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Member Elect for Moresby North West is : Honourable Lohia Boe Samuel - Total votes of 12,185. For your information.

Very useful ideas. I wish someone would do an analysis and implication study of the Ministry’s circular to schools in dealing with the present crisis. This paper would be useful in drawing some detailed plans.

Thanks Ash, Great to hear from you. The explanation you put forwards is certainly plausible. I don't think it's the whole story, because it doesn't explain the more general rise in trust among Australians covered in the post. But it may well be part of the explanation for NGOs. Not being in the newspapers for the wrong reasons must surely be helping somewhat. I hope all's good with you. Terence

Thanks Terence, like you I am surprised that Australians are becoming more trusting overall, I would have assumed that perhaps as our trust in government declined our trust in civil society may have strengthened but I guess that's not the driver! Do you think distance from scandal might be a cause of the increase in trust? I am struggling to think of any large international NGO scandal since the Oxfam one in 2018 that has attracted much coverage in the Australian media? Even domestic NGO scandals like the Shane Warne Foundation etc - which I think can dent trust in the charity sector more broadly - seem to have not been big in the news.

Hi Scott, Thank you for your comment. I'm not as concerned as you are for several reasons. The data aren't particularly skewed, nor does there seem to be much evidence responses are heavily constrained by the bounds of the scale. <img src="https://waylaiddialectic.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/histogram.jpg" alt="Histograms" /> Also, changes aren't limited to the mean. The median changes from 5 to 6 between the two years. (The change is, for what it's worth, statistically significant in a Mann-Whitney test.) In addition, it is hard to see how, "technical aspects of reliability and validity, scale construction, size of measurement errors, and the use of cumulative rather than unfolding response mechanisms" would be the source of the changes between the two years. I think more valid concerns might be that asking a single question on trust in NGOs asked to a representative sample may well not accurately capture changes in the propensity to donate to NGOs amongst the sub-population that is actually likely to donate. So we shouldn't necessarily expect the change in surveyed trust in NGOs that emerges from my data to translate into changed donations. Also, the I'll concede the second question on trust in fellow Australians probably isn't an adequate proxy for the suite of questions that are used in surveys specifically focused on general trust. Nevertheless, I suspect it's capturing some sort of meaningful change, which is worth noting. Thanks again for your comment. Terence

After looking at your spreadsheet I think we should be very careful not to over interpret the data. It is very challenging to accurately measure attitudes using a single item (question) scale. Prof David Andrich in WA has published extensively on this topic. He raises concerns about the technical aspects of reliability and validity, scale construction, size of measurement errors, and the use of cumulative rather than unfolding response mechanisms. For example, most attitude distributions are highly skewed and if this is the case with your data the median is a better measure of central tendency rather than the mean. I'm simply suggesting we need to be careful in interpreting your data.

I have a young friend in Timor Leste who is a coffee grower and expert Barista with great customer service. The program should expand to hospitality as I know NT is trying to recruit from the eastern Australian states. He has had one SWP stint in WA picking melons. But he can do so much more.

A great article that describes how the so-called Westerners often perceived and labeled other nations with a "tag" name, and for that matter, our former colonizer always "labeled" us (PNG) a "failed state" - a tag name that often comes up from the mouths of our former colonizer when some form of disaster strikes the nation like pandemics, wars, etc. For me, it is just a colonial "tag name" used by former colonizers to make themselves feel good and superior to their former colonies just to make them feel dependent and subordinate to them so that they can continue to undermine and exploit them, as rightly stated by Morona.

Hello Emma, my apologies for the error, yes, the survey was conducted in May 2021.

Thanks Jobs, and yes that was an unfortunate typo, apologies for the error, there will be a note added to correct this shortly. The survey was conducted in May 2021. I agree I just scratch the surface on reasons for the levels of vaccine trust. It would take a whole blog just to describe the diversity of legitimate concerns about the vaccine and legitimate distrust in authority and the media presentation of COVID19, and I do plan to discuss these in future blogs.

Interesting that you were able to survey students over 1 year in advance of the vaccine being released in PNG and still think that the result could be in some way relevant for release now, without any update...... Or did you do your survey in May 2021? I may not be a learned person, but I employ over 50 people and I spent several hours discussing the vaccine roll-out with them. You have barely scratched the surface in reporting the remarks of students. I found the biggest hesitancies were: 1) Is the vaccine safe? We don't know this medicine, its new. The virus doesn't look so bad, I think I will wait and see "with my own eyes" if it's safe for people I know to take it. 2) The govt always lies to us, why would we trust them on this? 3) We heard that the vaccine is banned in Australia for under 60s – why are they telling us it is safe here in PNG? How can it be dangerous for them but safe for us? 4) I think I had the virus already, can I get infected again, do I need the vaccine? 5) We are hearing about side effects, are these normal in vaccinations? We didn't hear about these types of side effects in polio and other vaccines, or other medicines. 6) It's been 16 months and I don't personally know anybody that died of the virus, how dangerous can it be? 7) After 16 months only 170 people died, how many died from other things. 8) My son/daughter/mother/father and other people I know died from ______ while all this was going on. Why is the govt not spending money and making restrictions/laws for those things if so many people are dying. Why only for Covid? Far down the list of questions was the racist or religious disinformation. But I found that the biggest cause of vaccine hesitancy was that they are skeptical of the govt and media's constant harping on about a virus that has a very small death count in comparison to other causes and disproportionate govt response to it. The term "Don't believe your lying eyes, it's how we tell you it is, not how you see it" is the best way to describe the confusion. By the end of our session, I had answered everybody's questions and given them a clear understanding of the virus, the vaccine, how they work, their importance in stopping the spread of disease, and countered all the superstitions and urban myths. Everything I presented was fact based and researched through the CDC, WHO, Govt, and media. Grand total result, was that not one of my staff had been convinced to drop their guard and sign up for the vaccine. Though most of them did thank me for clarifying all their questions, because right now they are being fed half truths by people they are told to respect that can't answer their questions or are just making up obvious lies to cover their lack of knowledge (insert: pastors, big men, politicians, doomsayers and academics, etc) or obfuscating the truths and information to push their own narrative, but not actually answering the questions that people are asking. Noted that the govt did put in the newspaper several pages trying to answer a lot of these questions to dispel the above concerns, but it was the wrong median and it came from the wrong people. Prof. Glen Mola is not well respected outside of his own medical/govt circle and his talk of "Racist " was the stupidest thing that could ever have been published if the intent was to break down the myths and convince people to accept the vaccine. This approach only put a new thought in their minds, that perhaps the "white" govt paid doctor was trying to convince them to take a dangerous vaccine, "why else would he say that, when we were not thinking that?" For disclosure, I am not anti-vaccine at all. I have had all my shots, the last being (Polio, Hep, and a few other boosters only 3 years ago). I forwarded an offer to my staff to organize a company wide vaccination appointment time (during paid work hours) to any staff that would like to partake. When I had zero names on the list I was intrigued and set about holding a staff meeting to dispel any myths and give a very concise and clear explanation of the virus and vaccines. I believe that my staff are adult enough to make up their own minds about their (and their families) health directives, and that my role is only to present them with honest and factual information, the choice is then up to them to make.

Thanks Rohan, this is useful. Can you confirm data is from May 2020? Will you repeat these questions in another end of semester survey? Interested to know if attitudes have changed a bit now?