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Parliamentary committees should be accorded some form of prosecuting powers or recommendations to sanction politicians and public servants who arbitrarily abuse public and state laws.

Great post Theresa, thanks. I wondered when reading Terence's post about the financial side as well -- women candidates tend to have less financial resources, so perhaps it becomes more of a struggle to mobilise money on each subsequent campaign, reducing chances of success? Soso doesn't seem to have this issue but it could be an issue for other women candidates.

Nicola, many thanks for your valuable assessment of the state of adaptive programming and what needs to be done to deliver the goods. I immersed myself in this literature when I was on the design team for the APTC Stage 3 which became the Australia Pacific Training Coalition to reflect its new approach. However, from my arms length engagement with APTC since then, I fear that little has changed on the ground. The pressures and incentives to continue to reply on 'rigid, traditional systems-based operation' are too strong to try more flexible ways of solving the problems we identified.

Thanks Nicola - challenging but very timely. For my part, there are highly relevant tools out there: e.g. results-based budgeting; portfolio management techniques; probabilistic (rather deterministic) planning approaches; and better-suited performance management frameworks (i.e. better than tools developed for engineering projects). The challenge is to actually apply them (not just the terminology). And rigorous application means quite major changes in both the systems and thinking of donors and partner governments alike. On a positive note, I know DFAT is giving serious thought to this. Hopefully, they will find answers to at least some of your questions some time soon.

Hey Cory. Thanks, it is very helpful for speech.

The field of program evaluation has a body of literature explaining the different types of evaluation use and factors affecting the take up of evaluation findings.

Thanks for the post, Lisa. DT Global is pleased to be one of the organisations participating in this RDI Network initiative. It is a topic of great importance to us, practically and intellectually, and we recognise that we need to explore better ways to address the research/policy/practice intersect in what we do. We are looking forward to our own exploration and in particular the learning we can take from working with this positively diverse peer group.

The full text of the PNG DHS, rather than just the PNG DHS Key Indicators summary, was released on 25 November. The full data set can be downloaded after registering with the DHS program <a href="https://www.dhsprogram.com/data/dataset_admin/login_main.cfm;jsessionid=4D4A488B082C0B5DF77735F25954E061.cfusion?CFID=28872781&CFTOKEN=e74b50cbc2b10c7b-3462F417-A6E4-1B58-C584822C6AC73ADD" rel="nofollow">here</a>.

No mention of the proposed golf courses? Plans for handling refuse? Thank you Michael. So very glad you are still involved and on the ground in Oecussi.

Sadly, there are so many examples around the developing world of this kind of waste: <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1986-02-10-8601100834-story.html" rel="nofollow">Duvalierville in Haiti</a>, the Basilica built by Houphouët-Boigny in Yamoussoukro, Côte d'Ivoire, and the whole of Nay Pyi Taw (including an airport which sounds very much like the one in Oecusse). Interestingly, Mr Alkatiri's party polled a good deal worse in Oecusse at the last election than they had apparently expected, and from what I heard that reflected a backlash from voters who could see clearly what was going on.

This is a every interesting because it speaks about domestic violence which is something that is a big problem in the country, more specifically South Africa. So, we really do need programs like this. In the community women need more education about the human rights violations so that they can stand up for their rights and our communities need community dialogs so we can invite the men.

Thanks Michael for this insightful piece! I visited Oecussi last year and found heaps of empty hotel left to be half built along the main road. Strategies in coping with these 'development' projects was built upon a vision that might not be envisaged soon.