'What really riled the prime minister was that he was done over in the VIP room as well as at the security checkpoint. Will his Australian counterpart, John Howard, appear at the Pacific Islands Forum meeting in PNG, later this year?'



International travel is becoming an ever more tiresome experience. Airlines go to great lengths to promote their flights as being events of assured comfort, glamour and entertainment. That may be so, to an extent, in first or business class. It is not so back there in the cramped confines of cattle class, and certainly not so when every row of seats is filled by at least one fatty, and when the row in front and may be at the back contains a bawling, whining, brat.

The horrors of cattle class are diverse unless the cabin is pretty well empty, which on some Pacific Islands regional flights is a hope often not hoped for in vain.

What airlines don't mention in shrilling about the joys of travel with them is the deteriorating hell of check-in queues, immigration queues, security queues and baggage collection queues.

These little stresses are normally avoided by most travelling VIPs-prime ministers, presidents and itinerant royals and various other big-wigs.

They were only partly avoided by the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, Sir Michael Somare and his wife, when they passed through Brisbane in April as transit passengers enroute from New Zealand.

The Somares were done over by Brisbane's security hounds who apparently could not be sure the Chief was not a heavily disguised international terrorist, aircraft hijacker, drug smuggler, or some other undesirable.

The incident rocked Papua New Guinea. Protestors stormed the gates of the Australian High Commission at Port Moresby, more or less. The high commissioner was summoned to the foreign office for an explanation. War drums throbbed. Papua New Guinea went to the brink in its indignation of practically breaking off relations with a country it heavily depends on for economic aid. It actually did say it didn't want aid, not at the cost of indignity suffered by the Chief. After a few days, the temperature cooled, but not by much.

Australia, refusing to apologise, insisted that one was not due since Sir Michael had arrived on a normal commercial flight with no advance fanfare and was subjected to standard treatment applied by law to any traveller, regardless of their status.

PNG insisted that since three Australian protocol officers had met Sir Michael and escorted him to a VIP room, the Australian authorities obviously were aware of his transit.

What really riled the prime minister was that he was done over in the VIP room, as well as at the security checkpoint.

Will his Australian counterpart, John Howard, appear at the Pacific Islands Forum meeting in PNG, later this year? He knows now what to expect at Port Moresby airport.

Perhaps he'll delegate his foreign minister to take it on the chin. Imagine Alexander Downer stripped to his underpants.