Comments

Thanks Cian, for the violence pre-ACLED, is this publicly available?

Congratilatoins tai Vola and your team. Very interesting data here. My human rights advocacy network members are already using this data for our advocay and GBV awareness rasing. Much appreciated. Keep doing what you do. Means alot!

Very saddened to hear about Ron's passing. I worked with him for a number of years in the 2010s to think through Australia's role in more sustainably supporting the smaller Pacific island countries through closer economic and institutional relations. Like the tributes above, he was just fabulous to work with. He was generous, he listened, he provided such clear and helpful advice - his depth of knowledge of the Pacific and his commitment to region was unparalled. I am very thankful to have met and worked with him.

Thanks Lee, Details on the sample size and question wording are beneath the first chart. Aid amounts to 63 cents out of every hundred dollars of federal government spending in Australia. The volume is tiny, in other words. I think Australia is wasting a lot of money on military spending too. My colleagues have done some great work comparing the yawning gap between Australia's aid budget and its defence budget: https://devpolicy.org/the-defence-development-divide-from-gap-to-chasm-20250417/ https://devpolicy.org/2026-aid-budget-breakfast/2026-aid-budget-breakfast-Slides.pdf [scroll down to slide 1].

An analysis of ILGs and ‘clans’ can be found here. Social Mapping and Landowner Identification in PNG Oil and Gas Projects: Law, Policy, and the Failure of Imported Templates https://www.academia.edu/170070591/Social_Mapping_and_Landowner_Identification_in_PNG_Oil_and_Gas_Projects_Law_Policy_and_the_Failure_of_Imported_Templates_Vailala

I want to thank everyone including those who have commented here and others who have reached out to me and the Duncans personally for their kind words on Ron. Let me also thank the many friends, family, and colleagues who attended the funeral service last Friday.

Thanks, Satish. Vale Ron

Dear Satish, our excellent obituary is a fitting and heartfelt tribute to our great colleague and dear friend. Congratulations! Chandra

Congratulations Satish on a terrific piece (and likewise your speech at the service today) about a great Australian.

Can I please ask what the sample numbers were and who was sampled? Perhaps the fact that we are spending $486 on a nuclear program we don't want with all money going to USA and UK, and there is very little being spent locally to address issues in this country I am surprised that you are surprised and disappointed. Deal with the issues of war we are being dragged into and the reasons so much foreign aid is needed. We are sick of handing money over when our own country is in chaos. And who is helping us - certainly not our government or any government or country. Australian tax payers are not a limitless pitt of money.

Yes, Indeed. Vale Ron, a quiet giant! I owe him a personal debt, for enabling me to re-enter the academic environment after years in development consulting and the NGO sector. I had developed an interest in economic informality, particularly as applied to PNG and opportunity presented itself around 2009 to 'sell' him on the value of this line of inquiry. I saw the potential of wider and more efficient informal economic activity to improve the reach of market-based economic activities ('market' both in the sense of physical marketplaces and in the broader economic sense), with corresponding benefits both for rural producers and urban intermediaries. He encouraged me in this work, publishing an early paper of mine in the lamentably-lost journal Pacific Economic Bulletin and nominating me as an honorary Visiting Research Fellow within the Crawford School. Over time I became more closely associated with the Development Policy Centre but I'm grateful for his continuing interest in and support for my work. This renewal of research activity was made possible by Ron's kindness in seeing some potential in my ideas. I remain enormously grateful to him.

Ron and Rita were good neighbours in the Carroll St days. Ron was a good golfing companion and very handy with an eight iron.