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Very Inspiring brother, wishing you best in your future endeavours

Good, there's always a struggle before success comes ...

Very interesting and inspiring story. It has motivated me to be a better person.

Hi John, Thank you for your interesting points and questions. Here are a few responses; I enquired with the vendor, and it turns out the shop owners are leasing the shop from her relatives so that must give her an advantage. From my experience of living in Port Moresby and interacting with buai sellers on an everyday basis, a lack of working capital to purchase new stock seems to be the biggest difference between those who make sizable profits and those who don’t. New sellers start with small amounts of capital, purchase their betelnut, make a profit and spend most of their profit on daily needs. Only those who plan and put aside money to purchase new stock tend to realise larger profit gains over time as they remain consistent with their sales, as opposed to sellers who enter the market to make a quick buck and get out. Also, perhaps the market is saturated. All the good spots to sell betel nut have gone, and no one has to walk far to buy betel nut. So it is hard for new entrants to come into the market, and there is no incentive for any existing seller to undercut the market. Finally, although this informal worker earned well, she has to work very hard (18 hours a day 7 days a week), and endure bad weather and the risks of being outside in Moresby. Not everyone is willing to put up with such risks and costs.

It’s ironic that ANZ shuts down its retail arm whilst concurrently predicting off-the-charts economic growth.

Inspirational experience, very good, sharing such inspirational stories.

Another perspective that could be further investigated might be the oft-quoted concern that it is predominantly qualified persons leaving government, teaching or other formal sector jobs to go and work on the RSE and other similar programmes. Depending what information is included in the original RSE visa-grant application this analysis might be possible, alternatively such data could perhaps be sought from either census or household surveys. If the data indicated that the longer-term RSE workers were drawn largely from the more qualified applicants, this would also assist Pacific governments in developing their policies towards term-limits.

This is what we all have gone through. This made us to be who we are today. This story gives me courage to stand at my feet to give the best to my people in remote area of Raikos district in Madang province. God located us in the remote area because we can survive through struggle. WE ARE THE STRONGEST IN CHRIST ALONE.

Thanks for your comments, Dan. These are greatly appreciated. I’ll respond briefly to your key points starting with the last one about the effect of the SWP/PALM programme on the RSE, and especially the numbers of RSE workers who have been participating in both programmes. As you will appreciate it is impossible to get data from immigration records in New Zealand or Australia on the numbers of workers who are either participating in both schemes in a given 12 month period or who have switched from one to the other. However, there is some useful information on this in Tonga’s latest census results and a blog will appear shortly touching on this issue. Your point about changes in the RSE cap causing surges in the numbers of 1 season workers is a good one and this is discussed at greater length in a longer report on patterns of engagement with the RSE that can be accessed at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344043537_Patterns_of_Seasonal_Employment_RSE_Workers_in_New_Zealand_1_July_2013-30_June_2017 Your point is an important one because new recruits in any given season have not had a chance to re-recruit and therefore are in a different position from one-season workers who first recruited two or more years earlier and who could have been re-recruited for a subsequent season if they (or their employer/contractor) had wished. The key point we wanted to make in this blog is the one you identified: repeat return is not a major problem at the aggregate level. Robust data on the participation of 36,675 RSE workers over a 15 year period suggest that regular, repeat recruitment for seasonal work on the RSE scheme is not as widespread as is sometimes believed. This emerges very clearly when the analysis is restricted to the patterns of engagement of those who have returned to work in subsequent seasons (excluding the one-timers).

Your story is very inspiring to me. To become a better person in the future we will have to face struggles and challenges in life first and let those challenges and struggles become as our stepping stone. Congratulation to you and all the best in your education career 🙏🙏

When first seeing the headline I believed in my heart that this would be a Sogeri National High Student. And while going through I was shocked,yeah that's was the boy's face I still can remember when I was at twelfth grade in 2018. I can remember!

very inspiration story .