An Australian author, Brian Darcey, believes Papua New Guinea's Bougainville crisis was triggered by a blunt response from the then Australian minister of mines to a question from a local as to the likely benefits of the Panguna Copper mine.
In his just published novel, Bougainville Blue, Mr Darcey - who spent 15 years in Bougainville - describes an Australian Minister of Mines replying to the question with a single word: Nothing.
Mr Darcey says although his book is a fictionalised account of the Bougainville conflict in the exchange actually did take place at a meeting he attended.
"It was the catalyst, trigger for everything that happened from there on. Mr Barnes who was the Minister for Territories was at a reception in the District Commissioner's house, which I also attended, and a delegation of local Bougainvillians were there as well, and they said, more or less, 'If and when this mine does start, what's in it for us?' To which the short reply was: 'nothing.'"
Mr Darcey says he wrote his novel before Lloyd Jones' award-winning Mister Pip - also set in Bougainville - was published.
He says Bougainville Blue deals with the run-up to the crisis and ends at the point Mister Pip begins.
