Comments

Great Job done. this book really fills the Gap of Old Social Sciences, as this book is aligne with the contrary society of this Morden times. However, special thanks and appreciate you all for your contribution in preparing this educational tool for we Papua New Guinean future policy Makers and Political leaders or the Citizens.

Great achievement through Community based development is very important and special way in serving communities in the rural areas of Papua New Guinea and I am greatly in support and congratulate you all for your contribution in every capacity

Banking the unbanked and reducing fees and charges has perennially been the complaint levelled at the commercial bank sector in PNG. The greatest challenge facing banking institutions is the cost of providing such services and mitigating associated risks. Over the decades innumerable attempts were made to bring banking services to rural people. But the long history of bricks and mortar banking outside major centres has proven beyond all doubt to be the place where banks go to die. Alternatively, it would greatly benefit rural populations if the government were to facilitate the widespread uptake of electronic banking services by enabling reliable signal coverage and band width at low cost to end users throughout the length and breadth of the country. There is also the fact that historically, interference in the banking sector is legendary. I am familiar with the entity that was PNGBC in the 1990s. What on paper should have been the engine room for economic growth was sadly a constant target for interference, graft and corruption. I well remember the challenges in the early 90’s faced by Sir Mekere as MD and later in 2000 as PM when he reached the conclusion that privatisation was the only option remaining to save PNGBC. Quite why the great and good in halls of parliament have forgotten these painful lessons is for them to explain. Sir Mek’s reference to “sticky fingers” should remain their constant warning.

Hello Andrew, I read with interest your write up; 'undoing sir M......' It is interesting and relevant information for me working with the PNG Institute of Directors.

For Change and Challenge. Very good post. Amenewere.

Hi Stephen. The special agricultural and business lease (SABL) was granted to local landowner company Tumu Timber Development Ltd (TTDL) in 2009. The directors of TTDL were then divided in their support for the two development proposals made by Australian investors Neville Harsley and Kirk Roberts. Harsley was the one who arranged the grant of the SABL, while Roberts was the one who was proposing a forest carbon (REDD) project. Rimbunan Hijau was not involved at that juncture. The directors of TTDL are now divided in their support for a logging project or a forest carbon project, so history is repeating itself.

I was also under the impression that this area consisting of almost 800,000 ha of diverse tropical forest was subject to a special agricultural business lease (SABL) from RH. Given the nature of this vast wildness I cannot believe that the hunter gatherer people and few rubber growers that live there were ever consulted on anything. If what has been happening in the Amazon concerns people, it is time to focus on similar events very much closer to home.

Thanks for breaking down the budget numbers and the foreign aid initiatives to a more intelligible level. "Under Labor (aid as a proportion of ONI) is projected to fall to 0.19%. That still leaves us in the deplorable “0.2% club” of miserly donors". In the face of the internal and external pressures upon the national budget, Australia needs to raise more taxes, not reduce them, if it is to become a responsible international citizen.

Hello Stephen, it's a great question! Progress has been made, and you can find out more about one PNG organisation that is working to raise awareness, prevent and respond to family and sexual violence, Femili PNG (https://femilipng.org/). Ume Wainetti was a founding Board member of Femili PNG, which has grown significantly since this blog post was written. Femili PNG provides survivor focused case management services in Port Moresby, Lae and Goroka. There are other community organistions, faith based organistions and NGO's working in that space too; along with some positive work being undertaken by the PNG Government (http://www.ngbvs.gov.pg/gbvstrategy). You can also find out more about my team at Friends of Femili PNG, an Australian not for profit. We work alongside our colleagues at Femili PNG (https://friends.femilipng.org/).

Jonah, good point, PNG should open up rice market

Thanks Adam Especially for mentioning perceptions of aid effectiveness. Which could - or should - be regularly reported in the Annual Performance Report required under the PGPA Act. Where you then have to follow-up on the Annual Report. DFAT also asserts: "Evaluations play an important role within the development performance framework to support a high quality development assistance program". https://www.dfat.gov.au/development/performance-assessment/development-evaluation. But then makes it extremely difficult to check its own evaluations, by what seems nearly to be random indexing, but is by the first letter of the first name of the Report: https://www.dfat.gov.au/development/performance-assessment/development-evaluation/program-evaluations#p Without even regularly mentioning the year in the title. For the currency and regularity of conducting those evaluations.

DFAT strategic directions What drives shifts in the strategic goals for development assistance is a complex issue that, partially, depends on personal assessments of motives and incentives. One might argue, for example, that the rise of “aid for trade” is a defensive strategy employed by development agencies to protect their budgets from politicians. That is not to “blame” politicians, who are elected representatives balancing priorities connected, however loosely, to the preferences of voters. In these more tense global times therefore, spending on defences increases and development assistance in seen, and justified, more as a tool of “soft power” than it is as a way to eradicate absolute poverty or for other countries to share the individual freedoms that we enjoy. Consequently, and understandably, the volume and content of development assistance is the result of incorporating various different reasons for spending Australian tax payers money overseas. Feeding into the debate about how and how much to spend on development assistance are perceptions about its effectiveness. Given whatever goals, what are the returns on the investment? This question can never be answered with precision, which is frustrating, and doubly so because the private sector operates with one clear absolute key performance indicator: profit. There is no equivalent for development assistance, which leads to Sisyphean angst to justify expenditures.