Comments

Primarily the Meat Processing Industry clearly has identified and addressed the labour shortage and good on them for opting into the excellent PLS program. However, somewhat surprising is that a number of SWP absconders are finding themselves in that industry, and as photos that I have reveal, even those who have absconded and have no work rights in Australia. The lure of advertisements for anyone on a raft of visas, including the 408, where offers of relocation fees and bonuses are attractive, even though technically an SWP (or PLS) worker on the 408 or 403 cannot abscond and be employed anywhere other than by the sponsoring employer, without that sponsor's and DESE's approval. The concept of in-country quarantining is commendable, but one still wonders why covid-free countries like Vanuatu, Solomons (? maybe one or two cases) and Samoa even need to have quarantining in the first place, given that NZ and AU have a "bubble" and even interstate travellers can still cross the VIC border currently with their outbreak that far exceeds the total number of any of those countries cases, ever.

Proud to say thanks to O'Neil Deon Government in Papua New Guinea

I'm interested to hear how the Education system came to Papua New Guinea from where it was originated to black indigenous countries like PNG.

Hi Terence, can you please provide a link to the DAC data that you are commenting on? There is no data or link to it in your article, as far as I can see. Thanks

The proposal to establish five regional seats reserved for women is truly bizarre, especially when the boundaries of the five regions would fail to coincide with those of the four regions currently recognised in PNG's political system. Why would five be any better than four? In either case, how could any woman standing for one of these seats be expected to campaign across such a large area, unless perhaps she were to be the female relative of some male bigwig who owns a helicopter or can afford to hire one for the purpose? And what would the Indonesians make of an electorate called 'West Papua'? Not amused, I would imagine. At least the proposal to create 22 reserved seats, in line with current provincial boundaries, made some sort of sense. Why is it so hard to get the necessary support for this proposal? Are the male parliamentarians afraid of having so many women in their midst? Is there some problem with the current toilet facilities in Parliament House? Who knows? The idea that 22 reserved seats, or any other number of reserved seats, would reduce the chances of a woman getting elected to one of the other 111 seats does not hold much weight when the chances already seem to be just about zero. Maybe, if 22 women could prove their worth in Parliament, the chances would go up a bit.

Thank you for your response. It's true that the mainstream media have not covered speculation about possible US involvement in Fiji's 1987 coup. There is much doubt about it. An authority on Fiji and the coup, Professor Brij Lal of ANU, has all but dismissed the theory. Rabuka has sung like a canary about the coup but little mention, if any, about the US. Not even in his book. Cold War politics was well and alive back then, and the stakes were high for the US due to the Bavadra government's anti-nuclear, non-alignment policy. The US had built a reputation for helping remove and install governments. In the Fiji case, however, there has been lots of speculation but never been any hard evidence of the US hand.

Take back PNG: Prime Minister Marape and his audacious version for PNG.

I am a graduate student at Fresno State, California, researching girmit and girmityas for my graduate thesis. Dr. Singh's article and a few conversations with scholars on girmit and indentured labor, in general, have been real eye-openers for me. My first takeaway is that periodizing my research between 1879 and 1920 alone might be an inadequate framework. I cannot stop at 1920 and I have to look at the history of girmit and Fiji in a continuum. Thank you so much Dr. Singh for this great insight.

This problem of getting women into the parliament will continue, even more; most of the voters are interested in temporal goods and funds given to them directly. They feel they aren't part of the beneficiaries who experience the centralized development. However, I believe women will still be able to get elected if they play money at this quick-bucks demanding times.

One of the best analyses I have read of the causes, historical context and contemporary legacy of Fiji's 1987 military coups.

Hi Manuel, I'm sorry if the title was offensive. It was intended to capture the main findings. The sample size was very large and there is no reason to believe it was unrepresentative, or that there was massive misunderstandings of the questions. There are also three quantitative surveys that show widespread calorific deficiencies in PNG. I hope to write more about them and it will be interesting to see the response. Regards, Stephen

Many thanks to Richard Brown for his extensive comments on our paper, and apologies for the long delay in responding. Before getting to his main point, we want to reply to Richard’s suggestion that we are too negative and ignore important data when it doesn’t suit our case. In particular, Richard says we ignore the 2019 APTC tracer survey result that 89% of respondents said that it was easy or very easy to find work, which, he says, undermines our result that APTC graduates are finding it increasingly difficult to find work. However, the APTC reports don’t make clear that this question is only asked to those in paid work. Good that most of APTC’s employed graduates said it was easy to find work, but this doesn’t speak to our finding that an increasing share of APTC graduates who need to find a job just can’t find one. Of APTC graduates who did not have a job to return to, only 9% were not in paid work at the time of the 2011-13 tracer surveys but this had grown to 35% by the 2017-19 surveys. We turn now to Richard’s more general critique. Before we summarise his position, allow us to reiterate that our analysis of APTC graduate employment outcomes is not seeking to evaluate APTC graduates’ performance in terms of their value-added contribution that they are making to their employer. Our sole focus is instead on the employment outcomes of APTC graduates, a measure of employer demand. This means that our focus is only on those graduates who are not employed while students and need to find a job on graduation—that is, job-seekers. Richard suggests we also include in our analysis those graduates who are employed while students (and at the time of graduation) but who have since gained a higher position with the same employer. In our terminology, these are a subset of what we call job-keepers, i.e., employed students, so are not included. A focus on job-keepers is not relevant to our purpose. To judge the demand for APTC graduates, we need to look at those not employed at graduation. A thought experiment might help. Imagine a scenario in which all APTC students were employed while they were studying and at the time of graduation. Then we would say, according to Richard’s method, that APTC graduates were 100% successful in finding jobs. That would be a meaningless finding. And that is why all APTC graduates who continued to be employed by the same employer while studying and after graduating need to be excluded from our analysis of demand for APTC graduates. The fact that some job-keepers have gained a higher position with the same employer is irrelevant for our purposes. They might well have moved to a higher pay level while still doing the same work. We have no way of knowing whether anyone else has been hired to do their old job. Their having a new position with the same employer cannot be taken as a sign of demand for APTC graduates. Crucially, Richard never says what question he is seeking to answer by grouping one subset of job-keepers with all the job-seekers. Our question is clear: how many APTC graduates who are not employed at the time of graduation have found paid work by the time of the tracer survey? Think of APTC as a curative pill. To test the pill, we need to see how it works on diseased (unemployed-at-graduation) patients (graduates), not healthy (employed-at-graduation) ones. To summarise, we welcome Richard’s comments but they do not alter our findings, or lessen the urgent need for APTC to face the fact that those of its graduates who need to find a job on graduating are finding it increasingly difficult to do so. Stephen Howes and Richard Curtain