Comments

Hi Terence, When I read your blog I, like Ashlee, immediately thought that NGOs have been out of the (bad) news recently so I think that, along with the broader trend you mention, may account for why trust has risen. And I think that there has been a positive social vibe about mutual support, etc, over the last year during covid, so perhaps that just has a little effect too. What will be interesting is to see what difference (if any) it makes to donations. Probably too many other factors working in the opposite direction to see any shift, but we'll see in due course!

Australia is somewhat cagey when it comes to new Pacific projects (e.g., labour mobility scheme), perhaps due to the region's governance challenges, etc.. The Pacific is at times viewed as an aid-reliant basket case, but what is often overlooked is that collectively, the Pacific has been, for a good while, a fairly reliable/important market for Australia, both as a goods and services destination, and as skilled/unskilled manpower source. Like any market, the Pacific needs an infusion of new ideas every now and then to revive/reinvigorate it out of stagnancy/decline. The DFI could be one such stimilus, especially when it has been tried by most western countries, and reccommended by some qualified experts. It seems Australia prefers to dip its toes in the water with the EFA first, but at least that's a start, even if it's primarily geared to benefit Australian businesses. Given the geopolitical realities, all options/strategies to strengthen all manner of ties should be on the table, including EPA.

Did we ever stop to think how Nahau Rhooney won her election during the time when our elders and big mans were still alive and PNG was in transition, from traditional to modern society. Pasin kastam stap strong yet na Nahau win. Again, what happened? I do not think the argument about PNG being patrilineal should be a challenge now, today.

Hi Dairi, Thank you very much for the update. Kind regards Terence

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.