Comments

Nice article.thanks

Public expenditure in terms of infrastructure developments I think takes a bigger share of the PNG Budget every year apart from salaries. Or they kind of switch between the first and second spot as biggest budget consumers every year on. Either way, management of public assets and infrastructure such as roads, bridges, schools, and hospitals remains a bigger concern. Lack of maintenance, deterioration, misuse, and mismanagement are some of the major issues that affect the management of government assets which had made us lose millions of kina and hinder our progress. Amid the Covid19 and other issues that affect us, I think there must be an intervention in how public assets are being funded, managed and maintained. Particularly, at the policy and regulatory level some measures should be put in place to keep track, monitor and report on how funds are allocated to construct roads, bridges, airports so that they are properly maintained and managed all year round. There must be some focus on the role that are currently being done by the National Procurement Commission, the APC (Authority to Pre-Commit) Committee, the Auditor General to create something like a National Asset Management Commission who will be responsible to manage, maintain and report on all the public assets in the country. I think in this way we can save a lot of monies and accelerate our progress.

Hi 'Ofa. Malo e ngaue. Looking forward to this "concrete action plan".

An insightful article which indicates that history repeats itself in the Solomons. We are witnessing the Solomon Islands self-destruct in another riot, but the article suggests that the nation has been in self-destruct mode well before the riots, due to corrupt politicians, who are as responsible as the rioters, if not more. From the article, one gets the impression that the Solomons is in the throes of state capture by a political-business cartel that has corrupted democratic institutions and compromised their proper functioning. This is the direct cause of poverty and violence perpetrated against ordinary citizens, who have risen up in the only way they can. A case of corruption breeds anarchy?

I couldn't agree more Mr Winn. As I Papua New Guinea working for an SOE. It's evident and I see corruption happening every day both formal and informal sectors.

Super interesting work and findings, thanks for sharing, Mark and Handoko. I found particularly interesting the comments in the report around not evaluating the pilot using RCTs, rather saving them for a post-pilot study with RISE (I expected this blog to be about pilot RCTs, so went looking through the report). I very much hope they still go ahead, indeed as pilots, as they are crucial to understand whether the impacts are real and whether it makes sense to scale. More generally, it will be great---and much more efficient and better practice---if DFAT and in particular their contractors build these in much more at the actual pilot and policy experimentation stage than currently is standard. Anyhow, thanks again for this super interesting piece and good luck with next steps.

Lest anyone think I'm over-emphasising outcomes, as the spender of our foriegn aid, DFAT is required to account for the performance of our aid budget, under The Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act of 2013, which specifies in part: "39 Annual performance statements for Commonwealth entities (1) The accountable authority of a Commonwealth entity must: (a) prepare annual performance statements for the entity as soon as practicable after the end of each reporting period for the entity; and (b) include a copy of the annual performance statements in the entity’s annual report that is tabled in the Parliament. ........ (2) The annual performance statements must: (a) provide information about the entity’s performance in achieving its purposes; : Resource Management Guide 134 provides details: https://www.finance.gov.au/government/managing-commonwealth-resources/annual-performance-statements-commonwealth-entities-rmg-134 "Achieving the purpose" of our aid doesn't get much publicity - but it needs to.

I find Mr Invarature's piece on Tonga's recent election displaying the same bias as the Kiwi and Aussie mass media churned out over the years against a political system with a monarchical head of state. Which is a pity coming from an academic institution. Headlining "change" and devoting most of the article on the PATOA losing out at the election implies the baddies are still in charge. Ho hum! How condescending to describe a free democratic election who spoke with their votes. Tonga have enjoyed a peaceful transition with the 1876 Constitution that guaranteed freedom from bondship, religion, press, etc, even though such freedoms were not understood by the general population, but equally protected by the legislative, executive, and judiciary bodies. Of course there were shortfalls, but remedied over time.

The "cautious consensus" may be better phrased as " what does Australia's aid achieve - demonstrably and effectively" ? The abolition of the Office of Development Effectiveness in DFAT last year needs much greater awareness amongst our federal MP's, as does moving well beyond how much aid is given. It's not the dollars allocated that matter or spent (so much) as their demonstrable impacts on the recipients. The clarion call "all aid is wasted" remains unfortunately very attractive in certain quarters of Australia. About 9.2% of the world, or 689 million people, live in extreme poverty on less than US $1.90 a day, according to the World Bank. Their lives matter. It would allay public suspicions if the Government actively promoted the benefits Austrealia's aid delivered. It's been quite some time since the Foreign Affairs Minister did this. Much less the Minister for International Development and the Pacific.

Thanks for the great post Ben and Tamas. Really interesting to hear some of the thinking and motivations for aid policy from inside Parliament. I'm also interested in one of your last comments, that moving forward , any increases in aid will be more focused on our national interest "...... and be implemented by a department with less expertise and capacity in aid programming." Could you expand on this a little? I don't know much about the skillset make-up of DFAT's workforce. Do you have thoughts on the implications of this reduced aid programming capacity for how Australian aid is delivered.? eg. more tied/audited aid vs more aid inline with aid-effectiveness principles? Thanks again.

The authors say "There are no electorates for which we have detailed case studies that would enable us to assess the reasons why incumbents either retained or lost their seats in each successive national election since 1982" in the full discussion paper (p. 7). Well, no, but Joe Ketan and I explained what goes on in Hagen (1987) and Dei (1992) pretty clearly (refs in DP96). Because the issues in Hagen don't change that much, and Dei only a little more, it would be probably rather tiring on the patience of readers to repeat our analyses election after election. Same plays, occasionally different actors. Spoiler alert: electoral politics in Mount Hagen (even though Ketan's paper was about Dei in 1997, he called his paper "Electoral Politics in Mount Hagen") is to be read through the shifting coalitions of tribe and phratry structures that persist over centuries. Of course, our style of presentation wasn't to everyone's taste. I remember the editor of the 1987 election volume saying he supposed there was a place for my analysis in it but that it wasn't what he was expecting. I grudgingly got in as the last chapter ... Re-reading Ketan's paper just now, I am transported back in time to the soundtrack of Hagen life, always on continuous loop, playing in the street, in the house, in the back of cars, everywhere three and four decades ago as today. Ketan writes "What appears to outsiders as bewildering makes perfect sense to Highlanders and one only needs to ask the people themselves". For the way he writes, and I hope I cloned some of it in my study of the previous election, is this soundtrack! I have to correct him on two points. "Highlanders" is too broad a category. We were discussing specifically Mount Hagen. Jiwaka is a bit different, Simbu different again, Eastern Highlands different again. "One only needs to ask the people themselves" - not really. You can't get a word in edgeways, let alone a question, for the constant stream of political gossip, speculation and corrective information for all to hear. Will so-and-so run? Who will give their block votes to whom? Which tribes will split because of internal strife? No, it can't be that because (long explanation of history and tribal alliances follows). Sorry we can't help with the other 109 electorates ...

Refreshing article....localisation!!!