Former Prime Minister and Member for Ialibu-Pangia, Hon. Peter O'Neill, CMG, MP, has officially accepted Prime Minister James Marape’s challenge to a televised debate on the national economy. However, O'Neill strongly criticized the Prime Minister's approach, insisting that the national Parliament remains the proper constitutional forum for economic accountability.

"I accept the Prime Minister’s challenge to a televised debate, thrown down to me in his TikTok-style video," Mr. O'Neill stated. "We should be cautious, though, about how flippantly he has responded to serious questions about the economy. The proper place for economic debate is the house of the people, the Parliament."

In a sweeping critique of the current administration, Mr. O'Neill accused the Prime Minister and the Treasurer of avoiding parliamentary scrutiny over the past eight years regarding the financial hardships of citizens, opting instead for public relations campaigns.

For the past eight years the Prime Minister and his Treasurer have been empty drums of noise, refusing to properly debate the suffering of our people in the Parliament. After eight years he now wants to avoid the accountability of Parliament House and dabble in a popularity contest.

Neither Melanesia nor democracy is about grandstanding. We are a village society, and in a village, people trust the leader who listens, stays humble and answers for what he has done. The right thing for the Prime Minister to do is to accept that the size of GDP does not put food on the table or pay for petrol.

Mr O'Neil highlighted that the Prime Minister Marape has stated that the economy has grown from about K79 billion in 2019 to about K140 billion, however that is not how the people feel.

"They feel whether the clinic has medicine and the classroom has a teacher."  "This year the World Bank found that Papua New Guinea spends just 1.9 per cent of its economy on health, and that real spending on each student has fallen by 14 per cent since 2018."

The IMF found that projects are often chosen for political reasons and that cash is released erratically. Read together, the two reports describe a budget run for politics, with health and education left short.

O'Neil further added that the Prime Minister today boasted that the economy is now K140 billion, up about 77 per cent from K79 billion in 2019, but about half of that increase comes from the fall in the Kina. Under its agreement with the IMF, the Marape Government has devalued the Kina by more than a fifth against the US dollar since 2019, so it now takes about 30 per cent more Kina to buy a dollar.

"When the Kina falls, the dollars we earn from exports turn into more Kina and prices rise, so the economy looks bigger when it is counted in Kina. Counted in US dollars, the same rise is less than 40 per cent"

"That is smoke and mirrors accounting, not genuine growth. It builds no clinic, pays no teacher and creates no job, and it makes the food, petrol and medicine we import dearer for every family."

Mr. O'Neill concluded by reiterating that while he will participate in the debate as requested, the administration must face the formal records of Hansard and the elected members of Parliament to answer for the country's economic trajectory.

"I will debate the Prime Minister as he wishes, but the right place for accountability is the Parliament."