PNG to ban all foreign advisors starting next year

Papua New Guinea's (PNG) Prime Minister Peter O'Neill will ban all foreign government advisors because he believes they make local staff lazy and could be spies.

The ban will take effect on Jan. 1 next year and will particularly affect several hundred Australian advisers helping the government as part of a 500 million Australian dollar annual aid program.

Peter O'Neill told parliament there was a decline in his country's national intelligence organization and believed it was the foreign advisers who were spying on PNG.

O'Neill said his country must rebuild the nation's spy agency, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported Friday.

"We need to revamp it, we need to fund it, work closely with many intelligence agencies around the world and we are working closely with some of the best today," he said.

"They've already come in and they've already starting helping rebuilding capacity within the national intelligence organization and at my invitation."

O'Neill then put Australian advisers working in areas such as policing, law and justice, treasury, planning and health in his sights.

"We've got people working in many of our departments that are working as advisers and it has led to two things," he said.

"One is making our own people quite lazy. They're not able to take over civil decisions, they are over-dependent on consultants and advisers and sometimes many of those decisions are not ... in the best interests of our nation."

"So our government has taken a deliberate decision that by the end of the year, all foreign consultants and advisers, their contracts will end by 31st of December."

O'Neill then took aim at the around 70 Australian Federal Police officers working to improve PNG's law and order situation.

"If we need to recruit experts, it will be recruited by the PNG government as an employee of the PNG government," he said.

"That includes policemen, that includes all the other consultants in every line department."

Australia is PNG's dominant aid partner.

The announcement followed the tension between the two countries over the Manus Island refugee detention center and a diplomatic row regarding Bougainville and Australia's intention to build a consular office there which PNG did not know about until it was announced.

An Australian PNG analyst told the ABC the decision to expel advisors would have major impact of relations between the two countries, particularly regarding aid. Endi