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Stephen, a fitting tribute to a respectable FM who graced her position with ease and intentionally promoted the Pacific. That is not to overlook some of her representations that were called into question at various points in her career but one understands she was part of a government with clear standing on certain issues. Overall, she had a positive impact on the Australia-Pacific relations. As Ashlee rightly pointed out, she was also an important inspiration to women folks in the Pacific region that are struggling for political leadership.

Thanks Stephen. While I do agree with all you have written above, on thinking a bit more I think she also deserves a bit of credit on some of the softer stuff, for example, like people-to-people links in the Pacific. Through the New Colombo Plan, but also through things like her own demeanour while in the region and her frequent trips, I think she has made more of a contribution to this than previous FMs. While people-to-people links may not lead to direct development outcomes, they will hopefully bode for a greater interest in the development of the region and more partnerships between Australia and the Pacific. Obviously there's still a lot more stepping up to do on the Pacific step-up, but JB has had more of a focus on this engagement it seems than past FMs. There's also just the powerful optics of a woman in a high-level position of power engaging in the region. While of course there could have been a lot more tough-talking with countries like PNG during her tenure, for example, it does send a message on women in leadership when there are very few in the region. Along with a focus on gender in the aid program, the commitment to the bipartisan trips to the region where you saw JB, CFW, Penny Wong and Claire Moore, for example, really did send this message that women leaders from Australia are highly capable and interested in the region (reality of Australians' own perceptions on women leaders perhaps sadly different, but don't get me started on that!). I also understand that she has encouraged some Liberal women, like Sen Linda Reynolds as one example, to become more interested in PNG and to observe elections etc. Again this kind of thing could help in the future. All this is more optics than policy perhaps, and policy speaks louder, but optics do play a part in how people think about the region, and think about Australia. I think it was always positive that she found time for the Pacific when there were so many other 'big' things happening i.e. at the UN, with US and China etc. When you think of the obsessions of past FMs, at least in recent years, I can't really think of any that had the same amount of time for the Pacific.

As a lecturer once said, some forms of corruption practices are good to keep the wheels of a country’s economy moving. It’s certainly not all about the involvement of politicians, elites nor the bearuacrats, but the participation of ordinary citizens. Thanks to Timipere and Tubodenyefa for shedding more lights on the corruption conundrum of Nigeria.

Thank you Dr. Grant. Like you noted, scholars and practitioners tend to dismiss any thoughts about corruption having a functional value. Ignoring how livelihoods of poor citizens may be depending on proceeds from elite corruption could send well-intended anti-anticorruption initiatives tumbling down the hill. For long we have assumed that elites are the only beneficiaries of political corruption. As it appears, the poor also benefit and could pose a danger to anti-corruption efforts that become a threat to their survival.

Apparently, the PNG government can get away with this poor growth performance. When is the urban population facing unaffordable housing and monopoly prices going to react? When is the largely rural and mostly uneducated population going to connect the dots?

Fair point, and I agree there are no winners. PNGUoT and UPNG are big ships, and they take time to turn. Trust me that I pushed hard from the management for transparency in financial administation and restructuring of personnel. For the former, I was somewhat successful, achieving an unqualified audit in 2017 for the 2015. For the latter, not so much. Each turn of the road, we found senior staff not collaborating, and since 2017 Council not supporting management.

Thank you. I will move on, but very sad I can never come back to PNG without putting my life at risk. I feel sorry for the students who will continue to get a 3rd rate or lower education. I also feel sorry for PNG citizens having to live with such abuse of Ministerial authority, policy powers, and violence. From the outside, however, there is little we can do about all this now.

Although without the required regulation, the government used its powers under the Higher Education Act 2014 to appoint new Chancellor and Council at the University of Goroka and the University of Natural Resource and Environment. Sir Nagora Bogan had been appointed as Chancellor of the PNGUoT in 2007, and then again in November 2012. At the PNG University of Technology I was the last "real" Vice Chancellor duly and lawfully appointed by Council, as the Sevua Investigation concluded in 2013. Prof. Burton mentions the UoG administration before 2015. All I know was that the former Chancellor was mentioned in the Panama papers, and the former Vice Chancellor was involved in shady dealings with the Chinese and regarding university procurement. Maybe it is a case of swapping one set with another set of dishonest and ineffective administrators? Prof. Howes correctly points about the reputational damage to the PNG universities with the last incidents is tremendous, and will be felt over the coming years. Sites like glassdoor.com and the international press coverage will make applicants think twice. What the national press writes is not so relevant. The Chancellors have now effectively achieved an end to any international recruitment of qualified academics or competent administrators. The current crisis raises the question whether the universities in their current state can be helped from the outside through any type of aid or support. They seem content being credential machines whose average graduates "only look good on paper" but have few real competences. I am quoting an industry partner here. Another one once asked "Vice Chancellor why is it that your graduates are unable to do anything? ". The other 2 parts of the mission, research and transfer, are barely developed at all. Apart from employable graduates, universities in order to stay relevant are supposed to produce active citizens and future leaders. With the elimination of the voice of the students at UPNG, UoG and PNGUoT the students are now expected to "shut up and get your degree", while for the large majority of them little opportunity is offered to develop leadership skills in the curriculum or outside it. Real reform of their governance is long overdue, driving a transformation allowing them to deliver a modern, competence based curriculum. In order to stay relevant Universities must contribute to a sustainable employment situation, and currently over 60% of graduates are still unemployed 6 months after graduation. The basic conditions for any learning to take place are not in place. Apart from the governance and focus on the mission, in my view the main urgent challenges for PNG universities are the financial administration, ICT and restructuring. At the PNGUoT we were able to sort out the finances in 3 years, make good head way with ICT, but we barely started the scratch the surface regarding the restructuring. Indeed PNG universities are funded badly, with less than half of the government benchmark of K30,000 per student per year. There is however also a lot of wasteful spending, and a lack of administrative and financial controls. Just by reducing the financial mandate of the heads of departments in 2017 at the PNGUoT, for example, we were able to save over K2M in unnecessary expenses. It did not make us very popular. At the PNGUoT the strategy was to get the house in order first financially, and then approach industry for support. The state is rather penniless and in the 10 year business planning was not expected to fund much more than the salaries. Achieving an unqualified audit in 2017 for all the 2015 accounts was a major step forward. The PNGUoT was the only university to do so, and it had not been achieved in over 2 decades. Since 2014, several large companies had been strongly supporting accreditation of engineering programs, and eventually assured me would have funded the refurbishment of the laboratories. Currently, hardly any of the laboratories have usable equipment, and there is no environment where scientist or engineers can be taught. The second leg of the strategy was to use "digital" to overcome some of the obstacles (e.g. no library) by improving the IT infrastructure. This was partially achieved, mainly because of deficient management, and failure to restructure the university's IT department which counted 40+ staff members, where 4 would have sufficed. Finally, there is a need for restructuring of all university personnel, but there is no willingness or capacity to execute a concrete plan. The academics to staff ratio in industrialized countries is 1 to 1, and even in Fiji it is only 1 to 2. In PNG public universities it is 1 to 4. I remember at one strategy meeting, I asked a head of department whether he would be willing to restructure and downsize some of his administrative staff. He agreed this staff was no longer necessary, but he said he could not support downsizing because of the long relationship they had in the department, and unwillingness to upset the social balance. Let me end with a quote: "Oh what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive." (Sir Walter Scott (1808) in the poem Marmion)

If I may put in a plug, and just to follow up on Amanda's comment, Colin Wiltshire and I will be providing an update on our research into constituency development funds in Solomon Islands at this year's State of the Pacific Conference (10-12 September at ANU). We'll also be hearing from Tony Hiriasia from the School of Government, Development and International Affairs at USP on his own research into CDFs in Solomons, and from Angela Nelson, Women’s Representative on the Milne Bay Provincial Assembly and Alotau District Development Authority, Papua New Guinea. Registration is open here: http://dpa.bellschool.anu.edu.au/news-events/events/6346/state-pacific-2018

Thanks Stephen and Nelson. PNG's growth performance in recent years has indeed been lamentable (and this is even before considering per capita terms). As you indicate, recognition of the extent of economic crisis could have led to earlier and more appropriate policy actions. Unfortunately, the need for policy corrections is still undermined by PNG Treasury using poor information. Even in the most recent mid-year update (31 July), the Treasury did not update their 2015 GDP figures for those from the NSO (see Chart 13 on p18). They did drop their estimate of 2017 non-resource growth from 1.9% to just 0.2% - politically it would too difficult for them to concede a negative number - so the non-resource sector was still retreating by about 2.9% in per capita terms. The same MYEFO document claims PNG LNG production increased by 15% from 2016 to 2017, and this is part of the basis for a continuing up-beat revenue assessment for the 2018 budget. However, Oil Search on p24 of its 2017 Annual Report states "The Project produced 8.3 MT (gross) of LNG in 2017, up 5% on 2016 levels." Increasingly, it is difficult to believe the numbers in PNG government documents. This re-enforces the important role for the IMF and other financial institutions to tell it how it is. Their performance in recent years has been disappointing. APEC and talk of new resource projects are a mere distraction to the underlying economic crisis in PNG which requires deep and politically painful changes to policy.

It may be useful if I add a few more comments on the issue of the ‘fair’ return that PNG gets from resource development. These comments are additional to those made on August 21. That there is a significant amount of reveue derived from sectoral employment taxation should come as no surprise. This revenue stream comes off the front end of all resource development projects and is unaffected by the CAPEX debt amortisation and interest payment arrangements of any of the co-venturers for all kinds of projects. When analysing the aggregated BPNG figures for both company tax and dividend payments it needs to be kept in mind that these two sources of GoPNG income are subject to various influences which include not only commodity price variation but also production variation from a wide variety of causes including, for example the influence of drought on Ok Tedi output in 2014, the reconfiguration of mining operations from underground to pit, the reconfiguration of Kutubu for gas (gas re-injection has been taking place for many years), the closure of Mananda, the Lihir construction of a geothermal power plant, to name a few. At present the PNG LNG Project is a dominating influence because of its very large CAPEX and relatively thin income stream (no big ‘windfalls’ as there is from oil). This makes the financing of the project of considerable significance. The financing arrangements extend over 15 years for the licence share owners, except for the GoPNG interest which is said to be for 12 years. So how do the financing arrangements affect the rate of return to GoPNG? The short answer is that we don’t know but we can get a partial picture from OSL reports published on the ASX (http://www.openbriefing.com/AsxDownload.aspx?pdfUrl=Report%2FComNews%2F20180501%2F01977352.pdf) The OSL report gives us a chart on page 21 for an ‘Indicative PNG LNG Repayment Profile’, distinguishing between interest and principal repayments. For 2018 principal repayments are about USD$ 375 million, interest payments about USD$ 175 million. Interest rates are not stated. Perhaps they are about Libor + 4%. A chart on page 24 shows the Oil Search PNG LNG debt amortisation falling from a 2017 high of about USD$ 3 billion to zero in 2026. GoPNG LNG Project equity (Kumul plus MRDC) is about half that of OSL. Term finance is for 12 years and the rate may be Libor + 6% or less. It is possible that the Kumul loan repayment obligations may also end c. 2026. However, from 2021 Kumul debt service obligations may well rise above current projections as it incurs new obligations in respect of the PNG LNG expansion and the new Papua LNG Project. Accordingly, it seems likely that a significant upward lift in company tax and equity dividends from the enormous LNG resource development projects will not occur at least until the early 2030s. PNG has joined with major oil companies in the making of some very large long term bets. But we should be very grateful that GoPNG participation in resource development has created a ‘front-end load’ of benefits for citizen beneficiaries. An unusual form for a Sovereign Wealth Fund. Perhaps GoPNG should seek to source its forthcoming LNG project development equity funding through the AIIB where it may be granted a rate of Libor + 1.5%. Vailala

Dr Terence Wood, thank you for this most interesting blog post. Your post reminded me of the interesting research being done at the Australian National University's Department of Pacific Affairs (http://dpa.bellschool.anu.edu.au/ ) on the discretionary funds that Members of Parliament (MPs) are allocated. For instance, Colin Wiltshire and Thiago Cintra Oppermann explained that people in PNG do not expect services or projects to reach them if they reside in villages which did not support the successful candidate (see http://dpa.bellschool.anu.edu.au/experts-publications/publications/4124/politicising-drought-relief-papua-new-guinea ). In the Solomon Islands, the discretionary funds available to MPs are amongst the largest in the world, according to James Batley (see http://dpa.bellschool.anu.edu.au/experts-publications/publications/4073/constituency-development-funds-solomon-islands-state-play ). It certainly seems to be an area worthy of further investigation. Dr Amanda H A Watson Lecturer Australian National University