. So I echo much of what has been said by everyone. I think my main goal is to bring to have a plan to make our schools the vibrant learning communities that we want them to be post pandemic, post disruption starting in the fall and also to address any learning gaps that have occurred over this time. I agree with lower class sizes. I wonder if adding extra classroom aids if we are in situations where we can't decrease class sizes past a certain point because of space constraints if that's helpful. I agree with the idea that we need to be messaging what we're going to be doing. We need to be doing that now so that because families are going to be planning for next year and they're gonna be making their decisions soon. And then I agree we need support for our teachers and that we'll need support for mental health and stuff such as social workers and counselors. But the other thing that I haven't heard mentioned is whether we want to be doing anything special specifically to address the learning gaps which have occurred. Things such as extended day summer programs education programs, tutors, online resources, things like that. I feel like we would benefit from maybe a two year approach to trying to get all the kids back up to where they should be. And I'm hoping that we'd be able to get some idea about what that would be and to see that reflected in the budget. And then I also agree that we need to be thinking about our negotiations that are ongoing and that we want to do the best job with those that we can. That's all. Great, thank you. Any other follow-up from anybody? Okay, and then so we will not be voting tonight on an FY22 town budget allocation because we don't have a number. But I think it's nice to see that on the agenda just because you know that in a different year we would have been doing that likely. Okay, the next item on the agenda is prioritization of teacher vaccinations, Mr. Heiner. Thank you. The governor and everyone else seems to have a priority of getting kids back into school full time. I think it would be most important for this committee to seek help with the MASC and other organizations to lobby the governor to get Jesse and everything to move the teachers up in priority for vaccination. They are on tier two. I'm on tier two by virtue of my age. I think I'll be honest with you. I think teachers should be on a higher priority to get them back and feel comfortable. So I'd like to open for discussion and possibly a motion to request the chair seek MASC or it's a lobby for us going forward. Thank you. Discussion, Mr. Cardin. So I mean, I think they are pretty high in the order now they're on second level of phase two and hopefully we'll be getting enough supplies that they can proceed with both the first level and the second level around the same time. But that's sort of where I would direct our efforts is not necessarily changing their priority order because that requires the advisory committee and other work to go on but encouraging them to move into both the two top tiers in phase two at the same time so that our school nurses can be vaccinating our teachers while our health department is organizing clinics for the elderly. Mr. Schiffman. I thank Mr. Hainer for bringing this up. I think that communicating to our representatives and our senator and the governor and to MASC and also to other school committees through the MASC listserv or other means possible would be a good thing to do with a message that's basically I don't know if the message is to facilitate moving up in the tiers but to urge a timely and expedited allocation of vaccine as well as the mechanism for providing it to our teachers. So where we are in the priorities is one thing is will we be able to get that in the arms of our teachers on a reasonable and on a reasonable basis? I don't want our teachers jumping through hoops. I'd like to see something like we did this week with first responders and making it easy for it to happen. So I would, and I'm crafting a motion in my head as we're moving forward. I move that the Arlington School Committee, to direct the chair to communicate to our elected state representatives, our state senator, the governor and to MASC our desire for providing vaccinations for our profession, for our school-based staff as soon as possible and providing support for the logistics of accomplishing the vaccinations. Second. Discussion. Okey-doke. Ms. Eckstein, let's vote. Yes. Mr. Carden. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schluckman. Yes. Mr. Hainer. Yes. And I'm going to abstain from this one. Not that I don't support it. All right. That's because we're making you work. You know, the next item on the agenda is the superintendent's report. Dr. Bodie. On mute. What's on the agenda as always is the update on the high school. And really the update this time is something everybody can see, which is the work that's going on. We have a bird's-eye view on the sixth floor. We also have, we also have noise of the construction, but it is going along very well. It is on time. You can see the steel going up. I think one of the things that was a big surprise to us is how quickly they put in the staircases the other day. And what you're already seeing is the east part of the steam lane being enclosed. The idea was to get the building as closed as soon as possible so that the interior work can begin in a more protected environment. So it's going along quite well. The subcommittee work that this part of the work that has to be done again is moving forward. We had, we have now moved to monthly meetings for the, for the building committee for the foreseeable future anyway. And continuously, I compliment to Dr. Allison Ampe and Amy Spear who keeps the communication continuing to be updated. And so there's going to be some new information on the website very soon. And I do remind people that if you would like to have the notification sent to you, you can go on the building website. Hsbuilding.org, all right. So anyway, that's really all there is at the moment. I hope to have you have more update from the subcommittees maybe the next time we meet. And that's all I have for the superintendent report. Great. The consent agenda, all items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no, excuse me, separate discussion of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the event will be, the item will be considered in its normal sequence. Mr. Heiner contacted me earlier about the minutes from the December 17th meeting. So let's pull those and then we can administratively change them and I think approve them tonight. So I'm going to pull those if I'm allowed to do that. I don't know. All right, great. So vote approval of warrant 21140, check date 122920. Can I get a motion on the consent agenda? So moved. Second. Ms. Ekston. Yes, Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlichman. Yes. Mr. Heiner. Yes. So yes. And for the minutes, Ms. Fitzgerald, I believe the December 17th meeting, Mr. Heiner's name is missing from the attendees list. So if we can make that change administratively, that would be great. And then we can approve the minutes separately. If anybody, does anybody have a problem with that? No. Okay. So I need a motion to approve the minutes from the regular meeting December 10th and December 17th with the change to the December 17th, 2020 meeting. So moved as amended. Great. And you seconded Mr. Thielman. Thank you. Ms. Ekston. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampe. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlichman. Yes. Mr. Heiner. Yes. And I am also yes. Subcommittee and liaison reports budget. Dr. Allison Ampe. We met, I'm getting my meetings confused. We met before long range plan and we'll meet again over, we met discussing things that would come up at long range plan and we will be meeting over the next couple of weeks in preparation for the meeting on the fifth. And also to start, continue the budget process. Community relations. Mr. Heiner. We had our first scheduled meeting last Saturday and Mr. Thielman and I didn't have a lot of people come out but a couple came in and occupied us for a good hour, some good discussions that were reflected in tonight's meeting. They will continue on a weekly basis for the next 20 weeks. CIA, Mr. Cardin. Yes. So as we discussed, we met yesterday to go over the student learning time report and new regulations. We'll be meeting again probably not until after our next meeting to go over, to go back with the human rights commission on the issues they raised over the summer, one of which we had told them we're doing the climate survey and I understand we'll be getting results of the climate survey at our next meeting. So we can discuss that further in subcommittee after the next meeting if that is confirmed. So I was gonna talk about that on the future agenda items but that's something that I have on the agenda for the meeting in two weeks time are the panorama survey results. So if there's any reason that that's not gonna happen then somebody needs to let me know. All right, facilities, Mr. Thielman. No report. Policy, Mr. Schiffman. Yeah, we're gonna need to schedule meeting. Dr. McNeil sent an email to me saying that we need to look at our restraint policy to comply with current guidelines based on the tiered focus monitoring review. And we also wanna take a look at the Native American imagery. So when I get the background information over the policy changes and some availability of the student, I'll poll the rest of the subcommittee for a meeting. And Mr. Schiffman, just a clarification on that. I think the piece we did the, we did the seal, it's the land use piece, right? Isn't it, it's that? Yes, yes, yes. I don't wanna talk the whole thing out but the policy statements surrounding her presentation which are definitely going to the land use discussion. Great, thank you. Arlington High School Building Committee, Mr. Thielman. We'll meet next on February 2nd. I think Dr. Boody summarized earlier. Great, liaison reports, announcements, future agenda items, Mr. Schiffman. Just on the announcements or the comments with regard to the building, the high school building, somebody's been posting some drone shots of the high school building on Facebook. And I just wanna say that, yes, I agree that the progress being made right now in the high school project is astounding. And I wanna thank the folks who were involved with the project for their diligent work. Great, so liaison reports, announcements, future agenda items, Mr. Thielman. I don't have a question and maybe I lost the plot here. We had a, there was a survey that went on to parents at some point in November. And I don't believe we ever got the results back and discussed them. Correct, so that's the panorama survey that the department mentioned and I also mentioned. And my understanding is that a representative of the superintendent, likely Dr. McNeil, but I don't wanna put him on the spot too much and we'll be sharing that with us at our next meeting. Panorama, okay. We can call it whatever. It's climate survey, call lots of different things, yeah. Sure enough, thank you. Dr. McNeil, does that line up with your expectation? So there are some things that we're working with panorama, they're coming in and they're doing a presentation to all the administrators in order to talk about the dashboard and the results. So I am looking to have that presentation on the first meeting in February. We also are planning on sending out the student survey around that time, February 1st in February as well. So I'm sorry, February 1st, I said that twice. I didn't mean to say that, but February 1st we're planning on sending out the student survey and have the students respond to that. So we are planning, I would like to have that presentation on the first meeting of February for school committee. Well, the challenge, so what you're saying is is that you're not gonna be ready for January 28th. My calendar might be wrong, but I don't see a, maybe I haven't even put these in, that's possible. All right, okay, so whatever, we must have a meeting in February. I just don't have it on my calendar, which is fine. I can check with Karen for the dates for the- February 11th, February 11th, February 11th. So if that's okay with the committee, I would definitely request that. However, if you, again, it's up to you if you would like it on January 28th, I could probably try to do that, but I just feel that we will be very prepared on February 11th to give you the results. Okay, I think my concern is just that the data is getting older and older by the day.  So I'm disappointed that we have not gotten any readout from it to date. So I mean, if it's not ready for the 28th, it's not ready and we'll do it on the 11th. But I, my personal opinion is that I'm disappointed that we haven't seen anything from it. And I think that it gets older and staler by the day. So that's the answer to your question, Mr. Thielman, February 11th. All right, anybody else? Okay, executive session to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with union and or non-union personnel or contract negotiations with union and or non-union, if which held an open meeting may have a detrimental effect to conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation in which if held an open meeting may have a detrimental effect, collective bargaining may also be conducted. I get a motion. So moved. So moved, specifying that it's with the AEA, the negotiation is, the discussion is about the negotiation with the AEA. Thank you. So a motion by Mr. Heyner, second by Mr. Cardin for executive session, Ms. Exton. Oh, and we are going to adjourn from executive session. We will not be coming back. Ms. Exton. Yes, Mr. Cardin. Yes. Dr. Allison Ampey. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Heyner. Yes. And I am also yes. All right, thank you to everybody else. Well,


7th block. A little bit of thanks. And Nul throws it down. Ryan Moore from Nick Jones. And a timeout called by the Hawks. Look at the celebration for Ryan Nul.


How are you doing? These are for us? Yeah. Well, thank you very much. You're on the hot side of town. You're on the hot side. Which is really good. I understand you're on your way to Europe. Yeah, I'm going to Germany. When you get there? Next week. Why don't you just say a good word for us. I'll be right behind you. I'm going to let us in. Well, okay. You know, always a good word for you. You do that. This is my television. Oh, yeah. Oh, and I'm not going to be in those places. Huh? I'm not going to be in those places. I'm going to Bonn. Yeah, Bonn, Germany, the capital there for the summit meeting. Yeah. You've got quite a tour there. Well, you know what? All the way to May 23rd. I always wanted to be a good ambassador to you. You know, I went there last year. And I did the same thing to him. What a great man you was. I took this country, took it out to Douglas, and to a positive finding. You know. And I just went up Jamaica. I was down there with the SIA. Oh, yeah. You know, for the seminar we had down there. Yeah. It was very successful. Well, let's say thank you very much for these. And I want to thank you for taking time to see me. They can see you. Chuck Jones. Oh, sorry. So, I saw you last in Dallas. Well, bye, guys. Bill Taito. Pleasure to meet you. We can see you. So, what's the matter? I'll be up there waiting for your other boys. They'll be waiting for you. All right. Do you need this back here? No. We'll know where you are. Thank you. Let me get my clothes up. Okay, sure. Thank you so much. Okay. I want to take one behind the desk. But let me give you this. Can I shoot it? Like I did before. Okay. I know this too. Thank you, sir. Okay. Thank you. Oh, that's God bless you now. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Oh, that's God bless you now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I used to play football against them. They're from England, sir. I got it from the National iuberty. Nice to see my boys.iba. That's what he's using. To, Conaway. Conaway. How are you? How are you, sir? How are you, sir? How are you? I hope you don't get affected. Mr. President, on behalf of the over half a million National Guardsmen, I'd like to thank you for what you've done for the Guard and also for our country. We also want to thank you for putting respect back as a unit one, and I want to defer an offer to the immediate best President to explain us a certain range. Mr. President, in 1972 in San Francisco, he kindly assisted us in presenting this award to a great American, Mr. Bob Hope. On that occasion, he made the comment to the opportunity to say that this would be one of them. We are privileged today to resolve that difference. On behalf of the National Guard Association of the United States, representing some 56,000 officers all over America, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Virginia Islands, and Guam, in deep appreciation for your support of a strong military, it is our pleasure to present you this award, which is unique. And we certainly hope that you will enjoy having it, and we sincerely appreciate all you doing to keep America strong. Mr. President, listen, thank you very much. I think that's a very remarkable display of 13 colonies and the uniforms for each. Now, this would be the wrong place for me to tell the whole story. I wouldn't have about to end, stood up in front of his troops as a general and said, I lost my toy soldiers and I cried, and my mother said to me, don't worry, someday you'll find them, and he said, and now I have. Mr. President, this is the plaque that I've run with. Appreciate you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I think we'll go down there and play with the audience. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Good to see you. Bye, sir. Hey, the desk, he's already done a ton of business stage, and he did it by looking at the floor and up, engaging his shop that went and shopped on the game. Isn't that anything else to do, ma'am? Very special. Right, right, right, right, right, right. Right, right, right, right, right, right. Right, right, right, right, right, right. Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right. Right, right. But I know that you have to communicate formally to Nancy that this is kind of special. It's your first visit here, but it's also your birthday, your sixth birthday. Happy birthday. It's your birthday of the jar with this seal on it. And in the jar at Delegates. I understand you have a common interest also in swimming, yes, because I understand that as a sport. That was mine. I was a lifeguard for seven summers when I went through school. The character you can give. I wrote a TGFL about the American attention that you began. Thank you very much. This is an old book about America. It's more general. Well, thank you. I understand they want a picture of us sitting down over here. Come in. Take the chair over there. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it. I appreciate it very much. I think we've gone down the brown. Getting in touch with you. You're looking for. You're looking for us. I'm looking for you. I'm looking for you. I'm looking for you. This is Carville. Hello there. This is Mr. Hickey. I can't stand there. I guess I start. Mr. President, it's a great honor. I know for Matt and his family to have you here. We have some other very special people here also. The people who really made all this possible. Mr. and Mrs. Carville and of course Pat. And I was going to say with the four children, her fire team. Then I arrived and I realized it was a potato. Now you all know Matt well. In fact, I would be presumptuous to try to tell you about Matt Caulfield. Let me tell you a little bit about the Marine Corps and Matt Caulfield. I think you all know that right across the river we have a very famous statue. A statue that by putting together a little marble and brick and mortar and bronze, we captured a very important moment in the history of our country. A moment that proved that brave men working against overwhelming odds can accomplish any mission provided they had the right spirit and dedication. Now what you probably haven't noticed is that the last man in the queue, private first class Ira Hayes, an American Indian, his hands are not touching the pole. They're reaching. And that's the greatness of the country that we live in and the greatness of the Corps that Matt and I serve. Because the country that the President leads, and when people ask us why we go to Lebanon and why we go to Granada, it's because if this country is to be a great country it must always reach beyond its grasp. And that's what private first class Ira Hayes is doing at our statue. And that's what a young officer named Matt Coffield has done since 1958. He has always reached beyond his grasp. All people ask me, they ask Matt, what is it that makes a Marine different? And that's a hard thing to describe. How does one describe love of family, love of country, love of wife? But it's that same kind of love. And I think that we also have realized that even in a day of high technology and of fancy equipment, that the true heritage of our Corps belongs to people. They make the organization not equipment. Because equipment, machinery, doesn't have a heart, doesn't have a soul. And really doesn't care whether it's going to the moon or to Timbuktu. If it quits, it quits. But Marines like Matt Coffield have big hearts and they have very big souls. And they do care whether they're going to the halls of Montezuma or the shores of Triple E because they'll never quit. I can tell you all about Matt Coffield, a soldier, statesman, all about his academic credentials and their many, all about the great staff jobs that he's had, which is epitomized right here by working for the President of the United States, our Commander-in-Chief. But Matt Coffield's greatest hours were spent as a Commander of Marines, as a Company Commander twice, a Marine Detachment Commander, and also as a Battalion Commander. And while today we are honoring a very special individual who will be soon wearing the stars of a Brigadier General in the United States Marine Corps, that when that last volley is fired, Matt, and that last bugle is blown, Matt Coffield's legacy will not be the stars that he wears on his shoulders. Matt Coffield, the leader, the follower, Matt's legacy to his country will be the thousands of young people that he has touched with his genuine, warm, compassionate leadership. And there are literally, in our country today, thousands of young Americans who are far better, far better for our country, whether they're in uniform today or out of, for having served under Matthew P. Coffield. Would you please read the order, sir? Attention to orders, Department of the Navy, headquarters, United States Marine Corps, Washington, D.C. April 18th, 1985. From commandant of the Marine Corps to Colonel Matthew P. Coffield, United States Marine Corps, subject authority to assume the title and wear the uniform of a Brigadier General, U.S. Marine Corps. By the authority vested in the commandant of the Marine Corps, you are hereby authorized to assume the title and wear the uniform of a Brigadier General, U.S. Marine Corps, effective this state. Signed P.X. Kelly, General, U.S. Marine Corps. I'll ask Matthew to raise his right hand and I will dismiss the other members. You, Brigadier General, Matthew P. Coffield. Hi, Matthew, Brigadier General, Matthew P. Coffield. Solemnly swear that you will support and defend the Constitution. Solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution. Of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. That I take this obligation freely. That I take this obligation freely. Without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. Without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. And that I will well and faithfully discharge a duty to the office upon which I am about to enter I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office to which I'm about to enter, so I hope you've got it. One more presentation given directly to the committee. She has shared in this moment, and that's an internal family problem on how you get it from her. You know, I don't mean to get anyone in trouble here. And yet I can't help but tell in this marine atmosphere a little something that happened the other day when General Kelly and the rest of the chiefs of staff were in giving me a briefing on each branch of the service in the cabinet room. And sitting in the cabinet table and it came in Kelly's turn and he was up there and he was telling about the great improvements in amphibious landings and so forth and landing barges and all of that. And I'm surrounded by marines here. It's an awful place for an ex-course cavalry officer. But my chief of staff, Don Regan, the secretary of state, George Schultz, the secretary of the treasury, Jim Baker, my national security advisor, Bud McFarland, all ex-marines. And now you won't hold this against him, but while you were giving that exposition there on all of the improvements in this, Bud slipped me a note. True marine fashion, I read it. And it said, we really don't need all that. Marines can walk on water. I did just want to say something. I rehearsed it for two weeks, Mr. President. It was very warm here. I'm going to make it very, very brief. But just to express my appreciation to my father, a person who never had the opportunity to go to high school, who is the most well-read and best educated person I've ever met. My mother, who I just could never find words to express. Both of them taught me what integrity meant long before I discovered it. It was the hallmark of a marine officer. My wife, Pat, who I've been in love with since we were 17 years old, who during the dark days of my career was the one that really encouraged me to stay with it. And in all the separations and the bad days, four children, Tricia, who just graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. She just returned from two years with the Peace Corps in Ecuador. Sue Ann, the senior of the University of California, Berkeley. Matt, the graduate of the University of California, Davis. And Danny, who just won a Navy ROTC scholarship to the University of Southern California. So the call fields happen to be from New York, but as you can see, we're nowhere to go. The other person I'd like to say something is Ed Hickey, who I've only known for two years, but Ed, in terms of loyalty to you and to the presidency and doing things right, has no peer, even in the Marine Corps where we pride ourselves on a revere motto of Semper for Dallas. Ed's hidden strength and secret is something that you probably don't even know, is that his mother's maiden name is Caulfield. Lastly, sir, I would like to say something to you and it's very difficult and I know it's hot and I'll make it very fast and it's difficult because there's deep meaning. A long time ago as a captain, I asked once a very imminent military historian, who are the greatest military leaders in our history? And he replied, Robert E. Lee and Matthew B. Richway. He said, because they were such extraordinary leaders that somehow they touched the soul of their army. I really believe that's what's been going on in the rebirth of our armed forces in the past four years.  And what it amounts to, Mr. President, is armies are what soldiers believe. You believe in us and that's why we believe in you. I hope a historian someday captures this and it's important to the future of the security of the United States. I do know that no words were ever expressed what it means to my generation, to those who fought in Vietnam and who came home and who kept the faith when seeing that the nation was losing it. I'll never forget that what burned in my memory was that day in the rotunda of the capital standing behind you as a member of your staff when the unknown from Vietnam was brought home. And it was so fitting that the president, the commander in chief who believed in him was the one that welcomed him home. That same historian told me in those days that I could be a general officer someday and I didn't believe him, but he told me the way you did it and the secret was you watch great leaders and you try to emulate them. And I've watched you as closely as I could and from that day of you standing with us in the rain at the Camp Lejeune and at other things. It seems a shame that all of your achievements, you weren't also a Marine. And Mr. President, I can't pay a high compliment. What you've done for my family today and for me, we appreciate it very, very much. Thank you, sir. My kid says, well, you keep that job. It's sure better than being a private. Congratulations again. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm pleased to be a part of this.


Hello and welcome to this Lowey Institute Australia Papua New Guinea network event. My name is Jonathan Pryk, director of the Pacific Islands program here at the Lowey Institute. It's a pleasure to be hosting you all online this morning. The Australia Papua New Guinea network is all about people-to-people connections, and our goal today is to keep you connected, even if the travel restrictions mean we can't get together in person. We're here today to talk about how COVID-19 is affecting the business community and beyond Australia's nearest neighbour Papua New Guinea. Let me begin this event by acknowledging the traditional custodians on whose land I'm currently sitting, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. I would also like to thank our sponsors who make these events possible, Bank South Pacific and Coca-Cola Amitul. Let me also thank the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for its ongoing support for the Australia Papua New Guinea network. COVID-19 has been the great disruptor of our time, leaving very few parts of regular life untouched. The six or seven flights a day between Australia and Papua New Guinea have dropped to just one if we're lucky. Businesses reliant on expatriate workforces are quickly pivoting. Supply and logistics chains are quickly being stretched. The impact of reduced economic activity and declining demand for commodities, critical to both the Australia and Papua New Guinea economy, have foot governments under considerable strain. Today, we are here to unpack all of this and have brought together three people with great perspectives on the P&G Australia business relationship to help to do it. I'll now introduce each of them in turn. Peter Itzi is one of P&G's most recognised business leaders. He is Group CEO of Credit Corporation Limited, is heavily involved in community organisations including Transparency International Papua New Guinea, the Badili Club and Leadership P&G. In October, he was appointed Chair of Cummill Consolidated Holdings and is also Chair of P&G FM. Welcome Peter. Peter Good morning Jonathan and good morning to our listeners. Peter Next, we have Priscilla Kevin, who is an entrepreneur and IT guru who's been working in technology in P&G for 15 years. She founded P&G Women in STEM and has been a big part of the digital ICD clusters organisation. And just last month she was appointed to the Board of Bank South Pacific. Welcome Priscilla. Finally, we have Peter Botten. Peter was Managing Director of Oil Search from 1994 to 2020, leading one of the most storied careers in P&G business. Thank you Jonathan and back to the viewers. Thank you Priscilla. So Peter remains Chairman of the Heller Provincial Health Authority and a non-executive director of AGL Energy and has three decades experience in a key role in P&G Australia business relationship. Welcome Peter Botten. Peter Yeah, thanks so much and great to be with you all. Peter So a bit of housekeeping before we jump into the discussion. I'm going to moderate a conversation between our panelists for the first half hour before taking questions from our audience for the remainder of the hour. If you've got a question you would like to ask one or any of our participants, please use the Q&A button on Zoom or leave a comment in the Facebook feed. Now, being a digital event, we are also dependent on the reliability of internet connections from Sydney across to regional west in Australia and up to Port Moresby. So please bear with us through any unexpected technical glitches. And if we lose all three panelists, I have a copy of Sean Dauney's recent low-institute paper, the embarrassed cloning list here. I can read excerpts from. We're going to make sure we keep you entertained. We will finish properly on the hour to let our panelists and you in the audience to get back to your normal day. So without further ado, let's jump straight on in. I'd first like to hear from our Papua New Guinea and panelists, Peter Itze and Priscilla. How is sentiment among the P&G community and more specifically the business community going in the age of COVID? Peter Itze, perhaps we could start with you. Sure, Jonathan. Look, I think it'd be right to say, as with other parts of the world, there's a significant level of anxiety and uncertainty within our community. And that really has probably been the major concern amongst the various parts of our community, both the rural and the urban centers. It's this uncertainty and the uneasiness around the impact of COVID, which I think has probably caused our people the most concern. On top of that, obviously, the restrictions that have been introduced to deal with the threat of COVID has also impacted on people's freedom and movement. So that's a tangible impact in terms of the arrival of COVID. Thanks, Peter. And Priscilla, how about you? How are things looking from your perspective? I'll probably speak on small businesses, micro SMEs that have been really impacted by the COVID-19. And a lot of businesses have been closed due to the state of emergency controls and the lockdowns. So it's affected a lot of small businesses, especially a lot of small businesses also run projects and contracts with the larger corporations. And if these businesses are scaling down, they tend to affect the small business down the chain. So we've seen a lot of impact also for ICT businesses. Where we've seen some of their projects come to a hold. And they have to look for alternatives to actually sustain itself during the crisis. So I think for small businesses, it's been a really, really big impact for them. The challenge we also have is really looking at the data that we have, what's actually happening on the ground. We don't have enough data to assess the situation. So post COVID, hopefully that we can look at some of this data and plan better. Yes, COVID certainly does provide us all an opportunity to stocktake on what's important and where investment priorities need to be allocated. Peter Bodden, lockdown in the capital of the Independent Republic of Western Australia, how does it look from where you're sitting? Look, it is very different. I think this is the longest time since I've in 30-odd years that I've actually stayed home and not been in P&G. So it's a pretty good place to be if you're in the independent state of Western Australia. But obviously, a lot of challenges going on between Australia and P&G in running major businesses, major projects, supply chain, people moving people in and out, managing your rotational stuff, managing the operations and supplying the operations. So it has been combined with COVID, combined with changes in resource pricing, probably one of the most challenging three months that I've seen since I started work. So a really, really very dynamic time. But some positives in identifying new ways of working, some very dedicated people who are willing to stretch their time in country to work in new ways to keep our businesses running, but also all the challenges of infrastructure, of keeping power on, of keeping people supplied with food. So yeah, a very dynamic time and one which I think broadly speaking from various sources from industry to government to others actually, for one reason or another, we've all muddled through to where we are today. The lockdown in particular of travel between Australia and Papua New Guinea seems to have been particularly disruptive. Peter, I'd say how has this lockdown affected both internationally, but also within Papua New Guinea? How has that affected business activity? Well, Jonathan, it's had a major effect. If you look at it in terms of the international restrictions, we're very dependent because of our resource sector of mobilizing and moving people across the borders. So that's had a major impact. Also, many of the companies here, they have a fairly reasonable size expatriate workforce. And so they, you know, their movements have been affected as well. I think in terms of the domestic market, that's also been there's been a significant impact on that. If you remember, you know, the SOE, as it was introduced, the state of emergency caused us to lock down our provinces. So as a result, the movement of produce of items across provinces was limited, as well as people as well, that was restricted. So, you know, the fundamental, you know, business model for us is in terms of trade is people movement. And so as a result, it caused a significant impact in terms of the ability of businesses to remain, you know, to continue to trade and operate. So I think that those are the sort of major sort of impacts of probably of most significant in terms of Port Moresby is the impact on the hotel trade. We've seen two major chains shut down two large hotels here as a result of the limited number of international rivals coming into Port Moresby. So those are probably the biggest visible signs of the impact on the business activity within Port Moresby. Of course, the population of PNG is very dispersed and air travel between provinces is often critical when you know, there are such limited road networks in many parts of the country. So it's certainly disruptive on a number of levels from economic to social. Peter Botten, a lot of economic activity in Papua New Guinea, as mentioned, happens in some pretty far-flung remote places, particularly up in the Highlands where you have a lot of experience operating through your time at oil search. The complexity of logistics to keep these operations going are pretty astounding. How do you see them holding up through this? How is oil search and other operators pivoting in times of stretched supply chains? How long do you think these operations can continue with a diminished foreign workforce and other restrictions? Well, look, I think the planning process is to keep our people safe. Firstly, non-infected and the dynamic of moving people not just between countries, but also around the country are very, very challenging. The workforces had to adapt substantially and they need to be congratulated for being flexible enough to, as I say, go to revised work schedules, go to revised periods of time on break and having breaks in country rather than necessarily to their point of origin overseas, but also our national staff who have been impacted by the processes of lockdowns and travel between different parts of the country. We've had a very substantial process of understanding what can and can't be done, working closely with government and the SOE managers, if you like. At the moment, we're obviously stretching our friendship with our staff and their friendships with their loved ones when they can't get home. Obviously, we hope and indeed anticipate that the restrictions will be progressively lifted and people will be able to move much more freely later this year. We're reasonably comfortable that the plans and processes we have in place now in terms of supply, in terms of managing our people are robust, but clearly the longer this goes on, the more stressed people become, the more difficult it is to be away from home and the more difficult it is to supply and keep our operations going. But across both I think the mining and the petroleum sector, it's demonstrated some creative thinking, but most importantly, it's kept our people safe and non-infected and not infecting the communities in which we work. I think we're okay for a while longer, but the longer it goes on, certainly into the second half of the year, it will become much, much more difficult and more challenging to support. Well, that's a very comforting message I think for our audience to hear and full credit to businesses for being able to pivot so quickly to keep operations running as reasonably as they can be in times of significant disruption. And I guess a further credit is certainly due to the people of Papua New Guinea who are famous for their resilience and used to adjusting to hardship. Priscilla, I'd like to turn to you and ask what kind of entrepreneurial workarounds are you seeing to keep connections going during the shutdown? It's interesting. There are ideas, but because the support systems in PNG are not as supportive of the startup ecosystem, they have to choose between surviving through the COVID-19 crisis as well as trying to be innovative at the same time. And that in itself, it incurs cost, it incurs time. So a lot of our entrepreneurs are left to either create the innovation and solve the problem, or they're left to go through and be in the survival mode. And that's what we've experienced with a lot of small businesses. But in the ICT space, as you know, everything's digital, we use tech tools. But one of the things that we also have a very big challenge in is the cost of internet and the accessibility across the nations and across, sorry, across the nation and across the capitals, which is not very easy for a lot of our entrepreneurs to access at the moment. But that's changing. I think with the post COVID-19 experience, I'm sure there'll be some important dialogue happening in raising the awareness or the importance of internet and making sure that third service is made available to most businesses. Yes, the internet has been a subject of front line, a front page stories here in Australia in recent days with discussion on the Coral Sea Cable that Australia has provided to both Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. And the potential it has to deliver more bandwidth to Papua New Guinea, but the challenges in actually transferring the benefits of that cable on to the consumer and not being caught up in the middle between the service providers using this opportunity to generate more profits. It's a big challenge and I'm sure something we're going to be teasing out or learning much more from in the coming weeks. And hopefully it can all get resolved in order to pass on those benefits to the consumers that desperately need. In today's world, we see much more as a public utility and a need and essential than just a luxury. Peter, I'd say how about you? How are you seeing entrepreneurial work around people adjusting in this time up in Port Moresby? Look, it's interesting. For those familiar with Port Moresby, we operate a public transport system called the PMVs, public motor vehicles. And these are 25-seater buses that generally operate around our various provinces along with some 15-seater buses. In normal conditions, what is normally a licence to carry 25 passengers generally has about 40 in it. So under the COVID conditions, these operators now have restricted themselves to 15 passengers in a 25-seater bus, and I think it's eight in a 15-seater bus. So there is probably an example of the change that COVID has brought on. We now have these types of limitations on these PMVs, which have become, as I said, a little bit of what is called a cultural image of transport around our country where we have people hanging out of buses. So that's been a bit of a change there. And I mean, that's particularly impressive, considering it's such a decentralized network, these PMV systems are all privately owned and operated. So these people are sacrificing income to put those restrictions in place, and I'm sure that income has not been supplemented elsewhere. So full credit to the PMV operators for taking the COVID threat seriously. Now we are getting some questions coming through on both Facebook and Zoom, so I encourage you to keep it up. I'm going to keep dominating the conversation for a little bit longer, though I'm afraid. And yeah, I did want to touch on the role of small business a bit more and the informal sector and PNG. I mean, we all know the informal economy is a huge component of the PNG economic landscape, and its role has been brought into stark view during this crisis. Peter, I see you do a lot of work mentoring young entrepreneurs is what's happening in the business environment helping or hindering that entrepreneurial spirit during this time of COVID crisis? Look, I think initially the restrictions and perhaps the uncertainty in terms of the economic climate has caused people to sort of take a bit of a deep breath and consider what options are available to them. So in a way that uncertainty is causing some perhaps some initial restraints for them. However, from what I've seen in a number of people, young entrepreneurs coming through is just some innovative thinking. We've had a number of them that have set up some door-to-door delivery for fresh produce particularly. And so that's an innovation. And there's been a number that have really taken on the delivery of say takeaway food from a number of the outlets that we've got here as well. So that's also some entrepreneurial thinking. So these are some of the signs that are coming through. And as we become a little more used to the new norm that will come as a result of COVID, I'm sure other innovations will come through in terms of how we are able to operate in this type of environment. There's also the risk during this time that more people from the formal sector are going to slip into the informal economy again. Dane McTaylor did an event last week with Kevin Rudd where she was talking about everyone in her part of Papua New Guinea, just going back to the village, back to the garden, growing their gardens again. And that traditional welfare system of Papua New Guinea is a key component of its resilience. Do you see that playing out from your perspective as well, the falling back on that traditional welfare system? Look, I think it's always there. And I think definitely in this time, I know a number of say people who have been laid off from work are falling back on to that our one talk system or our traditional sort of links to be able to survive. But because of the broad impact of COVID, this becomes stretched because where perhaps one or two people, you know, perhaps 10 people could carry a community now because of the loss of jobs in some areas, that's now gone down to perhaps two or three people carrying that family. So this is really where those traditional social structures will be tested. And also for the communities in Port Moresby that I guess can't return to the village because of the domestic lockdowns. Back to you, Priscilla. We did just mention the internet before. You're saying that it's becoming a more and more important part of successful small business and entrepreneur activity in Papua New Guinea. How important do you see it? And what would you, what do you think can help in the future improve internet connectivity in Papua New Guinea? So the Carlsey project, the Carlsey cable project has landed in PNG. What we're actually lacking is really looking at the strategy for the domestic rich, the broadband rich to the last mile, which is something that, you know, the government and partners are able to start looking at how best that they can bring that service all the way to the last mile, which is right down to the rural setting. We've still, we've got DG cell that's already reached most of our mobile and they're trying to bring other services there as well. But there's opportunity also to partner with local ISPs that are actually located in those provinces that can extend that Carlsey network right down to the last mile, which is really like accessing your internet straight from the Kunai house, as they say. And it's something that's very, very important because now that we've seen opportunities for e-commerce, we're seeing banks going more digital. Then there's the agenda of the digital financial inclusion, which is to make sure that we get a lot of the unbanked as well. And that'll only happen through a really, really good infrastructure such as the internet. And it needs all these other policies and other governance processes to be in place to ensure that that service is very, very effective and that the people of the population actually benefit from it. Well, thanks Priscilla. I mean, I'm sure if internet quality here in Australia over the last two months was the likes of what most people in Papua New Guinea deal with, you'd have a far more frustrated populace here in Australia. I want to pivot just a little bit here and talk about the impact that Corona is having on the health system. As Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape has already flagged investment in the Papua New Guinea health system over a number of years has been inadequate and that inadequacy has been laid bare during COVID crisis. Peter Botton, you've been involved in health through your role in Hela Province as a director as the chair of the board of the provincial health authority there. What do you think about the health response and how will COVID-19 fit in with other competing, many competing priorities in health delivery in Papua New Guinea? I suppose through our foundation, through the All Search Foundation, we support now three provincial health authorities. I'm chair of Hela, Stephanie Copis Campbell is chair of Southern Highlands, Gary Opius chair of Gulf provincial health authority and each of those authorities have different levels of maturity and different levels of efficiency. They total about a million people supported through those various health authorities. I think you can honestly say that the system and health supply, health delivery in the country and certainly rural remote areas is very challenging and even before COVID was challenging. It's challenging to get doctors, challenging to get the right medical services into many of the regions and challenging in terms of funding and this year certainly in Hela, the funding levels to keep normal provincial health authority activities running is well below budget to date and on top of that funding for COVID activities is also very, very patchy. Naturally in communities in Papua New Guinea, social distancing and the education about managing COVID is a very big challenge for our own people in the various PHAs. It's challenging to train up our own people to manage COVID cases should they occur and training in how to actually react to a COVID case is ongoing and is a clear priority right across the areas that we work. Provision of PPE has been a significant issue in the remote areas and continues to be challenging but it has improved over the last four weeks or so managing our own people who are very quite scared of COVID and quite concerned about their own health and managing some militancy within staff around that has also been on the cards. I should say that it's the internet in Papua New Guinea may not be super flashed but we can do zoom meetings with Tari and have done training through Zoom using the WHO training, NDOH training facilities and been training our people in Tari using Zoom. So we are getting and using a range of methods to get out our understanding and management plan on COVID right across the PHAs but I stress funding remains a challenge and is patching, setting up isolation areas, setting up the education processes to educate communities is a real challenge and I like it's hope being helped by Australia and other countries in terms of supplying materials, getting out this out into the country, getting those messages into a village in Korola or wherever, tribal fighting, social pressures are ongoing, it is a real challenge and I sincerely pray we don't get serious outbreaks because it will be challenging undoubtedly for the whole medical sector to manage. Well thank you Pete I mean as you say the health system is already under so much strain from all of these challenges that here in Australia we are at a distant memory you know the malaria, tuberculosis, all these other health challenges I guess it puts COVID into more of a better into a different context than it does here and the response needed to allocate to COVID as opposed to all these existing health challenges that you know are equally stark in terms of the health impacts they can have on our community so it's particularly challenging and P&G and yeah I think we're all behind you and hoping that there aren't any outbreaks in the future. Priscilla how over to you I mean how can technology help to improve health service delivery in Papua New Guinea, have you seen anything interesting going on in that area particularly this year? It's really interesting from experience we've seen that a lot of things are done in silos there's so many people doing bits of solutions here and there trying to address the health issue if there was a issue that came up where they couldn't track the drug supplies across all the rural health centers and there's a you know ongoing existing challenges that the nation face all the time and with with the crisis now on shore it was quite a very difficult time to you know get the statistics on where people were and the sort of services the health services needed to be delivered to those places so I think for P&G there's there's a lot more work to be done especially in the health systems we need to make sure that there is a a direction a clear direction and a mapping setup for the health systems that we have currently in country and the use of technology now we know that we've got mobile technology we don't need to have you know invest in so much IT infrastructure to actually deliver those services we can use mobile technology to actually deliver health systems to those rural places that need it the most and it's not only just the rural we've seen that in the in the major cities in the major capital cities we've seen that they've also had the challenge of keeping track of where things were and how to actually serve the people in terms of the health needs during the crisis that's that's all very interesting Priscilla thank you um Peter I'd see in in your role with transparency international your flagged the need for the P&G government to be open and accountable and how it spends money around responding to COVID-19 what what are your concerns and why do you think transparency is so important um look Jonathan there's probably two two areas of concern here and one obviously is that the health risk and health impact on our communities and the need for us to make sure that whatever funds are released to combat COVID are done so in an effective and an and an accountable manner just so that the public can be assured that they're going to where it'll have the biggest impact um our concern with right through transparency nationally is about the perhaps about the not the transparency but also the the level of accountability around some of the the release of these funds our our issue is that the public needs to ensure that it has visibility and can have confidence around how government manages these funds as it's deployed in the various initiatives that government has within its response to COVID what we've asked for here is to essentially have government regularly report back to to the public in terms of how much money is being released how it's being used and the current status of of that funding and so that's all we've asked for here is to is to put that on a public platform so that people can have real-time visibility of the kind of resources that have been applied to combat COVID um unfortunately what we found is that there are multiple streams of money being released and as a result it's very difficult for the public to really track how much has been released and what level of of funding has actually gone down to to the provinces and to the the health practitioners that need it the most so that's the area of concern for ti well i think transparent request of transparency from the taxpayers of Papua New Guinea is a completely reasonable request and i wish you luck in advocating for it now i'm going to turn to some questions from our audience the first is from lisa teppu and she asks similar to the australia new zealand bubble is there an opportunity for Papua New Guinea to negotiate a similar travel bubble with other countries and i'm sure this has been a topic of conversation within your communities um and she asks what risks would png need to be wary of if uh for such arrangements to take effect i might uh first go to peter botten and then ask peter ietzee to to follow in uh well look i suppose there is a definite need to progressively open up travel open up the economies to be able to interrelate in a more robust way in a normal way um uh clearly png needs to be aware and whoever png is interacting with needs to be assured that that um covid is under control testing regimes and where events happen um the follow-up for for tracking people uh are uh are carried carried out and i think the maturity of of those systems in terms of both testing understanding the prevalence of the virus and the tracking of people that might catch it are critical in opening up in any regional sense though you can see across the pacific a range of opportunity where covid has been well controlled in many ways uh and you can see in australia new zealand that the virus right now is under control so i suppose there is an opportunity down the track to to open up the economy in this region open up travel a little more in this region but uh clearly you've got to demonstrate to a lot of people that the systems and processes to to uh understand where the virus is and track people who have the virus are going to be critical to to that happening and critical to all of us not giving up the the benefits of that we've seen in managing the virus versus economic economic benefits for png hopefully uh with such a an apparent low level of of infection could be part of that um it hopefully is second half this year uh pete i'd say is this something that's being talked about a lot in the business community in port mortuary uh yes it has jonathan um you know look um png and most of our pacific countries have been relatively fortunate not to have large numbers of of covid cases um so we've got to be thankful there and i must say the png government took fairly early steps to close down our international borders so one may assume that that that helped us in terms of that uh in minimizing the numbers um to open up the international borders i think will need a significant level of cooperation between the different countries because you need to then put in place some some regimes that all countries can have confidence in in order for them to ensure this the the safety of their communities as people start to to travel again and so really it's about understanding what levels of freedom and what levels of movement can be allowed under these new conditions um the difficulty for us is that you know we've we've tested 2900 uh cases and so we haven't had broad testing in in our country so i think that's an issue that needs to be addressed in order for us to get to a point of confidence that we can we can comfortably say look you know that there's a you know the cases that were the confirmed cases reported are an indication of a lack of a lack of presence of covert in the broad community so there's a bit more work on our side to do i believe uh thank you thank you peter um i i've traveled bubble with the pacific is something i think we all endorse and hope can happen as quickly as possible and in a piece of shameless self promotion i did do a podcast last week with liberal and australian liberal mp david shama who penned an op-ed in the australian two weeks ago calling for an australia pacific travel bubble to be stood up as soon as possible we got really into the weeds of that proposal and how it might be how it might be implemented and over what time frame and you can find that podcast covered cast on our on the low institute website uh moving to another question from the audience we have do you feel that the state of emergency lockdown has given png national staff more of an opportunity to step into roles that were previously given to expats that's a great question and i might ask priscilla to have a first crack at answering it all right that's a really interesting question um thank you for that um we noticed that um a lot of corporations um depend on a lot of services offshore especially skills offshore so their projects are dependent on those skills and because of the lockdown where flights were able to come into the country a lot of their projects had to be parked or rescheduled again it actually affected their project plans so i mean it got me thinking about the the talent and the skills that currently in country um how we work into its developing um the skills that's needed for some of these very very specialized projects that are needed in country um and it's really affected a lot of project planning for some of these um larger businesses but also um just speaking from larger businesses we've also talked about small businesses they're also impacted by support services that they need that are offshore as well um and a lot of these say for example coders that are working offshore um because of their lockdowns in their country as well it's affected some of the projects that's actually ongoing in country so it's again a good time to really assess and review um the kind of skill sets we have in country in png and how to develop that based on the industry and the market trends uh either of the peters is there anything you'd like to add to that no just i think uh underscoring um what's been said before um there there has definitely been a a greater level of reliance and self-reliance on company getting people and services within png it's highlighted where those services are not available um locally but it also has been an opportunity for for pat the guinean people and companies to step up and generally speaking they've done pretty well so again an opportunity which i think can be built on into the future right uh another question from the audience we have from john burn from the lay chamber of commerce he asks the porga issue and for our audience the porga issue being that the recent announcement by the papua guinean government to not renew the mining lease of of uh newcrest the barric mining to to renew its porga uh gold mine operations the porga issue is putting extra strain on businesses from tari down the highlands highway does the panel have a view on how we can address the porga issue and how we can get to back to a win-win as opposed to a lose-lose uh scenario with regards to porga and uh renewed mining operations so uh peter i'd say perhaps you could maybe have a first stab sure uh look jonathan i mean the government and uh the the operator barrica um have unfortunately reverted to uh through the courts to try and get some resolution on this um i understand that a number of people that are trying to assist broker are way forward here um in in terms of its importance to the economy i mean that's that can't be understated um at this time uh we need as much investment money flowing in and as much operational money flowing into the into the country in order for us to be able to maintain the levels of economic activity that we're going to need to be able to to manage ourselves out of covert so from a bridge from a business perspective um this type of event unfortunately perhaps perhaps um you know undermines a little bit of business confidence uh which the government need to be aware of as as they make these types of decisions um ultimately ultimately there's a number of there's many elements here at play and and some of it is around sort of the the benefits of flow back to state the benefits that flow back to the province and the benefits and impact that that ultimately flies back to those impacted communities so it's a fairly complex environment that that the parties have to deal with peter uh botten you've you've obviously been closed uh to the action in a number of these big resource deals what do you think about the current environment for resource projects both existing and future developments you know there's a lot on on the burner at the moment what we go through the three natural gas in discussion so yeah what are your thoughts okay i think it's a very challenging time for for many projects in pg certainly but also around the world the confluence of covid 19 together with a a price war um from by opic against russia in the us has been a horrible confluence of circumstance which has really smashed the the oil and gas sector in a way to where many places around the world are not making money at all and are very unlikely to have any real ambition to to invest in new projects until there is a greater certainty about the level of pricing into the future and the level of demand for our product as the world hopefully comes out of the covid uh impact on or world economy and world demand so you put that in the light of various projects that uh that are have been muted and are muted in puppety kitty and in reality there's also the the quite right the debate about resource benefits split between the state and developers which i think is a healthy debate as long as it's managed properly and appropriately so you when you look at the environment as a whole for the resource sector although gold is holding up very well many of the commodities that impact png's revenue are struggling and what you want to attract investment into into png and or into to any country through the resource sector predictability and and stability becomes an important part of a discussion when people have stretched balance sheets and and are and are wondering where to put their their dollar or dollar around the world so png has some great potential projects it really does need to strike the right balance between resources owners developers communities provincial governments and state with the developer those sorts of discussions frankly are best done usually face-to-face not through zoom and undoubtedly the distancing that has been necessary over the last few months who's has not made those delicate discussions and negotiations particularly easily easy and i don't think that's necessarily going to change anytime soon but to take a realistic view i think there is there is scope to progress agreements but there really is a necessity to have a much greater level of confidence around where pricing demand is going to go before anybody is going to spend invest any serious money and move these projects into feed and final investment decision and that really does mean time and delay yeah so so that the wind they haven't missed the window but the window may be be narrowing it's um you're right the confluence of events has certainly not been in png or indeed the world's favor this year we've got a number of questions here about the png government's covered economic measures and responding to you know both the health system but also providing stimulus into the domestic economy to help bear this storm do do these economic measures from the png government go far enough are they helping down to the grassroots levels so maybe start with you pd it and then ask priscilla to jump in yeah sure jonathan um look um in terms of the business i'm involved in um we're seeing some of the the impact of the restrictions on the economy and that's translated in term in the form of contractors and and businesses around our country who are really now finding feeling the financial stress that that is that comes as a result of these covert restrictions and so from their point of view i think what what what we need to try and do is to in some way stimulate the economy through either some major some strategic investment in in provinces um i think the the challenge for government is how they deliver that and how quickly they can deliver that i know the government has gone out to the domestic market to raise to raise funds and unfortunately i my understanding is these funds have gone back in to to meet recurrent expenditure within the government itself so that that unfortunately doesn't help in the in the short or long term um so there's some discussions from the business council going uh that the business council is having with government to perhaps better identify some strategic areas of the economy that the government can be able to perhaps provide some some stimulus into and part of that is is is an area that priscilla is probably interested in which is the uh medium to small enterprise area and how we can mobilize funding to go to support that that part of the that that part of our our economy the other is about trying to perhaps provide an environment for our business our business community to be able to continue to operate so perhaps working with the tax office to perhaps look at easing up some of the the payment cycles there so that you know the the businesses cash flow can be sustained and as a result they're able to continue to employ people through a longer period as we start to stabilize the economy and hopefully uh be in a better position to ramp up after the restrictions have been lifted so they these are some of the measures that we're talking to government about to to fully consider in their response well it's uh i don't at all envy the people in puffing any treasury at the moment as they're trying to wrestle through declining uh incomes but also looking at measures to further decline their incomes while in turn trying to maintain recurrent expenditure and also inject more money into like domestic stimulus it's a a really big ask and a big challenge that i wish them well in priscilla how about you how how would what more would you like to be seen from the png government i think when when the stimulus package were announced you know the public was still trying to understand you know how far is that stimulus package going to go and which sectors is it going to assist and i think the challenge really is we don't have that data as i mentioned earlier around our small businesses our s and e's or m s and e's to then assist the government in terms of their planning so a lot of these has been just taken based on on the market that's out there but in terms of the stimulus package reaching small businesses and their employees that in itself a lot of a lot of small businesses have not experienced that and are still asking what even after you know after the covid crisis they're still asking is are we still going to be getting that assistance and i think that again really really depends on having the right data having an up to date data of what small business market looks like and then making sure that the stimulus package that they're developing is actually reaching the real grassroots reaching the real small businesses in assisting them. Peter Bodden is there anything you'd like to add to that question? Just to stimulate the to the shortfall in funding that is for ordinary and recurrent expenditures and certainly in the health sector we're seeing shortfall in funding for for day to day business and i suppose the challenge as you say in treasury is to balance and to find the money not just to do the day to day stuff but also to stimulate the economy further and certainly from my sources i don't see that hitting the grassroots yet. Thank you Peter we have a question from Leslie Bennett on she asks how has social distancing affected schools and other institutions in Papua New Guinea so i'll hand over to our Papua New Guinea colleagues maybe Priscilla? I think PNG is like we mentioned earlier is very resilient i'll give an example of my my son's school when it opened up in on May 4th the school was really well prepared they had all the protocols in place and i think PNG has really taken on instructions really well based on the lockdown and the state of emergency and schools have really responded well as in terms of scheduling you know the different classes and making sure that kids are you know sanitizing their hands before they're getting into their classes so the schools have really gone you know forward and taken initiative to really set up the environment that's safe for the students returning and we've seen that across most of the schools in the capital cities and also in the rural settings so for me as a parent i feel that the response was really good in terms of COVID-19 and how about you Peter? From my interaction with a number of parents but also just some some key people at various schools particularly rural schools i think the one thing is that that's become very i suppose obvious is that the hygiene aspects of it so some of the rural schools don't have the infrastructure of the the city schools so their their reliance is on making sure that that the children understand the hygiene requirements so washing hands has been has been a introduced in all in the schools that i'm aware of which is a good practice i think for the for the you know for the children as we go forward. Peter i did want to touch on a one particular area of the industry that has been really brutally affected by this and that's airlines and Eugenie in your role of and more consolidated holding and Eugenie is clearly it's a critical asset for Papua Eugenie as a local as a public utility really in terms of helping get people around the country but it also has a large international network how is the the national carrier of Papua Eugenie holding up in this time is it going is there enough effort to keep it solvent through this and do you expect how do you expect operations to continue on the other side of this yeah look Jonathan Eugenie is a is a vitally important you know organization for the country it's a national flag carrier so but as we found with you know globally the the airline industry has been the most severely affected so from a government point of view that they're supporting Eugenie to try and to manage through the COVID downturn we've been relatively successful in in sort of getting some I mean some financial injection into Eugenie in order for it to continue to maintain its operation that the board and and the management have been able to work fairly diligently to try and reduce costs where they can and just maintenance but to ensure they maintain obviously the safety levels that that we'd expect from them as of this last week the domestic routes were were able to be operated again and as people that know Eugenie well the domestic part of the business is really the where the profit is for the airline so it's encouraging that domestic routes are back up again and internationally they've been able to to provide some cargo and charters for different clients as well and so that's helped the the organization to be able to generate some revenue and globally as with others they've reached out to their suppliers those that provide leases for the for the aircraft to be able to get some some relief there as well so I think those those initiatives and those measures are assisting Eugenie to be able to to manage through to a point of a high degree of confidence hopefully when the the COVID situation settles down oh fantastic fantastic I look forward to that direct Sydney to Port Moresby opening up again sometime soon we do have a number of audience people have asked a similar question and Neil Chandra and Ian Prentice talking looking at the the border between West Papua and say a part of Indonesia and and Papua New Guinea like how confident are you that the border with West Papua is secure and how significant is that risk for you know any potential travel bubble that might emerge in the future between you know Papua New Guinea and Australia for example you know anyone want to take a stab at that maybe Peter Botten you've you've worked in in the Highlands region close to the border a lot yeah look obviously it's something that operators in the Highlands have been following very closely and obviously it's got a high profile that there's no doubt that the border traditionally is is crossed regularly as is the border between Australia and PNG in on the southern parts of western province so it is definitely a focus area for for the state of emergency military and police it clearly remains a fluid border and it's one that clearly has got more attention but it's an inherently difficult border to to lock down and police but certainly it's got attention and a lot of resources are being thrown at it to to try and control how the border works but it is a challenging border to manage given it's it's the fluidity of communities that go backwards and forwards and an education process for those communities about what the impacts of COVID-19 bring to them and how it's spread just how large that border is Peter I'd see anything to add no look I think as we all know it's a it's a it's a fairly difficult area to police at any time so and you know that we've got some defence for soldiers that have been deployed down there with some police as well and you know I think they're doing their best in here with with the resource that they have in order for them to be able to manage that that you know the the vastness of that border thank you all I'm going to take the prerogative as chair to take the last question before we wrap up here and I want to end on a more more positive note to take out of this difficult situation from each of you I'm really keen to hear what you think you've we've all learned and will benefit from in future business activity and you know in broader society coming out of this experience in particular how it's going to change the relationship on this front between Australia and Papua New Guinea so Priscilla maybe I'll start with you what are some positive outcomes from from this crisis I think we're with the COVID-19 experience we had a lockdown for almost two months I think it started in March and went through to April there's a lot we can learn from what we've experienced as well in terms of our human capital in terms of the environment that we have set up in terms of our policies governance and so forth and these are things that I think for me personally is also about the data data is very important it's important to collect the data make sure that it stays up to date so that it assists in any kind of you know disaster planning any kind of crisis that we may encounter in future so that's something I'd like to see come out from this COVID-19 experience is really the the significance and the importance of collecting data that's very very important for decision making thanks Priscilla and how about you Peter Watten Look I think one of the big upsides of if there is an upside of COVID in any sense is that we've actually learned to work in so many different ways doing this sort of communication with lots of people there wasn't necessarily very common before COVID the fact that we've can work and have an effective process in various offices and operations where people are working remotely from home the flexibility to provide greater levels of autonomy to different workers to improve their skills in working autonomously is something I think we are not going to come back to work and work in a similar way to pre-COVID the setups of offices the setups and use of technology use of Zoom etc is a huge positive I think and we're going to learn a lot from our resilience and the innovation that's come from being able to manage complex difficult issues from a location whether it be a bedroom somewhere or front lounge with I think as an industry across a range of industries we've learned a lot and won't ever quite be the same and Peter I see the final word you look Jonathan I think as with shared with Peter Watten and also Priscilla the you know it has changed the way that we think about our work environment and how we operate it's really tested those in terms of our ability to continue to maintain our operations in you know in very challenging situations where we don't have that ability to physically interact or to be able to travel and move so that in itself I think is the big lesson for us as you know in the lessons that come out of it for our business is going forward I think the biggest thing for me though is I think it's demonstrated the fragility of of the world we live in you know we were so dependent on each other and the interactions that we have for each other and so when you take that away from us you know you do really understand how important that is to us all and and so that for me I think is something that we all need to remember is that you know when we do get that that ability to connect with each other again we need to really treasure it and to look after it in terms of how we the quality of that engagement going forward that's a excellent sentiment to to end this conversation on Peter thank you and well folks while there is plenty more to discuss we do like to finish on time here at the Lowe Institute we hope this will be the first of a number of digital events focusing on the Australia Papua New Guinea relationship in all of its facets but in the meantime keep an eye on all of the Lowe Institute's digital products from our research to our digital magazine to the the interpreter to our podcast and event series to see more analysis on how COVID-19 is affecting the world around us thank you again to all of our panelists to my colleague Shane McLeod for putting this all together and handling everything behind the scenes thank you to the internet gods for keeping everything everyone connected and until we see you all again stay safe stay healthy and have a great rest of the week thank you


It doesn't matter how old you are, some baseball traditions just never get old. I know this guy. I know that guy. I say Quintana. I practice with him in the old season, in Phoenix, so yeah, had a chance with him, pretty nice guy. Christian Jellies. Yeah. Yeah, MVP. MVP. Do you know him? Oh yeah, I know him. James Faxen, fellow teammate now, good to have him, glad to have him. You know Clayton Kersha? I don't know who is that. MVP. Oh, I know this guy. I know Clay Ritoris. GT. Oh, Joe Egarlo. I know Joe Egarlo. I play with him in every league, in the minors. Rona Lacuña. Oh. I actually got a funny story about him, so in AAA, it was the last game of the season. I have two runners on, and I think I had a good season. I think that season I haven't let up more than, I think it was four runs in a game. I've let up, I think, two or one that game. There's two outs in the last inning. I'm out there. I think it's a sixth inning for me. It's a 3-0 count. I throw him a fastball away. He has a 3-0 Apo homer on me. Just cashed all the runs in that game, and I was like, come on, man. It's 3-0. Give me a break, you know? But, you know, he crushed it. He crushed it. I have Otani Bretman. Back then, I really liked Matt Williams, because he played for the Diamondbacks, third baseman, and I liked third. So I liked Matt Williams, because he was kind of quiet, went about his business, and did his stuff. So I wanted Matt Williams, and I wanted a retro of Willie Mays, but that would have been a rare one, you know? You know what? When I was here, I wanted to have Andy Perica, Dere Jeter, Sami Sosa, Mark Maguire, you know, the power hitters, power hitters in that time, Barry Bones. Eldidian Judge. Oh, yeah. That's a cool card. You got me an Aaron Judge card. That's you guy right here. Hey, yeah. That's you guy. Shuffle. Shuffle, yeah. Ooh! Look, Dere Jeter card for sure. I want to say that one. You got to keep that one. JD Martinez. Yeah, that guy had a lot of them. Look, Adam Jones, big brother for Domingo Germán. Yeah. We always think that we're going to win. It's a cool moment, yeah. When I had my first card, I'm really excited. Yeah. I feel like I'm important now. Finally, I got a baseball card. Yeah, it was pretty cool for sure. Just brought me back to my childhood a little bit, you know? Opened up a few packs of cards and checking out and keeping like three of them and trying to trade the rest. Yeah. I feel like a kid again, like opening a new package.


With Brandon Childs, head coach of the York College Spartans, they defeat Bates this afternoon, 19-8, the final. Coach, we just had a chance to talk for just a minute. Last night, you guys beat F&M, 10-player scored. You were proud of that. Today, the exact same thing, 10-player scored for York.  And I thought we, no matter who we put out there, offensively, we managed to put the ball on the goal. And I think that depth is going to pay off as the year goes on. Last night, it was Harnick that had six goals for you. Today, Dylan Wolf had five. So you've got a lot of different players that can do a lot of different things. Yeah, Dylan's been doing this a long time. And he got injured early and missed a little bit in the preseason. And he's just starting to kind of get into his rhythm. And it was a good game for him to come out and get some confidence. But he's a great shooter and no surprise in our locker room that he was able to put five in today. I didn't realize this last night, but I did a little research today. When you lost the two games to Salisbury and RIT coming into this tournament, that was the first time that your team had lost two in a row in about seven years, 2015, if I'm not mistaken. So what was the mood and what was the message that you were telling your team coming into Owings Mills this weekend? Yeah, I mean, I think going back to my days as a player, it's something that my coach, Coach Kedalka, obviously, who's team's here, he really preached. So as a player, it was kind of instilled in me. We won't lose back to back. But as I mentioned yesterday, whether you lose one or you lose two in a row, regardless, you're going to focus in and get better as a result of those challenges for sure. Talk about your extra man unit, six for seven today. Yeah, we've started off the year slow there. And we spent a lot of time this week working on that area. And we made some personnel changes. We changed what we were doing a little bit. And I give my offense coordinator, Ryan Drenner, a ton of credit. He's worked with that unit. He's a great coach, has a great eye for the game. And he put us in sets that I think suit our players better and gives them confidence and freedom to just make plays instead of being robots. Talk about Vinny at the dot today. I think he was 20, I think your team was 25 for 30. And then the battle on the ground, you dominated there also. Yeah, no, I think Bates is scrappy there. I really liked yesterday when I was watching them, the wings and their short stick demittees and how hard they battle. And it was something that we really, really stressed this morning when we met as a team that we were going to have to win those wing battles.  And those two guys have certainly sharpened each other throughout the year.  Well, it was a successful weekend. There's no doubt. Congratulations on that. You got a long way to go. And good luck the rest of the way. All right, thanks a lot. Appreciate it. That is Brandon Charles, head coach of York College. They defeat Bates this afternoon. 19-8, Mustang Classic, day two.