Even political autonomy has to be taken seriously says Dr Martina Trettel, a senior research fellow with the Institute for Studies on Federalism and Regionalism.
Trettel shared this view during the presentation of her paper on “Political Autonomy Study” draft.
This presentation was facilitated by the National Research Institute as one of its seven key studies under the PNG NRI Bougainville Referendum Research project.
The paper refers to examples of other autonomous governments almost similar to Bougainville, from which PNG and the Autonomous region of Bougainville.
She weighed out the advantages of being an autonomy and how valuable this can be to Bougainville, if following the vote in the referendum, it continues autonomy status.
“It is actually valuable and can bring very big advantages to Bougainville,” she said.
But this needs time to develop, mature and settle, to be able to fully benefit the country.
She said Bougainville is pretty young in terms of autonomy, but can be an interesting study as it has a very broad range of powers exercised, compared to other autonomies.
Also sharing a paper during the same workshop today, was Professor Satish Chand from the University of New South Wales.
His presentation was an expansion on his paper “Fiscal Autonomy Study”.
Chand stressed on Bougainville’s need to be self-reliant, building their capacity to fund the budget, regardless of the degree of autonomy.
While fiscal self-reliance is not a legal prerequisite, it is needed if region wants to enjoy enough political autonomy.
He said Bougainville is a resource filled region that could grow internal revenue, stressing on areas of fishing license, cocoa export tax, property registration levy and training locals for the future mine operations.
Chand also weighed what it would mean to the region if it becomes independent and the challenges it will manoeuvre as an independent state.
The workshop stressed the need for corporation between the national government of Papua New Guinea and the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, leading towards the Referendum.
NRI will continue a few more study presentations towards this referendum.
Today’s presentation was basically based around autonomy issues and trying to understand it from a political view and a fiscal view.