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Teacher’s notes

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The clip shows a community meeting in which a Ganiga man debates with Joe Leahy about the fair allocation of profits from their shared Kaugum coffee plantation in the Papua New Guinea (PNG) Highlands. After the man’s initial speech referring to the 60–40 per cent split of profits, Leahy replies. There are more questions and Leahy replies again. He says that he is the one taking the risk with the bank loans and therefore he deserves the greater percentage. The clips ends with the Ganiga man expressing the Ganigas’ continuing dissatisfaction. There is no commentary and subtitles are used.

Educational value points

• The debate in this clip reveals the differences between on the one hand traditional values of sharing, and on the other capitalism, which rewards the individual for their work and expertise. Joe Leahy speaks of his individual role and his individual reward while the Ganiga man sees only unfairness in one having so much while others have little. Village people invest their cash and traditional wealth in the social and political relationships that support them throughout their lives.

• The issue of shares in the Kaugum plantation exemplifies the problematic role of Leahy with regard to the Ganiga community and the tensions involved. The discussion in the clip focuses on Leahy’s majority share of expected profits from the joint enterprise of the plantation, which used Ganiga land but Leahy’s business skills in development and finance. The use of Ganiga land greatly reduced available land for food gardens and they had to wait years for their first full coffee crop.

• This clip shows the importance of public speaking skills to the Ganiga and the way the men use public debate as a way of clarifying and resolving issues and establishing status. The Ganiga man presents his views and he questions Leahy, who replies. This process is repeated. Although there is no resolution this debate allows the speakers to express their views and gain support for their positions. Leahy shows that he is a skilled speaker as well as a businessman.

• While the Ganiga clearly liked the idea of wealth in cash from Kaugum, they valued their way of life in a non-cash economy as shown by the employment of outside workers on their plantation. PNG Highland economy is based on land belonging to kin groups and on the establishment and maintaining of relationships, often through the giving of gifts or the sharing of wealth such as pigs. Gifts given at one time set up a relationship in which reciprocal gifts are expected.

• Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson used this footage early in the documentary Joe Leahy’s Neighbours in order to establish the ways the younger, more literate, generation were challenging the older men who had allied themselves with the outsider Leahy as their ‘big man’ for business. Making the observational documentary over the 18 months they lived there, the filmmakers looked for dramatic incidents and themes common to all societies.

• Reference made to the Kilima plantation indicates Leahy’s complex history with the Ganiga people. Because his father was Australian, Leahy had no land of his own, and so bought Ganiga land and established his own plantation of Kilima in the early 1970s. The Ganiga resented Leahy’s wealth and expected more sharing from him, never really accepting the Western concept of the alienation of that land. In the clip, the man refers to it still as ‘our Kilima’.