Lata Milner
Lata holds a Bachelor of Law Degree from Victoria University, New Zealand and is admitted to practise in New Zealand, Australia and Papua New Guinea. She also holds a real estate license for Queensland Australia. She is a very experienced senior commercial lawyer with over 38 years’ experience in Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Australia and the USA.
Lata specialises in Banking and Finance, Commercial, International, Mining, Corporate, Property, business compliance, due diligence, Contracts, negotiation, mediation, infrastructure project documents, joint ventures, trademarks, customary land conversion, leases, and conveyancing, strata title law and government liaison.
Lata is also experienced in corporate governance and regulatory matters having sat on the Nasfund Board and chaired the Audit and Risk Committee as well as the renumeration and nomination committee. She was a director of Hopewell Hospice in Qld Australia; Heritage Park Hotel Limited in the Solomon Islands and the Millineum Group of hotel owning companies in the USA.
Lata was awarded the International Women’s Day Leadership Award for the Gold Coast in Queensland in 2005 and the Congressional Order of Merit for services in the hotel industry in USA in 2008. In 2014 Lata was awarded an MBE by Her Majesty the Queen for services to the Legal Profession and Charity. She has been since 2012 and still remains the Chairman of the fund-raising committee for Susu Mamas PNG Inc. Lata was President of the PNG India Business Forum for the past six years.
Lata worked as in house legal advisor at Deloittes in Wellington, New Zealand before coming to PNG in 1983. She then worked with Talair in Goroka and Henao Cunningham Lawyers prior to setting up her own firm Milner and Associates in Lae. She owned and operated one of the largest real estate franchises in Queensland managing a portfolio of over 650 properties. In 2004 Lata moved to the USA and returned to PNG in 2011. Lata currently works as a consultant for the law firm Twivey Lawyers in Port Moresby.
