What Are the Basic Social Obligations in the PNG Constitution?

Papua New Guinea’s Constitution does something unusual. Having acknowledged the Basic Rights of every person in the country, it immediately declares a matching list of Basic Social Obligations. Rights and duties appear on the same page, deliberately.

The nine obligations

The Preamble to the Constitution declares that all persons in the country have the following basic obligations to themselves and their descendants, to each other, and to the Nation:

1. To respect, and to act in the spirit of, this Constitution.
2. To recognise that they can fully develop their capabilities and advance their true interests only by active participation in the development of the national community as a whole.
3. To exercise the rights guaranteed or conferred by the Constitution, and to use the opportunities made available under it, to participate fully in the government of the Nation.
4. To protect Papua New Guinea and to safeguard the national wealth, resources and environment in the interests not only of the present generation but also of future generations.
5. To work according to their talents in socially useful employment, and if necessary to create for themselves legitimate opportunities for such employment.
6. To respect the rights and freedoms of others, and to co-operate fully with others in the interests of interdependence and solidarity.
7. To contribute, as required by law, according to their means, to the revenues required for the advancement of the Nation.
8. In the case of parents, to support, assist and educate their children — whether born in or out of wedlock — and in particular to give them a true understanding of their basic rights and obligations and of the National Goals.
9. In the case of children, to respect their parents.

A tenth declaration follows: all citizens have an obligation to use profits from economic activities in the advancement of our country and our people, and the law may impose a similar obligation on non-citizens carrying on economic activities in or from the country.

Who owes these obligations?

All persons in the country — not only citizens. That mirrors the acknowledgment of Basic Rights, which also extends to all persons subject to restrictions the law places on non-citizens. Only the profits obligation is expressed as a citizens’ duty, with a power for the law to extend an equivalent duty to non-citizens in business here.

Are the obligations enforceable?

Not as free-standing causes of action. Like the National Goals, the Basic Social Obligations sit in the Preamble and are framed as declarations rather than as operative sections creating liabilities. You cannot be sued for failing to participate in national development.

They do, however, appear in three practical places.

• Justifying limits on rights. Several Basic Rights are qualified rights, restrictable by law to the extent reasonably justifiable in a democratic society having a proper regard for the rights and dignity of mankind. Obligation 6 — respect for the rights and freedoms of others — is part of the constitutional backdrop against which such limits are assessed.
• Interpretation. Where a statutory provision or a discretion is genuinely open to more than one reading, the obligations are part of the constitutional context.
• Legislated in specific form. Obligation 7 — contribution to revenue according to means — is given operative effect by the tax and duty statutes. Obligation 8 is reflected in maintenance and child-support law, including the Maintenance Orders Enforcement Act and the Infants (Clarification of Application) Act. Obligation 4 is reflected in environmental and resource legislation.

Obligation 1 in daily life

The first obligation — to respect and act in the spirit of the Constitution — is the one most often invoked rhetorically and least often examined. It is worth noting what it does not mean. It does not stop you criticising the government, the courts or the Constitution itself; section 46 protects that expressly. It is not a loyalty test. It is a statement that the Constitution belongs to everyone in the country and that its arrangements are to be worked, not worked around.