Comments

Hi David For information on Australian Government labour mobility schemes please visit the website: https://www.palmscheme.gov.au/ For further information on the Pacific Engagement Visa also mentioned in this post, please see the Australian Government website: https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/pacific/people-connections/people-connections-in-the-pacific/pacific-engagement-visa

I am David Danga from PNG and have great internet to be part of labour's scheme in Australia and how can I apply for this opportunity. I need your assistance to provide me or email me for the application form and necessary document for meet the labour's requirements. Your help will be appreciated Thank you in advance

Andrew, what then is the estimated real non-resource GDP per capita? If we assume about eighty-five percent of the population lives in a rural community and a further ten percent make up the informal urban sector, what does this mean for them? While income from mineral resources may have swelled government coffers from time to time, income from this source has not translated into improvements to essential services on a per capita basis. If we acknowledge that a nation’s greatest resource is its people, what strategies would you recommend going forward? As an outsider who has spent decades in your beautiful country, I am convinced that working with rural populations to address their basic concerns is an essential component of any pathway forward. Given the multiple challenges posed by such a diverse environment it should be obvious by now that neither the government nor its agencies can solve these issues alone. And yet the accepted mantra appears to have changed little since independence: that government will bring development to the people. This fantasy is built into the ideas behind the DSIP which by any rational analysis has been a tremendous waste of scarce resources. For a possible lead I would point toward models of economic empowerment such as that pioneered by North Fly Rubber Growers cooperative that after fifty years provides income to family rubber block holders living in some of the most remote settings in PNG. For all intents and purposes people living in back water lagoons in Middle and South Fly have no services and yet North Fly Rubber Ltd is able to get a ship alongside their scattered communities and inject significant quantities of cash into local families several times a year. This model works because it aligns with the traditional lifestyle of the riverine communities and confers benefits of value to them without disenfranchising or impacting negatively on their world view. My point is that if this can be achieved by civil society actors, why hasn’t there been a much greater emphasis on developing similar models throughout the country? I return to my pet rant, which is until and unless government and its development partners place as much emphasis on empowering people where they live on their own terms as is placed on infrastructure and “strengthening” government modalities there will be little momentum for change.

A quick note on the fact that successful incumbents tended to be reelected earlier than challengers. I looked at this more & there are very clear relationships between: (1) the number of candidates and the probability an incumbent will be reelected. (The Hegarty rule). (2) the number of candidates and the time taken for votes to be counted. This suggests a possible explanation for the -- otherwise suspicious looking -- finding that reelected incumbents tended to be declared earlier: usually when sitting MPs are reelected they do so in races with fewer candidates (1 above). And counting is more rapid in races with fewer candidates (2 above). So the relationship between incumbent victory and time for results to come in stems from the average number of candidates being higher in races where new MPs are elected (and incumbents lose their seats). I checked this empirically, and when candidate numbers are controlled for, incumbent re-election ceases to be correlated with number of days until results came in. Terence

Thank you Australia and New Zealand for this Pacific Engagement Visa program coming soon. The industries in Australia need more skilled labours and why not most of us can make it through this time. Waiting to apply for one asap and why not.

Sasha nailed this set of realities

Very pertinent article by Peter Walton. I would suggest the realisation that people don’t need saving, is the epiphany every development practitioner needs in order to remotely become useful. Further, levelling up the playing field and vesting ownership and control over the proposed prescription, treatment and cure with the intended recipients is another essential understanding. From where I sit, as someone who has lived in communities throughout Melanesia, the tone of INGOs remains overwhelmingly constrained by a western world view, too often delivered with overtones of a paternalistic saviour complex that comes across as arrogant and inappropriate at best rather than useful. The woeful track record of the development assistance spend for lack of sustainable impact at community level across primary healthcare, education and environment sectors in Western Pacific countries, is testament to how far INGOs and their funders have yet to move their thinking and models of development if they wish to deliver what they would have you believe on their websites. Until and unless they seek to align their goals with the lived experience of communities and incorporate the knowledge, talent and ownership for the desired outcomes with those that live in them, I would venture that results will continue to be decidedly underwhelming.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this blog, thanks!

This article provokes lots of questions and comments starting with the title. Surely given the history of two decades-plus of US-led occupation that included war, untrammeled impunity and “nation-building” on the basis of massive corruption that contributed to the return of the Taliban, western donors have a responsibility to acknowledge the many reasons for the current catastrophe. This includes the freezing of the Afghanistan’s external reserves – US$9 billion – as well as the policies that led to such an aid-dependent country. As poverty, hunger and humanitarian needs mount, a key part of the solution is to unblock the frozen reserves to enable the central bank, Da Afghanistan Bank, deliver on its responsibilities so that the local currency is stabilized, inflation is brought to heel, the economy is revitalized and banks can operate. There are many reasons to be appalled about Taliban policy but insisting on the immoral and illogical collective punishment of the Afghan people is not the answer. This is a perspective shared by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and some 70 other economists recently: https://www.against-inhumanity.org/2022/08/16/71-economists-write-letter-to-president-biden-calling-for-the-release-of-the-frozen-afghan-funds/

Hi Rhoda, thank you for your comment. Some ideas for PNG to grow participation in labour mobility are detailed in a report by one of the authors of this blog, Richard Curtain, which you can read here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3255353 Some of the barriers facing PNG are in a presentation by Natasha Turia Moka which you can find here: https://devpolicy.crawford.anu.edu.au/news-events/events/19452/8000-seasonal-workers-2025-png The situation is different between Australia and New Zealand. There has been a large increase in workers coming from Papua New Guinea to Australia, albeit from a very low base (more than 700 now in Australia, when there were only around 40 at the end of last year). PNG has also sent a lot more workers on the longer-term (4 year) Pacific Labour Scheme; an option which isn't available in New Zealand. For New Zealand, there are currently 12 seasonal workers from PNG; this number has dropped from a pre-COVID peak of 135. One of the main differences is that in New Zealand, employers have to pay half the travel costs: they have to pay much more to recruit workers from places further away, which have higher costs. Some countries sending workers to New Zealand (like Kiribati and Tuvalu) have different arrangements which include longer visas and lower employer costs which take into account these countries’ remoteness. Perhaps similar arrangements for PNG could work to boost uptake. This seems to be something the new governments in both Australia and PNG are keen to work on. There definitely needs to be a greater effort by governments to both support employers to recruit from PNG, and to work together on recruitment practices that can be mutually beneficial.

If this argument "These very different results follow from the facts that all three schemes are demand-driven, and that employers have mainly decided to recruit from a subset of countries in the Pacific and Timor-Leste" holds true for SWP, PLS and RSE, why is the temporary migrants to Australia or New Zealand from PNG zero?

Hi, Appreciate the read about all the research into our RSE workers. If possible can I contact you in regards to how I can support them in any way.