Paul Chai speaks with Dame Carol Kidu, a pioneering Australian-born female politician who served with Papua New Guinea’s first Prime Minister, Michael Somare. Here, she reflects on the five decades since PNG’s independence.

BAPNG: What is the most significant achievement PNG has made since independence?

Dame Carol Kidu says PNG needs to ramp up rural development in the next 50 years, with schools, hospitals, health centres and other essential services. Credit: Godfreeman Kaptigau

Carol Kidu (CK): Independence has brought over 800 tribes into one nation and that is an incredible achievement, although it hasn’t been entirely completed yet.

The citizens are very proud to identify as Papua New Guinean, they are very proud of the PNG flag, and they go crazy every year at independence celebrations.

We have much to be proud of at 50 years, but we have a long way to go.

I feel our founding Prime Minister, Michael Somare, was the right man at the right time for independence. He had a unique ability to get a positive response everywhere that he went.

Q: What would you like to see happen over the next 50 years?

CK: PNG is a unique country. What was done in the colonial times was a decree that the land would remain with the people and 97 per cent of the land at the time remained with the people – with only three per cent taken for government and church purposes.

Papua New Guineans do not realise how lucky they are and now is the time to understand that. They are not getting essential services, so they are racing to the city to get those services, which is causing pressure on urbanisation.

The solution to urbanisation is rural development: get schools, get hospitals, get health centres into those regions because people own the land.

People get tempted to dispose of the land when there are no services out there, but they are very lucky. You look at the number of young people in Australia that cannot own a house, or people who are forfeiting on their mortgages because it is not easy in Australia either at the moment.

We have to start talking about how lucky Papua New Guineans are on the 50th anniversary of independence: they have land, they can build a house on that land but there has got to be infrastructure functioning out in those rural areas.

Q: As a woman in PNG politics how do you think things have changed for women in PNG?

CK: It is still very difficult for women. In the first election after independence, in 1977, we had three women elected, we have never gone beyond three women, we have had several parliaments with zero women.

That is one of the things I am working on: mentoring women to get more into politics. I am hoping 2027 will see some change – we are just about to get started on a mentoring program for 20 women who performed well in the last election.

We are trying to change mindsets about leadership, the idea that only men are leaders. Westerners quite often have the wrong idea about PNG, saying that women have no power. That is not true. Their power has always been in the private sphere.

I know in the household I married into, the most powerful person was not my husband (Sir Buri Kidu), who became chief justice; it was his mother. She was an incredible woman, and decisions would be made in private with the clan and then when the announcement was made in public it would be made by the men.

Women do have power, but we have to transfer that power from the private sphere into the public sphere.

Q: How will you celebrate independence?

CK: Since leaving politics I have set up a family enterprise (Tutu Beach Retreat) so we will do something there. In the pre-school that I have started, we will probably have a little independence show.

Q: What makes you proud of PNG?

CK: I always defend PNG when I am overseas because we are facing enormous challenges. I think PNG is a very misunderstood country and society. We have much to be proud of at 50 years, but we have a long way to go. And the outside world could learn a lot from PNG if they are willing to humble themselves to do so.

This article was first published in the August-October 2025 issue of Paradise, the in-flight magazine of Air Niugini.