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Another excellent article from Dr Curtain. The PALM scheme is indeed not an aid program, at least not officially — Australia has AusAID for that purpose, and employers are meant to drive demand. However, from a recruiter’s perspective, the extensive contracting out of operations and the funding of Labour Sending Units (LSUs) across sending countries via the Pacific Labour Mobility Support Program (PLMSP) and its predecessor, the Pacific Labour Facility (PLF), have created a strong de facto aid-like operating climate. This includes heavy centralised systems (PALMIS and In-Country Recruitment Databases (IRD)) and compliance requirements that many participants experience as donor-driven micromanagement. These features may help explain why President Jose Ramos-Horta has made the comments he has. What Australia sees as necessary program integrity and worker protections can be viewed by sovereign sending nations as excessive external influence over their labour mobility systems. We have seen similar sovereignty concerns raised by the Vanuatu Government during recent bilateral talks around the Nakamal Agreement. At the root of these tensions is the persistent myth that the PALM scheme is an aid program. There is no coincidence that many NGO stakeholders have seized upon this myth giving it more traction. This has allowed an aid ethos to linger, shaping how worker welfare is approached and managed. As a result, meaningful control has been removed from both employers and their recruiters, as well as from sending country governments. This power vacuum has likely triggered the current pushback. Employers largely remain silent, as do many LSUs and recruiters, for fear of being disenfranchised or losing access to the scheme. A clear example of this mission creep is the In-Country Recruitment Database (IRD). Originally intended as a recruitment and worker tracking tool, it is increasingly morphing into a much broader citizen information system. In some countries it is now being used as a statistical and census-like resource, with East Timor reportedly uploading electoral card data and a new feature incorporating voting constituency information. (Constituencies are voting 'electorates' used in Vanuatu.) While improved data management has benefits, this expansion raises legitimate questions about national data sovereignty and the appropriate scope of a labour mobility program. Those extra features, to which outside of a particular sending country, is surely out of scope. While the centralised approach has delivered benefits in record-keeping, it risks undermining the very employer-driven model the program was designed to be.

Thanks Richard, a very informative and balanced article. I also have found analysis of the comparative economic benefits to Australia vs Timor-Leste to be pretty unconvincing. Typically, one worker salary in Australia pays the living costs of the one worker, and then 1/4 of that is sent to Timor to support a whole family with a new house, motorbike and even fund a small business in several cases. The amount spent in Australia is more, but that is because Australia is an expensive place to live. The benefit is far greater in Timor-Leste.

In Donigi v The State [1991] PNGLR 376 Peter Donigi sought declaratory relief as to the constitutionality of particular provisions of the Mining Act (Ch No 195) of the Petroleum Act (Ch No 198) which reserve rights of ownership in gold, minerals or petroleum below the surface of land to the State. Peter Donigi appeared for the Pialin clan in The State v Richard James Giddings [[1981] PNGLR 423. These two cases are discussed here: - https://www.academia.edu/167998690/REPORT_ON_THE_HISTORY_AND_APPLICATION_OF_PAPUA_NEW_GUINEA_LAW_TO_THE_ISSUE_OF_CUSTOMARY_LAND_OWNERSHIP I admire the work of the widely dispersed ‘clan’ of Land Court Magistrates, mediators and lay assistants who collectively carry the intellectual burden of deciding land dispute cases throughout PNG. The important and difficult work of this conflict management resource structure has been seriously under-resourced for decades. At the heart of the adjudicative process in these lower courts is the reasoned application of the principles of equity. The important work of the lower courts (including the Village Courts, both urban and rural) needs, as a developmental imperative, to be greatly strengthened. For more jurisprudential background on the arena, or ‘agon’ of operations of the lower courts see: - https://www.academia.edu/166881149/Concordance_Between_the_Indian_Evidence_Act_1872_and_the_Papua_New_Guinea_Land_Disputes_Settlement_Act_1975 and Lloyd Fallers, “Customary Law in the New African States”, Law and Contemporary Problems , pp. 605-616, 1962, Duke University School of Law Note that Fallers was an anthropologist and fails to notice the emergence in the court’s discussions of the equitable doctrine of laches. The court found, on its own motion, that the application of this principle decided the case. Vailala

Analysis and discussion of PNG customary land ownership law can be found here: https://www.academia.edu/167998690/REPORT_ON_THE_HISTORY_AND_APPLICATION_OF_PAPUA_NEW_GUINEA_LAW_TO_THE_ISSUE_OF_CUSTOMARY_LAND_OWNERSHIP Vailala

After witnessing the misuse of Australian tax payer's money donated to PNG to use in improved health services being misued, Australia MUST stop its aid money. We know very well that there is corruption at high levels, all responsible and reliable positions at high levels are involved in the missing of these aid money. If they cannot answer, there is something wrong. How can the money just disappear??

I appreciate your comment and had a look at the SSIR article you cited. It provides much food for thought. In international development there are special challenges that must be addressed: there has to be donor policy demands for sustainability and scale in the first place and these demands are diminishing. Why, I wonder. Second, assuming there is a supportive policy framework, we need sound project design and excellent implementation, and then sustained benefits from change before scale is possible. And I think trying to tease out general principles of scale must always be sensitive to specific disciplinary qualities and to the culture and belief systems where development and scaled benefits are intended to occur. It is rewarding to see that a discussion on these matters has emerged here - thank you!

Thank you for your positive feedback, Bill. In the case of donor-supported educational development projects, I fully agree with you about how little attention has been given to learning among the major donors from cases of long-term sustainable scaling and would go further and argue that there has been limited learning about long-term outcomes of success and failure, especially over the past two decades. Previous learning, in the case of Australian international development, encapsulated in the very clear and practical AusGuides, has been largely lost. Further, the point you make about action which is culturally congruent, inclusive, and locally owned is critical and one that I have drawn attention to in an April 2021 DevPolicyBlog reviewing the very important work of Gerard Guthrie on this theme.

Thank you for adding to this discussion, Ryan. The early INPRES experience is illuminating as it has parallels with the more recent large-scale government intervention during decentralisation of implementing school based management. The evidence there shows general success although it varies considerably across schools and is often fragile. In a similar way, INPRES schools, notwithstanding their benefits, were also ‘fragile’ in the sense that field observation demonstrated the deleterious impact of a lack of maintenance so common in infrastructure development. Thank you also for drawing attention the List’s work.

I have long been a great admirer of Sir Mek. He was truly a great Prime Minister and an exemplary Leader. His birthday and accomplishments should be celebrated in the same light as those of the founding fathers. I wonder if there will be another Sir Mek? He was and will always remain a great man.

I appreciate your post, Robert. It reminded me of this recent SSIR article, 'Scale Really Matters' - https://ssir.org/articles/entry/scale-really-matters. I liked this quote: "In this vision of scale, the role of the NGO—and, hence, of philanthropy—is to develop solutions that can be scaled via governments, prove and refine those solutions, and then work with government to achieve ownership and adoption." It is a slightly different lens on the same topic, but I think scale and sustainability are critical to ponder. Thanks for prompting us to do so!

This is a valuable piece. Thanks Robert! It's striking how little attention is given to learning from cases of long-term sustainable scaling. I think there is another connection worth mentioning - sustainable scaling involves low-cost, large-scale systems change which scales because collective action which is culturally congruent and inclusive (and therefore locally owned) produces sustained flows of benefits by enlarging the common good.

Thanks for the interesting post. One thing I found striking was the timeline: going to 1971, this covers the INPRES school building era, which was entirely funded with domestic funds from oil revenues, as far as I recall. And there is a lot of serious evidence on the impacts of that program at serious scale with respect to time, location, and spillovers. What changed since then? Was it just the nature of how the money was spent, and that the supply side was the lowest-hanging fruit? I was also surprised to not see any reference to John List's writing on this topic or the work that has been going on for many years at Yale (through their Y-RISE initiative). Prof Imran Rasul's recent piece in Science provides a good synthesis, in my view: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aef8482 Best, Ryan