Comments

Hi Amanda, thanks for the piece and also background literature on countries who and adopted mandatory SIM registrations and have worked and not worked for them. me, like others have already registered SIMS and are discouraged by the literature that is currently coming out on the pros and cons...but thanks!!

Reforms should also consider addressing the growing demand for people (or healers) who claim to have supernatural powers to assist the so called victims of sorcery find the sorcerers or causes of harms. The existence of such "good" people have also given rise to the belief.

The Pacific Island countries have two major challenges, among others; (1) less natural resources to develop and generate income; (2) a growing population that the individual country is not able to cater for adequately. Descending from the above two challenges, the Pacific countries needs very much support from other countries to meet some of their short and long-term needs. In that scenario, Australia and New Zealand were there in front most of the time providing much of the needed support. While the Pacific countries are more exposed to the world, their aspirations and dreams also create more demands than how much their government would afford. On the other end, Australia and New Zealand also need to move away or into different ways of doing business with the Pacific countries. Now, the opportunity for Pacific countries to look elsewhere for support is becoming a reality. That is when China became a convenient figure in the minds of the Pacific countries, not that they dislike Australia or New Zealand. What the Australia Minister for International Development and Pacific denounced and criticized China for is not of China's making but the nature of the two challenges faced by Pacific countries discussed above. The Pacific casual labour mobility scheme is not the solution nor will help improve what the Minister has denounced but is a short-term measure. There would be more that Australia and New Zealand could do to maintain the traditional leadership approach in the Pacific.

PNG has evolved from traditional ethnic groupings with 800 plus diversities into a more loosely integrated society coming out of age since 1975. Categorically describing, PNG as an entity of dispossession and inequality would not hold much truth but a defensive work by someone to contest his/her belief. We are here to build capacity, would mean nothing to a traditional PNG ethno dwellers in the 1970s than today PNG. Looking back, early PNG ethno groups knew how to mobilise as social groups, do gardening and hunting so building capacity would mean nothing to them; is it to do with their traditional daily chores or introducing something new that they will adopt. That book by Paige West on PNG needs to be contested at some points with regard to pre and post 1975 views on PNG. PNG traditional society are some of the civilized society of the early human era, dispossession and inequality was never the norms, even in today's PNG society. PNG people belong to a nation, a society, a community and an ethno clan group, they belong to something that you cannot find it in many other countries and nations. PNG has possession and equality too.

Sean, Read my postscript.

But there is a deputy secretary responsible for development- currently Ewan McDonald

Thanks Tess. As I say, Australia and NZ "have unrestricted two-way labour mobility."

Thanks Camilla for this post which has brought my attention to the book. It's definitely one book I should read.

Thank you Camilla. West has done some interesting work on PNG and this seems to be one of them, especially her insights on some of PNG’s contemporary challenges.

Surely it is a no brainer that we should not give money to 'dictatorships' because it makes the giver 'us' equally complicit in the atrocoties that these dictators hand out to their people. I for one am against my taxation money being given out willy nilly to dictators. One would have to be without a brain to think a dictatorship spends 'aid' money for the good of the people they represent, they spend it on themselves.

It would be worth including the need for contraception. Access to knowledge there may be, but adequate provision of contraception? This youth bulge could have many babies before it solves sustainability in employment and other areas. Women’s Plans Foundation supports family planning projects run by Marie Stopes, ChildFund and CARE, so that girls and women may plan and join in decision-making.

Thanks for this Stephen and for stating clearly (along with several others, including me) that Newman missed several points in his advocacy for integration, most notably that there is nothing to indicate that Pacific island countries would be interested in arrangements of this type. I note that you look to the Australia-NZ relationship as a model for how Australia should step up relationships with the Pacific and yet make no mention of the fact that there are no visa requirements for travel between those two countries. Surely, the ability to visit Australia (for holidays, to visit family, to work, to study, or for business) without having to spend time and money on getting a visa would be the single biggest way to promote greater integration between Australia and her nearest neighbours?