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I am a PNG academic and have undertaken research and have published papers in journals and conference papers internationally. My comments are nothing about png but research that will contribute to knowledge world wide. I am sure Australia steel industries have benefited from my research. Yaip K Telue BENG Hons 2A PhD Qut

Do not believe Albert schrams story. He has never served as professor and Head of school anywhere and he was wrongly a pointed the unitechs former council for their own selfish reasons. The three of us PNG indigenous professors kept saw it from the beginning that Albert was not the right person to lead unitech. I was professor and Head of Dept at Civil dept unitech and though respect Albert as an individual he was and is not VC material not to appoint him. When Albert turned on the former council they had no one. Some of us read and know the unitech act so when NEC made a decision to appoint a new council we decided to support the unitech couch then as by Law we Know that they were the legitimate council as NEC had no powers to appoint a new council. We did these based on our values and principals. The two of us still around are my self and prof Clestus Gonduan. Both Of us are not on face book, twitter or publish articles though the Internet so Albert ruled the Internet with his inaccurate publications. He came to unitary with all staff and students behind him. When he left he was a very lonely person as every knew him better and all chose not to suppport him when he was terminated by the same new council that supported him 6 years. The chancellor of the new council was related to me by marriage (my wifes first cousin) and the university is in Lae where chancellor is from. I had to leave unitech in December 2014 and set up my own institute. I received a call about a week or two later after Albert was sacked from the chancellor who has since left unitech to stand in 2017 elections on other matters but advised they sacked Albert for not presenting his original PhD certificate. I was employed by University of Sydney in 2005 and this was one of the first things I showed to Prof Kim Rasmussen the Head of school of Civil eng at Sydney University. My observations in hindsight was that Albert used the new council to hang in their as VC with student backing because everyone was against the former council including myself. I was vice president of the uniteach national staff association back in 2007 and we went on strike against the former council. I stood behind them when their decision to appoint albert as VC backfired as they were still the legitimate council under the Unitech ACT and supporting all other students and staff then would be against my values and principals. That is corruption. I did that venue with the expense of my position as Prof and Head of Civil Dept. In 2012 I initiated the revision of the civil dept programs through appointment of a dept academic advisory board to critically look at our programs and help us prepare for acrrediation by Engineers Australia to the Washington accord of our engineering programs. CEO OF water PNG Mr Raka Tavira, fist assistant secretary of Department of Works Mr Erick Siam, current Engineers PNG president Mr Brian Alois reps from within unitech and Professor Mahen Mahendran from Queensland university of Technology was brought up to chair this meeting. Since I left and under Albertsons term as VC unitech enginering programs have not been a credited 6 years on. I have decided to provide these comments to give the other side of the story. Yaip K Telue BENG Hons 2A QUT PhD QUT FIEPNG Registered Structural Engineer PNG

Discussions like these makes a lot more people aware of new government policies.

Following publication of the blog, we were actually sent the 2015 NSO sectoral GDP numbers. According to the NSO, resource sector growth in 2015 in constant prices was 39.0% (K15,235 million in 2015 v K10,958 million in 2014), and non-resource growth was -3.1% (K42,764 million in 2015 v K44,122 million in 2014). This is a smaller contraction in the non-resource sector than we had guessed, but still a significant one. According to the NSO, there were major falls in 2015 in manufacturing (-9%), construction (-14.4%) and finance (-14.0). There was positive growth in administrative and support services (+9.7%) and public administration and defence (+5.7%). We hope that the 2016 figures will be released soon. Stephen Howes and Nelson Atip Nema

While Australia has embarked on this political leadership fiasco like most Pacific Island countries esp. Melanesia, yet it is hard to see that the Pacific itself did not get its act together on a number of issues not to say all. With the Fiji co-Presidency of COP23, the Pacific seem not to fully take advantage of that and push for climate change initiatives forward. Fiji has taken all the credit on their co-Presidency (and they have the right to do so) even when announcing at the very beginning of their mandate that they are representing the whole Pacific community. Somehow we seem to have missed it all on this opportunity and I am not sure when we will have another one like this. We have seen how the sub region Melanesia is so divided over the West Papua issue which has other implications on a unified region. All these have great impact on so-called Pacific regionalism, which has been preached for some time now. All in all, while its good to look up to big brother (Australia) it is also important in the Pacific context that we first get our act together on a number of key issues before we look elsewhere. We (Pacific) seem to forget that by working together we are stronger.

One initiative to carry forward is on regional cooperation in Anti Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism. See article by Nathan Lynch https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6440440056590274560/

Thank you JK Domyal, The question of whether the cultures of Sols and PNG cause their clientelism is an interesting one. If you're interested in reading two different perspectives, the papers from Tony and Tobias that I linked to under James Batley's comment make for very interesting reading. Thanks again Terence

Thanks Titus, I agree, if people had better services their electoral choices could be very different. The challenge is how to build better services in the midst of clientelist politics. Thanks again for your comment.

Thanks Albert, I have a paper on how clientelism harms electoral quality (written in 2014) which can be accessed here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2497206

Thanks Tobias - great comment. I agree with you when you say almost every country started with clientelist politics. The fact that some now have programmatic politics is in encouraging in that it suggests the trap can be escaped. My belief (I'm not certain) in the necessity of bottom-up change involving sustained collective action stems from: (a) the obvious collective action problem that currently confronts voters and (b) the role bottom up change has played in some other countries' transitions (or partial transitions) from clientelist politics (Brazil is the case I know best, but the progressive era in US politics is another example, and -- I'd argue -- so is the transformation associated with the rise of labour movements in countries like the UK.) However, I agree there are alternative pathways out of clientelist politics. Simply getting wealthier appears to decrease propensity to vote in search of private goods or club goods. This then raises the question, could Sols and PNG find developmental clientelist politics involving more stable elite pacts and the like. It's possible, but it would need a completely different sort of clientelism from that we currently see. Not to mention a dramatic change in the political landscape more broadly. And it's very hard to imagine what would bring such change about. Perhaps a lot of migration, and raised incomes from that? As for the Slater argument, the contextual differences just seem too different for that to be relevant to Western Melanesia, I think. At some point a "Pathways out of clientelist politics" forum would be a great event in which to discuss this more.

Speaking of Tony Hiriasia, his SSGM discussion paper on kin-based voting is a very valuable read on voter choices in Solomon Islands: http://ssgm.bellschool.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/publications/attachments/2016-08/dp_2016_4_hiriasia.pdf Also worth reading is Tobias Haque's paper on voter choices in Solomons: http://dpa.bellschool.anu.edu.au/experts-publications/publications/1414/influence-culture-economic-development-solomon-islands

Many thanks for this important piece. Some very insightful comments here about the durability of relations between Australia and the Pacific islands. With regard to climate change I think it's important to emphasise that Australia's failure to legislate Paris Agreement targets and continued promotion of coal is not just at odds with Pacific island countries. There is daylight between Australia's 'political reality' and global political opinion. At last years global climate negotiations for example - hosted by Fiji and Germany - countries like the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and New Zealand launched a 'Powering Past Coal' alliance. This is a global diplomatic initiative intended to see a phase out of coal-fired power. Increasingly, that is the way the world is headed. And the reason why is straight forward. If all of the planned and currently operating coal fired power plants worldwide live out their 'lifespan' - emitting for decades to come - we will go beyond dangerous levels of global warming. So few policymakers seriously doubt that we actually need to see a managed phase out of coal fired power. Unfortunately however, Australia is the world's largest coal exporter and the coal lobby is extraordinarily powerful in Australian politics. The new Prime Minister has appointed a coalmining lobbyist as his chief of staff, and we can expect to see the Australian government shirking international responsibilities and promoting coal-fired power for some time yet. The longer this goes on, the more damaging it will be for Australia's international reputation, and the harder it will be to pursue Australia's interests in other areas, like trade and security relationships.