Comments

I agree with number 5, but it shouldn't stop at a framework. Far too much debate is about money, priorities and effort leading to improved frameworks. What is and has been missing for a long time is publicising the results - where Australian aid has made a demonstrable difference to helping in the fight against hunger and poverty. Consequently, the ignorant on the far right get a free kick by saying that our aid is wasted and should be stopped until poverty is ended in Australia. There is little understanding - in the general, voting community - of what poverty is in the developing world/third world or whatever other euphemisms are employed in referring to the real people in the following World Bank excerpt: "There has been marked progress on reducing poverty over the past decades. The world attained the first Millennium Development Goal target—to cut the 1990 poverty rate in half by 2015—five years ahead of schedule, in 2010. Despite the progress made in reducing poverty, the number of people living in extreme poverty globally remains unacceptably high. And given global growth forecasts, poverty reduction may not be fast enough to reach the target of ending extreme poverty by 2030. According to the most recent estimates, in 2015, 10 percent of the world’s population lived on less than US$1.90 a day, compared to 11 percent in 2013. That’s down from nearly 36 percent in 1990. ............ In 2015, 736 million people lived on less than (US) $1.90 a day,..........." https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview I have not heard Australia's Foreign Ministers speak publicly about demonstrable aid successes. All I've seen is billions of dollars cut from the aid Budget and AusAid amalgamated with DFAT. Your 5 key points are very much bureaucratic ones aimed at those who manage the aid budget. Absent seems to be any priority of reaching the Australian public with aid successes. Let me give you one - in Afghanistan. I helped fund a project that trained 40 women to be paralegals and act as defence counsel in domestic violence cases. Details here: https://actionaid.org.au/why-womens-groups-are-so-important/najiba-a-paralegal-working-with-actionaid-in-afghanistan-helping-women-access-legal-support/ Never saw one account of it in Australia. In public.

Thanks for this insightful personal account. I continue to cross my fingers for my friends in PNG. Vision City is quite different to most of Port Moresby and your post makes that clear. And as people often say, Port Moresby is very different to the rest of Papua New Guinea. I spoke to a good friend in Madang on the phone last night. She lives in Wagol sawdust settlement. She knew about the lockdown and mentioned it at the start of the call, as soon as I asked ‘Yu stap orait?’. She said that she and her family members had bought plenty of food and they are staying at home. She said that they had also purchased soap and they are washing their hands before every meal. So that was reassuring. I am very worried for my dear friends in PNG. Dr Bryant Allen’s new paper increased my concerns. It is worth a read. The paper is available at http://dpa.bellschool.anu.edu.au/experts-publications/publications/7523/ib-202006-coronavirus-covid-19-papua-new-guinea Thanks again, Amanda.

The Papua New Guinea Minister for Communications & Information Technology, Hon. Timothy Masiu, told me this week that the registration deadline for mobile phone SIM cards in PNG is now May 31st, instead of March 31st. The extra two months is due to coronavirus.

I’d be surprised if the PNG govt did anything well. They suck up so much international money like a vacuum cleaner and still fail to improve their citizens lives. They’re a waste of space!

That's fair Chris. And yes we do mostly agree. INGOs certainly need to be active - I just think that right now, not being over-eager would be a good thing. This: "... it is also possible that isolation and everyone ‘staying at home’ might create a space where power will be claimed, if not ceded. If this is the case then we may well see local development actors not only claiming the new space afforded them by setting the agenda but insisting more powerfully for greater ownership over humanitarian responses and development cooperation" is exactly what I think needs to be embraced, and space given for it to happen. So it amounts to letting our Pacific islander friends make the first move. We can be ready to assist, support, resource, broker and advocate. And I think being mindful of the framing is really significant. There are sound administrative reasons to talk about 'delegating authority' but it is still a term embedded in hierarchy. Giving or ceding authority could send a different message.

James thanks for this, I think we mostly agree, and I take the point on framing. But what Fiona and I are arguing is that *we* do have a proactive role to play in that part of the eco-system of international cooperation and relations we occupy to assist in not only helping to maintain and ideally enlarge that space, but also - as Sarah Philipps has so cogently argued recently (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338444289_The_primacy_of_domestic_politics_and_the_reproduction_of_poverty_and_insecurity) - in seeking to also contribute to addressing the international policies and politics which contribute to regional insecurity, inequality and impoverishment - not to mention global pandemics - in the first place. Of course this needs to be done in conversation and dialogue with Pacific Islanders, but we believe that we have some responsibility to act too, as well as 'shutting up, listening and learning'.

Put bluntly, lots of Pacific islanders will for the first time in decades - possibly centuries for some - be managing their affairs without the close supervision of external structures, be they NGOs, colonial administrators or others. As we are forced to step back, there is no way for us to predict how they will occupy the space we leave behind. But occupy it they will, and I am pretty confident that for the most part they will do it well. For us on the outside there has never been a better opportunity simply to shut up, listen and learn. We can get out of the way and let our Pacific islander partners lead. We might ask 'what are you doing' and that may be enough. And asking what they are doing rather than what they want to do may be an important distinction as it recognises that the agency is already theirs. I think there is a lot to be said for not trying to frame this as 'localisation' - or applying any other label. 'Implementing localisation' still makes it our project - *we* are working out how *we* change *our* systems and processes. Why don't we instead put all of that to one side and just communicate? I am sure that our Pacific partners will tell us what, if anything, they need.

We need more of our Pacific expert views and experiences on the aid effectiveness agenda in our Region. Excellent article indeed.

I agree. The attraction of Charter Cities to any prospective resident would be transparent rule of law. People are already voting with their feet leaving poor administrations and seeking admittance to good ones giving us an immense problem of displaced people. We need Charter cities administered by legal experts. Like an urban population sponge across the archipelagos of SE Asia made by Chartered city ports linked by a common transparently good administration that mediates goods in and out of an associated country so that all law is observed. A circuit court with international jurists known for integrity will ensure justices are not subject to the local corruption that kills the project.

Thanks both. Surely the instructions restricting domestic travel/movement and some states ‘closing’ borders also means the idea that Australians are suddenly going to take up fruit picking is absurd. Some living in the fruit/veg regions might but would only be marginal compared to the reduction in workers. Seems like an area where some serious thought needs to be given by policy makers, and that needs to happen before things start to rot on trees/vines/in the ground.

Excellent article and good reading material.

I think that there is more important problem. You should check not gender equality but national one. People who live on occupied territories are greatly oppressed, especially Mongols https://www.buzzfeed.com/inside18acres/chinese-oppressions-in-inner-mongolia-7ql3lqpl9k