Comments

Hi Lindsay and thank you for sharing you view on this issue. It is certainly an interesting view taking into account the decision to step in to seek a stay was after I was approached by Provincial Paediatrician for Madang General Hospital, who explained that some 600 rural health officers that he communicates with on regular basis, providing life saving health information to treat critically sick children and mothers having child birth complications. As to your question how I would rather spend my time? Hmmm roads and infrastructure or the welfare of sick children and mothers facing birth complications ??? How a learned person, who has been afforded a tertiary education and yet appear so morally confused on such an issue is a question I'm more intrigued about?

It seems to me - 30% loans each fortnight....to those improvised keeps them deep in a poverty trap. This appears normal practice in urban PNG. What is the consensus around this practice?.

Its sad to learn that workers under these schemes do not work on holidays. I guess its due to labor laws where workers should be paid double time? (at least more than the usual hourly rate). I totally agree to visa free conditions not only for workers but families as well. some reports of the last scheme stated the hardworking natures of workers from the Pacific. I wonder how this program could facilitate genuine workers who through their experiences would like to apply for permanent residency because of environmental issues at home. While it is not an easy topic because of national interest of both send and destination countries, it would certainly be great to have options as such under PLS.

Kudos to Bryan Kramer for standing up for the silent rural majority. In retrospect however, would you rather expend your time and energy on providing much needed leadership to resolve more demanding socioeconomic and infrastructural problems being experienced in Madang District - your district? Madang town once dubbed the 'pearl of the pacific' has dire law and order problems that need immediate attention. The state of the town's road infrastructure is in shambles and needs urgent attention. The present ongoing political interference destabilizing a previously perfectly functioning provincial public service machinery has directly affected basic service delivery at the rural level. Perhaps the question here is; would you rather spend your time and energy on trying to resolve a national issue or deal with pressing local issues that demand your immediate attention?

Thanks Denghua I can understand from your discussion; how China’s domestic economics, foreign diplomacies and global image have played out in the modern world. The establishment of the new aid agency will hopefully do better to achieve China’s broader foreign policies for a community of common destiny. The communities of Islands in the Pacific would very much be interested in being part of President Xi’s new initiative and benefit from the Belt and Road Initiative. The diplomatic tug-of-war between China and Taiwan is something the Pacific Islanders would not consider much but they will look towards development aid offered by the two countries and their own domestics needs. Apart from China and Taiwan diplomatic contests in the Pacific, China is also posing a threat to Pacific Islands traditional partner – Australia. There is a growing concern in Canberra that most Pacific Island countries are drawn into China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Australia needs to reshape its AusAID program into the Pacific. After all, the bigger institutional changes taking shape in China’s foreign aid program will impact foreign diplomacy of other countries. Pacific Island countries will be lucky to benefit/loss in this new China Aid Program.

Australia's Seasonal Worker Scheme and the yet to kick off Pacific Labour Scheme, which are of substantial benefit to Aust, make the labour resource through the Pacific region a very valuable commodity

Well said Bryan Kramer.

I believe that this research only points to one side of the coin. It presents the lender's point of view and lacks the borrower's point of view. It is estimated that 15% of the 7.7 million population are currently in the workforce and living in towns and cities. This means that approximately 85% of people live in the rural areas. In my research titled "Alleviating poverty through micro credit: Papua New Guinea Case study". I focus my research on the borrower's perspective, I found out that there are two very important problems that the borrowers face. The first one is accessibility - micro finance institutions are based in certain commercial centers. E.g. PNG microfinance in Mt. Hagen is serving almost all of the population of half a million people in WHP and JIWAKA. Just imagine less than 10 bank officers serving 85% of almost 500,000 people of Jiwaka and Mt. Hagen. A customer said she has to wait for hours just to find out that she does not have the historical cash flow or/and cash collateral to obtain the loan. So left and never went back again. She also discourages other people to seek loans with these finance companies. The other customer said "He travels for hours to come to the bank to find out that he had to wait again for some hours to get served. If he had to wait then he will miss the only PMV back to his village so he didn't want to try. The first problem is accessibility. Banks focus so much on risks and overhead costs that they discourage people from accessing their credit facilities. The other problem is loan requirements. I interviewed a mother in Madang and she said, "In order for me to get a K15000 loan from Peoples Microbank, I had to offer my husbands van as a collateral and at the same time write a business plan including projected cash flow, income statement and Balance sheet. Just image a Gr. 10 leaver being asked to provide all these. As an Accountant and MBA I couldn't understand too. She didn't went back to Peoples Microbank again. She even discourages others from going there too. It is all about convenience, not about risk or demand. See how BSP is successful. The electronic channel is their green gold. They have more than 200 ATMs and 12000 Eftpos all over PNG. Even though they charge a lot of fees, people still go for it. It all about convenience. People will pay any cost to consume it. The other example in Digicel; they have towers all over PNG. Even though some customers complain about voice calls fees or their credit disappearing, they still use Digicel because its accessible almost everywhere. Hence, those who want to do further research please see also the customers point of view.

Yes Bernard but Australia GIVES aid (FREE) and CHINA loans (NOT FREE).

Hi Peter, Thanks for your comment. I agree business is crucial. But it is not the only sector or activity that is crucial to any particular country's development. There is no one road or one answer to sustainable development. This means to me that decisions about how to spend aid and on what require careful country context analysis, and the active involvement of various stakeholders in the country concerned. Re: women working in business, there are many precursors that need to be in place before that can occur, all of which require their voices in analysing their situation. In my experience, one precursor is often supporting women to have the number of children they want, so they are actually able to leave the house and their caring responsibilities to go to work. Social progress is complex. Why make it even harder to achieve benefits from NZ ODA for the poorest people by trying to also use ODA to advertise and sell NZ businesses? I thought that was what NZTE was for.

I agree with Therese's idea of moving away from evaluating Australia's aid based on the percentage of GNI and using the percentage of the budget expenditure. I had a short letter published in last Monday's Sydney Morning Herald using that statistic: It is good to see our Foreign Minister exhorting her British counterpart to increase its Foreign Aid to the Pacific (“Britain pumps up Pacific presence”, SMH, 21 April). This may strike some as hypocritical when Australian total aid has fallen from $4.3 billion in 2011-12, which represented 1.2% of total budget expenditure, to $3.8 billion in 2017-18 (just 0.8%). I can only assume that the rumours of further cuts to our Foreign Aid in the upcoming budget are “fake news”.

Chinese aid and presence in the country more is feasible and can be 'felt and seen' by ordinary citizens and I think this is what matters. Traditional donors like AusAid and JICA are being blanketed by the Chinese aggressive presence. Chinese workers literally do the actual work and they don't sub-contract or just give the money and disappear. Majority of the people do not care much about systems and processes, but rather something that is physical, like the big infrastructure projects being built by Chinese. They will be in the country for a longer period.