Comments

Hello Tamara. That's a good point. So far we haven't looked into companies' country of ownership as it requires a huge amount of manual work. But I agree it would be interesting to check that. Thank you for raising it.

Interesting observations, Sharon, with thanks. What might happen if instead of defining an Australian supplier one 'registered in Australia', they were defined by country of ownership? Nearly all of the key suppliers of large, multi-year contracts for DFAT are overseas-owned entities, not Australian-owned as is commonly understood. Food for thought.

Thankyou for your comment and apologies for my late reply. In the vein of your conclusions on aid meeting VFM, wondering if you would agree that MSD would offer an opportunity to address certain constraints in thin markets like Fiji that. And if so, what are your thoughts on the work that programs like MDF and Pharma do in the region (also AusAid funded).

Dear Emily, Thank you for your message. It is interesting to hear of your work. I can't write about the NZ Public's opinion at present as we don't have recent data on it. However, if you are interested in NZ public opinion about aid, please have a look at our earlier survey paper. We have a blog post on the data here: https://devpolicy.org/new-zealanders-nicer-when-comes-aid-20160531/ and the paper itself is here: https://devpolicy.org/publications/dp63-is-support-for-aid-related-to-beliefs-about-aid-effectiveness-in-new-zealand-2017/ MFAT have studied public opinion about aid more recently; the information from their study that they released to the public is here: https://www.mfat.govt.nz/assets/Aid-Prog-docs/190131-Development-Aid-Report.pdf As for whether providing accurate information on aid volumes changes people's opinion about aid, we've tested this in Australia. Please see the discussion of the findings on pages 21-23 of this paper: https://devpolicy.org/publications/aid-and-the-public-in-australia-key-findings-from-developolicy-research-2022/ Keep up the good work. Aid advocacy can be very valuable as you know. Terence

Naturally, Timor-Leste has hundred of thousand past problems (social, political, wars, crisis etc.) since Portuguese times, Japan from 1942, Indonesia, sequentially leaving the country in most miserable & poor conditions which can not be smoothly settled at this time & it is against worsened by the many mountain ranges rolling around the territory from the east part-central areas till the west sectors. I could not think consciously of someone from rich-developed country without viewing upon all these very challenging natural factors/variables then can say, everything is ok. So the overall challenges laid behind the very natural barriers/landscape so try to solve this at first hand before turning the point real development on the ground ahead with.

very interesting

Dear Terence, Thank you for your article. I found it interesting that most of New Zealand's aid will be directed to climate finance. During my internship at The Borgen Project, our team and I have advocated for extending the Foreign Aid budget in the U.S. by petitioning Congress and spreading awareness. Recently, we were able to help increase Foreign Aid spending from less than 1% by 6% (through the FY23 Omnibus Appropriations Bill). Advocating to increase aid for the U.S., and as a New Zealander myself, I understand how an aid budget of just 1% is worth improving. As a story idea, do you believe that studying the New Zealander's perception of foreign aid (how much it is, and what it is directed to) that you would be interested in writing about? On our website, we have noted that most Americans overestimate that the foreign aid budget sits at 25%. Do you think advocacy about increasing the funding is needed, as well as discussing the variety of issues NZ can assist with? Thank you for reading. Here is a link to our website, where we advocate for federal budget expansion and spreading the word about ending poverty across all nations. https://borgenproject.org/foreign-aid/ Thank you! Emily

A great piece explicitly laid out, highlighting the progressive invention of newer and clever ploys to maintain political power via MP numbers and abuse of positions. Apparently, Democracy is not guarded by the rule of Law, rather numbers tend to dictate political outcomes.

Thanks for sharing such an excellent blog, Karen: wish you Merry Christmas and Happy New year 2023

Fascinating. I hail from an island of the southwest coast of Manus Province. The people are still working on rebuilding 100 homes destroyed in 2017 from a tornado. These homes would not have met any building codes that insurance companies need to determine the levels of insurance premiums they would charge to replace homes and business etc. My question is how are insurance companies going to establish the building codes they will use in the Pacific and are we talking urban or rural areas considering that when disasters strike, it is often the rural areas of the pacific that bear the brunt. In Australia insurance companies still grapple with insurance claims from flood victims. Claimants have some knowledge in navigating insurance claims, some understanding of what their insurance covers, the premiums they need to take and why. Insurance for insurance sake won't cut it for the Pacific. Custodians of insurance knowledge must be explicit in their communication with the Pacific peoples. We must know what it is, who needs it and why and, the cost of having or not having insurance. They must own the process, be shareholders and investors of insurance companies be participants in designing the insurance policies.

Lots of interesting information and insights here, Sharon. Thanks for your work. As you state in the article and in responses the data raises as many questions as answers, so there's lots still to unpack. It's important members of the development community do so dispassionately without bringing prejudices into the mix. With this in mind we really need comparable analysis that looks at the community sector and NGOs and also multilaterals. There's a shared interest in having sufficient diversity of suppliers of all types to maintain the benefits of competition (which are real and substantial, even if anathema to many in the sector). Diversity, of course, should be a means to the bigger goal of greater development impact. Maximising the number of providers would actually be detrimental to that goal because not all providers are of equal quality. Into the bargain, an under-resourced DFAT struggles to manage existing contracts, grants and relationships. If these are multiplied so are its difficulties in managing strategically for results. Multiple dilemmas. No easy answers. Here's another dilemma that many wont want to contemplate. One of the reasons for market concentration, despite untying, is that profits in the industry are typically low. Quite frankly I wonder why quite a few of the firms - and individuals - bother, as the returns are often less than 5%. The answer usually is that the companies and in particular the people who work on them are just as committed to development as others in the sector. Imagine that, people in the private sector who also have values and who are motivated by a whole range of factors not only profit maximisation. Turns out there's less black and white and plenty of shades of gray.

Hi David, thank you for your comment. Yes, Papua New Guinea has been sending women as seasonal workers for a long time, and actually has a high rate of female participation. At the time in question that this data was taken (mid-2022), over 100 women from PNG were working in Australia and New Zealand, mostly on the SWP, and that number has scaled up significantly since then. But, this graph is looking at female participation as a percentage of Papua New Guinea's domestic population; as participation is relatively low, and PNG's population is high, the number is low, and appears as 0.0% on the scale we are using. The actual number is that 0.004% of Papua New Guinean women are participating labour mobility. Hope this helps to clear up the data in that graph.