John Ferguson’s article, ‘Woke versus history: the new battle for Kokoda’ in the Weekend Australian on 7-8 February 2026, provoked a wide range of responses regarding Canberra’s priority for Climate Change and Gender Equity issues across the Kokoda Trail in preference to the preservation and interpretation of our shared military heritage.
Australians are rightly shocked at DFAT’s decision to subcontract responsibility for our military heritage to two international aid conglomerates, USA-based Abt Global and UK-based Oxford Policy Management.
Since they took control in 2009, trekker numbers have fallen by 52% from a peak of 5,621 in 2008 to just 2,700 last year.
This computes to a cumulative LOSS of some $20 million in forgone wages, campsite fees, and local purchases. We have spent more than $100 million trying to ‘help’.
The only solution if for PNG to reclaim ownership of the gazetted area of the Kokoda Trail between Owers Corner and Kokoda as a tourism enterprise for the economic benefit of their traditional landowner communities rather than as a socio-environmental park for the benefit of overseas aid officials, including Canberra’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water officials.
READER’S COMMENTS:
Robert Tulip
I worked in the AusAID PNG aid program until 2007, including providing support to the International Finance Corporation in its tourism program in PNG, which had a Kokoda focus led by John Perrottet. Charlie Lynn was a great advocate then. Supporting PNG tourism was not a focus of Australia’s aid program, which was far more focused on government than on the private sector. The Prime Minister’s Department had to encourage AusAID to take this on. Given the culture within AusAID, continuing in DFAT, it does not surprise me at all to see gender and climate given priority over military history. As Charlie explains, this undermines one of the main reasons why Australians want to walk the track, to honour the sacrifice of our forebears in World War Two. Kokoda tourism builds and maintains essential personal contact between Australia and PNG.
Terrence
So true Mr. Lynn. Recently I sat at a dinner table with a first assistant secretary in Foreign Affairs who advised her meeting the next day was to discuss the wording of missives to beneficiaries of our largesse in other countries directing them to speak about gender in their countries – sick stuff. Meanwhile the selling off our ‘defence’ real estate icons is just another example of the mindless destruction of our history and burying it, hence burying our historical culture as well ( good bye Kokoda – a track my father walked during the war).
Bruce
Not just the Kokoda Trail, the whole Australian aid programme (AUSAID and Australian Volunteers NGOs) seems to be focused on so called gender, climate issues etc and so much less on the aid recipients basic needs such as water, sanitation, transport and the like which will greatly improve their lives, rather than an agenda that is more for satisfying the needs of the donors than the receivers.
