Comments

Hi Grant Really nice piece of work. I've just completed 9 months of ethnographic PhD fieldwork in Moresby looking at the links between ethics and performance on the PNG public service, mostly at a central level. Many similar themes and findings. We should compare notes. 🙂 Early days yet for me in relation to data analysis, but a couple of quick points. Firstly, it seems to me that one of the keys to fighting corruption is to establish a more effective performance and accountability culture in the PNG public service. In one sense, 'corruption' is just one end of the scale that deals with the "appropriate and effective" use of public resources. One of the main challenges here (highlighted in a couple of examples in your paper) seems to me to be that formal accountabilities are not always clear and accountability practices are often weak. There seem to be a range of reasons for this - some are 'top down' (e.g. politicisation), others are 'horizontal' (e.g. the influence of wantok relationships in individual performance management), others are more broadly environmental (e.g. a tendency at times to'make do' with verbal rather than written accountabilities). On the whole, it's challenging to hold others to account if accountabilities aren't clearly defined and appropriate written records aren't always kept. Having said that, I also found (as your paper mentioned) that there are very, very many PNG public servants who strongly wish to 'do the right thing', and are motivated by a strong desire to serve the people of PNG. They work hard in a very challenging environment, made more stressful by the fact that they are consciously working across 'two worlds' - the world of their family, village and community, and the world of the bureaucracy. Navigating this boundary raises deep questions of identity for many. I'd be interested to know if this came up as a issue in your qualitative research.

Quite an insightful article, thanks. Echos some of my experiences in running a business in Solomon Islands as well.

Thanks for sharing. Dr Kitau

Thank you Fabian, BS, and John for your comments. BS - your comment is interesting, but personally, I don't think less democracy would help. If the political incentives are wrong in a democracy they're equally likely to be wrong in an autocracy. And rulers would be even less accountable. John - thanks for an interesting reflection. I guess where I differ from you is that, on the basis of the quality of provincial government in much of the two countries, I don't think that that level of decentralisation would have been much better. The DSIP/CDFs are an interesting example of even greater decentralisation. In the electorates/constituencies where they work, they are certainly suggestive that this level of decentralisation might work better for some tasks, if only it could be pulled away from the politicised distribution that plagues these funds.

Thanks Tom, I agree, even a walk-in party, just for old time's sake, would have been nice. Something for the author to plan for in their next book...

Hi Erin, Congratulations on putting this great piece base on your experience in the Solomon Islands. So true about what is needed to create conditions for flexibility. Would be good to see more programs supporting complex social and political change using flexible approaches to drive real change. Love this article. Thank you Fremy

''Eve spat...cursing the banks...'' did not warrant detailed examination and/or resolution in deficiencies to market?

Thanks for the great review. I too liked the book, though I wanted Mary-Anne to make a cameo just to tie into J's other books.

Great piece. In terms of solutions we know that political systems are a complex adaptive systems. So the solutions would probably be simpler and be focused around changing constraints. One of the most likely constraints to tweak would be the number of MP's in the system. You could start tweaking that and then let the feedback cycle kick in. Quick thought experiments: - What if you started slowly reducing the number of seats election by election? - What would happen if you got down to 11 seats, 7 seats, 3 seats etc.? The issue is it's difficult to predict what the unintended negative consequences could be so you'd need to have some way of creating a mass sensor network to provide real time feedback from the system. What would the unintended negative consequences be? What would the unintended positive consequences be? How would you mitigate against these? Just wondering if there is a way to test these out in a safe to fail experiment.

A very valid point indeed! One wonders whether it's discrimination package only for the privilege! Besides the cost of visa's vary as well.The rich countries pay less or pay nothing at all compared to the Pacific. More Pacific islanders are aware of this biased visa policy. Australia needs to play a fair game.

Great piece Terence Wood. This is very enlightening on PNG and Solomon Islands politics.

The PNG LNG Gas Agreement dated 22 May 2008 ( https://www.banktrack.org/download/png_lng_gas_agreement/080522_pnglngagreementexecutionversion.pdf) describes in Exhibit J the ‘Protocols for Social Mapping and Landowner Identification Studies’. Under the heading of ‘social organisation’ consultants are expected to ‘provide a description of clan structure, migration history, provenance and present organisation of people ... principles of group formation (kinship and descent), leadership, identity and genealogies ...’ Under the heading of ‘Mapping Results/Findings’ consultants are required ‘To provide a preliminary distribution map showing the relative positions of major groupings such as clans in the area – a ‘group to ground’ grid with an understanding of applicable land tenure principles and concepts.’ The SMLIS reporting requirements described in Exhibit J closely mirror the pre-independence colonial administration reporting practice. Conspicuous by their absence from the Exhibit J reporting requirements are any references to PNG legislation relevant to the determination of customary landownership. The Ministerial informational requirements imposed by the Oil and Gas Act are also not mentioned. Given the limited (and backwards looking) vision imposed on the consultants by Exhibit J it is understandable that they were not able to contribute in any meaningful way to a Ministerial Determination of inter-group landowner benefit sharing arrangements. The SMLIS consultants and their reports have no legislated for processual standing in an OGA sanctioned benefit sharing agreement. I think that Anura Widana’s post summarises the process of landowner identification in admirably simple and straightforward terms. I agree with Anura that identifying landowners is a joint responsibility shared by developer and GoPNG. The developer’s interest in landowner identification includes the need to engage with local companies, facilitate employment of local labour, and the OGA requirement for the developer to pay landowners compensation for entry to land, disturbances to land and occupation of land. In regard to your concerns about the Papua LNG Project the Chairman of Total was today reported as saying ‘[t]he Papua LNG Project is completing all environmental and social studies including the important SMLI (Social Mapping and Landowner Identification) studies. The SMLI process and methodology has been enhanced, and with the Department of Petroleum’s guidance and counsel, ensures that a strong report will be submitted for the vetting.’ https://www.thenational.com.pg/construction-of-papua-lng-to-start-in-2021/ The National also reported PM O’Neill’s views- ‘On landowner identification in Gulf, O’Neill said he understood that most of them had been issued with identification cards “so that they are fully identified as genuine landowners”. “We certainly do not want to repeat the mistakes of the past where even today our minister is trying to determine the real landowners in Hela and Southern Highlands.” https://www.thenational.com.pg/gas-deal-is-on/ Vailala