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CFW and Bishop are both on the record lecturing the aid sector that it needs to ‘sell the benefits of aid to the public’ before aid can increase, or even reverse its current free fall. But does CFW actually mean it? Comments like her latest ones basically reveal her as an aid sceptic, or least one only willing to lead as far from the front as she can be. This undercuts any sales efforts by the sector when the responsible Minister can’t see any value in selling the benefits of Australian aid herself. Sad lack of leadership in this.

What is the role of vernacular language in sustainable development?

Thanks Bal For shedding some lights into the deepening influence of China foothold in the Pacific and how much influence Australia had exerted in the Pacific. Including the evolving domestic expectations and demands exerting pressures on Pacific countries’ government to venture regionally and globally to court new allies and secure more aid. For China, we cannot say much because they move to aid Pacific countries’ development areas with bigger impact projects to drive the local economy, its looking for bigger space in the Pacific. Whether it is sustainable or not at the end is not an issue for the host countries. Also, politically Australia is not in a position to use its Sino Aussie bilateral relations to talk about Pacific foothold. Australia needs to understand the domestic and regional politics played out by Pacific countries past, present and their aspirations for the interim future. Pacific countries are not the same in the last one or two decades, leadership in the small island countries have shifted with new crop of leaders taking the helm of political aisles in their countries who are much better or worse off than the previous leaders. These leaders tried to look beyond Australia to foster new trade and foreign relations and China – a growing economy in the East Asian region, is more of an ideal helping hand that Pacific countries more likely to grab. Apart from reorganizing its geopolitical and strategic position around economic and foreign relations with the Pacific countries, Australia needs to focus on training potential future leaders of the Pacific islanders to think the way Canberra would want to. Otherwise Australia would spend more to match China foothold in the Pacific but less likely to attract attention of the current crop of Pacific leaders.

What has been missing in these discussions about China, is not so much what the Chinese Government is doing, but the infiltration of Chinese businesses and its increasing dominance across the Pacific Islands. The only countries that have so far been able to resist it is perhaps, the Federated States of Micronesia, Niue and the Cook Islands. In Melanesia there is already a very strong presence of Chinese retailers with Honiara being so visible when you drive from the airport to the end of town. Honiara has literally become a Chinese town, and this is in the capital of a country where Australia spent almost $3 billion over 14 years. In the Marshall Islands, most of the taxi's are owned by Chinese and a good number of shops are also owned by Chinese. The same trends are discernible in Kiribati, Tuvalu and Tonga. The Chinese Government does not need to build a military base to extend its influence in the islands. The Chinese are already doing it by crowding out the locals from their turf and making them increasingly bystanders in their own country! Talk about Chinese influence has been about its government but they are already have a big influence where it matters.. in the pockets of peoples where they dominate commerce and in what they buy and can and cannot do. This is a far bigger internal security risk than that posed by the engagement by the Chinese Government which so far are perceivable, imaginary risk seen by those whose influence are perceived to be waning. In the Pacific Islands, there is enough space and problems for us to engage with other countries to help us address, and not believe that it is just the line of a few

There is a growing number of small NGOs and foundations specializing in offering direct funding to grassroots leaders. And 20+ of them came together to write a book last year entitled, "Smart Risks: How small grants are helping to solve some of the world's biggest problems." See: smartrisks.org When people in the aid and philanthropy sector learned about our approaches to making small grants at the international level, there were always questions that revealed how “risky” this seemed to people: “How do you find the groups?” (In other words, “It’s much easier for us to fund the same, usual players in the capital cities who talk like us.”) “Aren’t most local NGOs corrupt?” (In other words, “I believe the hype about briefcase NGOs.” or “I inherently distrust people who are from different cultures or nations.” or “I may have racist or classist assumptions that have never been challenged.”) “How do you measure your results?” (In other words, “Small grants are too insignificant to make a real dent in any social issue.” or “Hard numbers are the only way I know if I am getting a return on investment.”) “How do you keep your overhead costs down?” (In other words, “It’s too expensive to fund at the grassroots. It costs me the same amount of money to make a US$5,000 grant as a $500,000 grant.”) We didn’t get it. For us, not investing in the wisdom, experience, and leadership of people most affected by poverty was the opportunity cost we were unwilling to bear. In our minds, placing our relatively small amounts of money in the hands of people who are already doing something to address the challenges in their own communities was actually one of the least risky things we as funders could do, and also one of the smartest. We also wanted to highlight the often more serious risks of supporting even more irrelevant aid interventions or the risk of new “players” on the scene turning into more over-bearing funders. And so we named our book about small grants, Smart Risks. If we are focused on the expected gains of lasting, transformative change over large scale or quick “results,” to deem an initiative or a group of people as “risky” continues to reveal the global power structures at play. Risk implies future uncertainty. That is something Smart Risks authors have learned to embrace. Hopefully those who haven’t yet considered funding grassroots groups may pick the book up and discover that it’s not as risky as they may think. And hopefully readers of all kinds will use the book to continue to deepen their analysis of how power and privilege play out in our work. Learn more here: https://www.smartrisks.org/

In the debate about Australia's influence in the Pacific and whether it is declining, there has been little discussion of Australia's attitude to climate change. But my experience with Pacific Islander students and churches suggests they are appalled by what they see as Australia's callous disregard for the dangers of sea level rise, increased cyclones and the other harms of climate change which will affect the islands. Examples of Australian politicians laughing at the plight of Islanders go down very badly. Clearly this is not the only reason for the distancing of relations between Australia and the Pacific Islands - but is more important than some commentary would suggest.

This is an excellent and very valuable piece of long-term research. Fascinating that 14 out of 22 of the workers have started to try a business. Most though seem to have failed. Getting workers to invest their seasonal earnings is more a matter of improving the business environment than providing financial or business training to workers.

Maybe its time to redefine Chinese antics in the Pacific region - from 'soft power' to 'sharp power'. While soft power is limited to spreading one's culture and values abroad,'sharp power' coined by the National Endowment for Democracy, a Washington-based think tank, more appropriately describes Chinese influence, through coercing opinion abroad, economically and otherwise (short of outright conflict), see: https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21732524-china-manipulating-decision-makers-western-democracies-best-defence There have been reports that Chinese development loans through EXIM Bank and AIIB, although given at concessional rates, do not allow debt restructuring, or the ability to write these loans off should a recipient country default. Hence, China is spreading its reach in economically vulnerable countries, repossessing key infrastructure that these loans are used to build. The Pacific region's need to be conscious of Chinese interests cannot be understated: China may help meet our short term interests, but an overarching regional dominance is its long term goal.

Sadly, it’s a consistent approach from a government which reportedly mentioned aid as much as it mentioned Antarctica in its recent White Paper on foreign policy...

If agencies are so concerned with taking risks, maybe they should take the time to plan for more options, and more solutions when issues do arise? I think they could benefit from developing their own custom software to plan and track projects, so they could be best-prepared in the moment when something does fail. It should be known that there will be many risks in International Development, but they could be well worth it in the end, with educated planning.

Thank you for this piece. I have only lately come to appreciate the extent of the refugee crisis. The world once tolerated slavery. I hope our generation will lead the way in ending the refugee crisis.

Michael, your point about different perspectives on risk is a good one. I also wonder if we need to think about variation *within* donors, for example between different branches of government, or even within the same agency? I suspect staff based in country may have different ideas (compared to staff at HQ) about what level of risk is optimal and which types of risk are of most concern.