from Allan Patience, 1 June '06, SMH.

"There is incontrovertible evidence that the situation in PNG is is worsening by the day. The systematic corruption that poisons the political system form top to bottom is well known. Transparency International continues to downgrade PNG each year on its international corruption index. Late last year the PNG police force was strongly criticised by Human Rights Watch International for routinely imprisoning, bashing, torturing and raping children. Crimes of violence are escalating, including bashings, murder and rape of very young children, teenage girls and women. HIV\AIDS is out of control, as are malaria and tuberculosis. Health services are collapsing. The education system has all but disintegrated. Literacy rates are plummeting as schools close. Teachers are not being paid properly, or are not being paid at all. The higher education sector is fragmented and grotesquely under-resourced. It long ago ceased being the main builder of human capacity for PNG. Over the past two years the United Nations Development Program has placed PNG successively lower on its Human Development Index because essential services are failing and governance is stalling. Now the UN has warned that PNG may be downgraded from being a “developing state” to a “least developed state”, ranking it among the poorest nations in the world."