Charles Lepani discusses the role of expatriates and local Papua New Guineans in the National Planning Office and the efforts to recruit economists and political science graduates to the Office. He relates how they developed policy as a team, but that it was he who took the policies to Cabinet. He discusses the case of Air Niugini planning to buy new jets that needed airports that could accommodate them when his priority was to maintain existing airports and build feeder roads.
Charles Lepani discusses the role of the central planning document Papua New Guinea Vision 2050 (Government of PNG, 2009), and the process for setting priorities when he was head of National Planning Office. He discusses the importance of key issues: subsistence sector production, relevance to tradition in business activities, co-operatives and community-based organisations, and decentralisation. He states that the Little Red Book predicted population growth requiring a Population Policy which attracted criticism from the Catholic church.
Charles Lepani discusses the issue of reducing and stabilising wages in the public and private sector prior to Independence by those at the National Planning Office and Treasury, without examining the tax policy and profits made by big companies. He describes how he saw the other side of the issue once working at the National Planning Office.
