Comments

Parabens... inspiring story

Thank you very much for sharing your information. I am also working as what you have done. My organization name is Sepik Wetlands Management Initiative Inc. For more information go to UNDP website Small Grand Project. Also on WWF World Wide Fund.

My name is Michael Nenzepa. I am over 60 years old and I have tried all odds to help our youth to become better citizens by getting them to work in Australian farms under the Pacific Seasonal Worker Programme. I had arranged a few youth using my own funds and send two youth down to Gatton and rotate them over last 3 years. I need funding and government support now to continue. I hand pick hard working youth who will work hard, save money and come back home and enrich themselves.

Given the bilateral trade between Australia and PNG is a bit more than $6 billion, what is hard about rescuing its Pacific neighbour with a $10 billion soft loan? At the end of the day, it would still be good for Australia, as they can keep China in a distance and flourish on their $16 billion investment RoI.

If Bougainville does gain independence, then who will be working in the government and the private sectors? Who will be moving Bougainville's economy? Where is the human resource, ladies and gentlemen? The supposedly productive age group of Bougainvilleans between 25-50 are illiterate because they grew up during the crisis and never went to school. Most of them even took part in the fighting. This group of people, especially men, are only contributing to social disorder in Bougainville. There's no one to build Bougainville up as yet, ladies and gentlemen. If the ABG is serious about independence, they should build more schools, educate their children and allow this lost generation to pass out before they can gain independence from PNG. Otherwise, Bougainville will be another South Sudan. So for humanitarian sake, the Prime Minister of PNG must not let Bougainville go as yet. It is suicide if he does so!

I get denied my pension. I worked and paid for over 47 years due to spending "too much time" volunteering on community projects in Timor-Leste. Centrelink prefer to regard it as "living" in Timor Leste... I always fly out of Australia with a 6 month return ticket. Need more people volunteering not less.

The 2006 HPI from NEF was a milestone in the journey beyond GDP in that it drew critical attention to the non-income contributing factors of well-being. Vanuatu is committed to collecting high quality SWB statistics as regularly as possible, and part of that is due to the local attention that arose following the 2006 HPI publication. In full agreement with your thoughtful comment, I also believe that the importance of the HPI is not in the comparisons, but rather in where the light is shined and how that helps build policy with improved purpose.

One of the main factors preventing Tuvaluans from using the PAC visa is the cost- of the various medical and X-ray examinations, the entry fee for the ballot ($150 for the first try, and $50 thereafter), and the cost of travel from Tuvalu to NZ to secure a firm job offer. This means that only the fairly affluent Tuvaluans can afford to migrate, and with their better (presumably?) education levels, these might be the very people that Tuvalu needs to keep to help in future development? At the very least, NZ could abolish the entry fee for the ballot?

Hi Carolyn, You're absolutely spot on in regards to flights from HK as well as the overall accessibility issues. My company is presently working on various flight routes into Dili. You mentioned the Governance for Development program. I would like to know more about it in the hope that we can tap into their efforts and resources. Would you be in the know and be of help? Thanks. RJ

Thanks for the comments and clarification Saamah Abdallah. Great to hear from you. Yes, very much agree with your last point - it's the work, not the rankings, that really matter!

Actual topic. In general, I agree with you. I believe that it is necessary to create an electronic government. Information and communications technology networks improve public services, making dissemination of information about the structure and activities of government and the provision of basic public services more efficient. E-government also contributes to greater activation of the institutions of society, improves the process of strategic decision-making and the implementation of national development programs. Good luck!

Great article Luke. It's great to hear that the excellent work in Vanuatu and the Pacific Islands is continuing and having policy traction. As one of the developers of the Happy Planet Index, I just wanted to note that it's not exactly true that we dropped Vanuatu from the Index for 2009 and 2012 because 'of lobbying from other nations'. We just felt uncomfortable in 2006 making what was at the time a very controversial and counter-intuitive claim based on data which had been estimated. We were very happy in 2016 when we were able to include Vanuatu again, using subjective wellbeing from the national initiative. There are of course comparability issues when using data from different sources (when all the rest of our subjective wellbeing data come from the Gallup World Poll), but we felt it was worth it in the case of Vanuatu. And we were vindicated when we saw that Vanuatu still ranked very high! Of course, the rankings aren't that important - the important thing is the national initiatives taking place in Vanuatu, New Zealand and other countries, to really embed wellbeing into policy.