Trekker numbers for pilgrimage tourism along the Kokoda Trail, once the jewel in the crown of PNG tourism, have plummeted since Canberra outsourced its management to two international aid agencies: the USA-based conglomerate, Abt Global, and the UK-based Oxford Policy Management.
Our shared military heritage is obviously not part of either charter!
In a bygone era, there would have been a national uprising if former Prime Minister Billy Hughes had prioritised gender equity and climate change over the legacy of our Anzac heritage on the Gallipoli Peninsula during negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
When United States President Woodrow Wilson questioned Hughes’ authority to participate in world affairs because he was ‘speaking for only 5 million people’, our ‘Little Digger’, as he was affectionately known, retorted,‘I speak for 60,000 dead’! He was speaking about our ANZACS and was welcomed to their table.
The Gallipoli campaign is now regarded as the baptism of our nation, born just 14 years earlier in 1901.
Within two decades after the ‘War to end all Wars’, our troops were called upon again to serve, this time in defence of our homeland in the jungles of Papua and New Guinea.
It took the sacrifice of more than 600 diggers on our last line of defence along the Kokoda Trail to help turn the tide of the War in the Pacific and break the ‘spell of invincibility’ of the Japanese army. Until then, they had been undefeated in their quest to conquer Asia and the Pacific in 1942.
After Paul Keating became the first Prime Minister to visit Kokoda on the 50th Anniversary of the campaign in 1992, the Kokoda Trail emerged as PNG’s most popular tourism destination, with more than 65,000 Australians committing to the pilgrimage.
Kokoda is now part of our folklore along with Gallipoli, Villers-Bretonneux, Sandakan, and Passchendaele. If Gallipoli is regarded as our baptism as a nation, then Kokoda is surely our confirmation!
Unfortunately, leaders with the gumption of Prime Minister Billy Hughes have been replaced by gormless bureaucrats who have outsourced our military heritage across the Kokoda Trail to international aid-funded conglomerates in the fields of environment, climate change and gender equity.
In 2008, Canberra took control of the Kokoda Trail under a joint agreement signed with PNG. the Department of Veterans Affairs was sidelined in preference to the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA). ‘Heritage’ was later removed from its charter when it was rebranded as the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities (DSEWPC), and later as the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW).
Each bureaucratic transition led to a further devaluation of its military heritage!
This was exacerbated by Canberra’s decision to outsource responsibility for the Kokoda Trail to USA-based Abt Global and UK-based Oxford Policy Management.
According to their websites, they specialise in multi-million-dollar foreign aid programs associated with Environment, Climate Change and Gender Equity in Third World countries,
Their ignorance of pilgrimage tourism was evident in their failure to include the ‘Kokoda campaign’ as a pillar in their Master Plan for the Kokoda Trail, which was outsourced to a separate American consultancy who completed the task without trekking across the Kokoda Trail to obtain a briefing iat each military heritage site or to meet with traditional landowner communites. It could best be described as a ‘desktop study’ with numerous glossy organizationl charts.
Canberra then engaged a compliant American anthropologist without any previous military service or heritage credentials as Australia’s ‘National Military Heritage Advisor’ in PNG on an eye-watering six-figure salary package!
In his ‘Kokoda Track Heritage Management Plan’ he refers to the Kokoda campaign as an ‘event’ and seeks to ‘recognise the prominent roles of Japan and the USA in PNG’s war history, as well as the place of other nations, including the UK, India, Fiji, China, Korea, Taiwan, etc.’ He also reported that Canberra’s ‘Kokoda Initiative’ will pursue ‘a gendered approach to interpretation, highlighting women’s stories wherever possible’!
The American agencies and their advisors seem to be unaware that the military heritage of the Kokoda campaign, fought between young men from Australia and Japan, is the primary reason more than 65,000 Australians have trekked across it over the past two decades.
These trekkers didn’t sign up to have an ‘environmental levitation’, a ‘cultural awakening’ or a ‘social reckoning’. They signed up to trek in the footsteps of our diggers, to hear their stories, and to honour their legacy!
Their social engineering outcomes have proved disastrous for Kokoda Tourism and traditional landowner communities.
Since the American consultancy published its ‘Master Plan’ in 2015, trekker numbers have fallen by 28%, from 3,581 to an estimated 2,700 in 2025. None of the objectives relating to the three pillars (the ‘Track’, the ‘People’ and the ‘Environment’) in their Master Plan have been achieved!
No funds have therefore been directed towards military heritage site plans across the Trail to enhance the value of the pilgrimage for trekkers.
There is now a serious stench of corruption in the PNG management body they control. They have not published an Annual Financial Report since 2015. Nobody knows where the money goes. But what we do know is there no signs of malnutrition among the Port Moresby based officials!
Incompetence is also a major factor in the decline, as nobody engaged in the PNG management structure has any business management qualifications. As a result, it’s not even possible to book a campsite anywhere along the Trail.
The seven-month illegal blockade of the Trail in 2024 has resulted in Canberra’s DFAT Smartraveller advising that trekkers may not now be able to finish their treks! Trekker numbers have plummeted by 25 per cent since the blockade while PNG authorities remain asleep at the wheel.
The drop in trekker numbers since Canberra outsourced its management to American agencies represents a cumulative loss of some $20 million in foregone wages, campsite fees, and village purchases for the communities Canberra has invested tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars trying to help!
A comparison with New Zealand’s Milford Track, which started around the same time as Kokoda in the early 1990s is instructive
Within a decade, both the Kokoda Trail and the Milford Track had equal numbers, around 5,500 each.
Since the Canberra took control of the Kokoda Trail in 2009 and outsourced it to American aid-agencies Kokoda tourism numbers have slumped to around 2,700, while the Milford Sound trek now attracts more than 10,000 and has a reported 12-month waiting list!
This is because the Milford Track is managed as a commercial enterprise by people with skin in the game, while the Kokoda Trail is managed as a government bureaucracy by people on fixed salaries with no skin in the game.
The downward trajectory in trekker numbers indicates that the aura of Kokoda as a high-value pilgrimage destination has been tarnished since Canberra outsourced its management to USA and UK government funded aid agencies. It now risks becoming a ‘low-rent physical challenge for bucket-listers’ chanting ‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie – Oi, Oi. Oi’ as they ‘high-five’ each other at the top of every ridge!
