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Good to have this discussion, thanks, Terence.. clearly,one must avoid rhetorical positions and generalities... yes, big NGOs are corporations with characteristics and sometimes budgets of corporations or government agencies, but that does not make them all competent or incompetent, any more than community based organisations necessarily are altruistic and achieve positive outcomes at the community level... although they have a higher probability of doing so, with generally less risks of costly mismanagement.. There is a need to research and examine your NGO and CSOs, if considering providing support. Local NGOs and CSOs are usually harder to reach by contributors but more effective on the ground, but widely sidelined or squeezed out...the NGOs and CSOs certainly need support to be effective and accountable ( ticking off the various boxes), but doing such research in remote Melbourne, New York or London can be challenging, and requires some assistance...how do you know that NGO on the ground isnt just a scam or pyramidal money operator? Accessing reliable locally-based information sources are invaluable for those willing to make the effort

Yes, it really is a an odd misnomer that PNG is one of the most resource dependent economies in the world, when ( unlike say in Saudi Arabia et al) relatively few in PNG are directly or even indirectly employed or dependent upon these extractive industries. Yes, some are,largely in enclaves but also those supplying the mines through the supply chain, but most formal and informal employment, plus household livelihoods, comes from agriculture and related activities, which really provide PNG's backbone. If the revenue flow from the resource sector was solid and consistent, and public expenditure well targeted and much more accountable, the State could support the needs of rest of the economy and household welfare needs better, but the Dutch disease in various forms has been making a discretionary effect for a long time, but with govt policies so misguided and uncoordinated over the past decade or so the potential beneficial effects have been subsumed... rather than a Sovereign Wealth Fund, for example, to ameliorate negative resource sector impacts, we have a combination of costly debt and accumulating public funds concentrated in the same sector from which that revenue is sourced, rather than invested in diversification, or used to sanitise exchange rate pressure into the future... A major factor is that extractive resources are there, which provide opportunities and temptation and lure the wrong people into politics.. self-serving rather than serving people. But another factor is a relative weak and ill-informed civil society, which is perhaps surprisingly respectful or submissive to leadership. This isnt really so surprising, as there is a commendable respect for traditional leadership, but now also because so much of public funds and appointments have been coveted by political leaders, including under remarkable discretionary constituency gra tks, that people gain opportunities not from merit but from allegiance..

PAPUA NEW GUINEANS ARE RUNNING OUT OF MONEY .SO WHAT WILL NEXT.? IF THRE ANY ANSWERS PLEASE TELL US.

Bula Where could I get the form to apply pleade

Thanks for reading, Joanne. One respondent, notionally the household head or de-facto head if the head is away, and a roster format, for certain issues like school enrolment and work, where they also provide details about individual members so there is individual and household level data. The opinion question here was of the household format so the one respondent. There will be much more detail on this in our forthcoming papers and report, and the data documentation when we make it all public which part of the main goal of this project. Where women away working abroad, typically the male partner/husband, and vice versa, and we take it to mean their views themselves. On the split by gender above, this is important as male and female respondents to have different baselines (lower and higher respectively). This gives me a little more confidence in the results as these differences push against the direction of the effects we see. Re: proxy respondents, definitely an issue for some outcomes (e.g., worker earnings, remittances from the households may be subject to measurement error and misreporting, where the worker survey we are doing now will be helpful to compare against this) and I would not interpret opinion data as being the view of anyone but the respondent. The issue of having a partner in the room and the gender or identity of the enumerator may matter here too of course, especially for the non-migrant households where both of them may be present. I think I'd have to disagree re: "adequacy and accuracy of household surveys generally". This depends on the survey in question and the specific issue you're trying to look at, but in general I'm reminded of the popular saying that its the "worst apart from all the others tried". We very much hope that the PLMS will be a helpful and high quality resource on that front! Best wishes, Ryan

Thank you to the Government of Australia for this great initiative in creating job opportunities for the Pacific countries. I for one a former APTCT graduate with diploma in community service and drug and alcohol area. With the verse knowledge I have PNG government have no government run service that can accommodate such woman like me. To conclude am a mother victim of gender based violence and going through financial issues. I have trust this program has helped a lot of many marginalized community abroad and I am happy to be part of the team.

After getting independence in 1975 from Australia, PNG has been left in the dark for decades. There were no social relationships with the Australian people. Before independence there were stronger social relationships like motorbike racing, gumi race and many fun activities where Papua New Guineans used to enjoy with the Aussies growing heart to heart and love to love and there was a big cut off after Independence. The new generations are wondering who are Australians because they don't see them any more. China has crept in without resistance and have taken PNG by 70%. By making visa accessible to PNG citizens to visit Australia , educational purposes, employ skilled and unskilled workers will generate the heart to heart and love to love relationship that was cut off by independence. Should Australia face war or natural catastrophic situations, all of PNG will give full support to Australia rather than the Chinese influence to support China.

Thanks Jo, great comment, I completely agree. Aid is so varied, it doesn't really make sense to talk about it as a singular thing. That said, I think the Deaton/Temkin argument that aid undermines governance via reduced need for taxation is unlikely to be true for most types of aid in most instances. To be fair to Temkin, at points in his book, he does note that aid isn't a singular thing. And remains supportive of humanitarian aid. He also approves of other aid in some contexts (non-aid dependent countries). However, the diversity of aid still doesn't inform his conclusions enough. Terence

Thanks as ever Terence for thought provoking pieces. I just want to add my appeal to better disaggregate aid. The historical tendency to categorise aid as a single thing led to the unproductive 'aid works' versus 'aid doesn't work' debate. Similarly the idea that 'NGO aid' falls into a single category is just not accurate. It can include humanitarian work, local community development, service delivery, advocacy, or as Rose points out, working with governments in policy development, legislative reform and so on. Some types will be more effective than others depending on the context, and of course how well it is implemented. We haven’t yet found a satisfactory way of categorising aid. In 2014, for example, Stephen Howes proposed dividing it by technical assistance for improved governance, budget support and projects. But ‘project’ in my view is too broad because projects work in different ways. An infrastructure project might work by providing finance and building capacity of the recipient government agency to build and maintain a road; a community development project might be about empowering local citizens to engage with local government. Both are ‘projects’ but operate according to different mechanisms. In order to measure what type of aid works best in what contexts, we should disaggregate aid according to the main mechanism by which we believe it can achieve its aims. Such a typology might build around areas such as knowledge brokering, empowerment, accountability, advocacy, solidarity, community mobilization, coalition building, incentivization and influence.

It's not a surprise that labs have a short lifespan. Bureaucracies have little absorptive capacity to embed such counter-intuitive capabilities and often there is no intent to do so. Bureaucracies are perfectly designed to sustain themselves and maintain the status quo as is. Labs are a reflection tool to gauge whether it's worth or needed for a bureaucracy to change itself. And the answer usually is: "no, we're good" – even if it's not good – and life goes on. As such a reflection tool, labs have by design a limited life span. For that reason, I don't think the downfall is swept under the carpet. When labs have come to the end of the runway, their journey ends, they were never meant to take off. Labs come, and die. It's a fact of labs' life. A "critical reflection" is not going to change that. Instead, a broader critical reflection on why bureaucracies fail to reinvent or renew themselves in times of disruption and fast paced change will be of more value I believe.

Looking forward to the Pacific engagement visa applications opening in July. This will greatly ease the labor crisis in PNG and give greater opportunities to Papua New Guineans and Pacific Islanders to take on the challenge of resettling in Australia as skilled migrants.

Thanks Rose. Great comment! I totally agree. Terence