Comments

An outstanding essay on an important and little discussed topic. Thank you, Mark.

Thanks Colin for this piece- agree with Dr Puloka that it is a very important message and that diabetes remains one of the major public health problems in the Pacific Islands region. It is responsible for a huge amount of preventable morbidity and mortality, which should be a cause for concern for anyone interested in public health in the region. I would encourage anyone interested in Pacific Island health to read the Pacific NCD Roadmap and I hope that investments can be stepped up to fully fund and implement the strategies that it proposes.

Thank you so much for your work. It is a must have source of reference for students, researchers and public here in PNG. Cheers! I've adapted your datasets for private and public presentations where I have acknowledged my primary source of data. With appreciation. Thank you. Henry Boas Kopapa

The media landscape has been changing/evolving, arguably for the worse, for some time now, as attested by several reports, including the McBride Commission (1981),'Many Voices One World'. UNESCO's attempt at a 'New World Information and Communication Order' to address the inequalities in the flow of information between the North and the South came to naught. McBride highlighted the importance of strengthening the national media to avoid dependence on external sources, an underlying theme in this DevPolicy article. The problems are well known and will no doubt be highlighted by yet another inquiry, by Australia this time. The challenge is finding effective and lasting solutions. It's tricky because the media landscape is in a constant flux and the issues compound and become more complicated due to political upheavals and technological changes. One is sometimes resigned to the fact that maybe it is the normal and natural order of things - as VS Naipaul's book title says, 'The World is What it is'. The jaded outlook notwithstanding, the search for solutions is also a natural and instinctive human survival trait/reaction. Allow me too share <a href="http://ssgm.bellschool.anu.edu.au/experts-publications/publications/5286/dp20171-state-media-review-four-melanesian-countries-fiji" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">my paper on the 'State of the media in Melanesia'</a> as it corresponds with some of the points on hand. The findings highlight the need to continue striving for improvements rather than give in against the odds.

A "home grown" perspective of Pacific governments on development effectiveness that best contextualises some of the issues raised in this article for the period 2010-2015. http://www.forumsec.org/pages.cfm/strategic-partnerships-coordination/pacific-principles-on-aid-effectiveness/forum-compact/cairns-compact-1.html

Hi Baljeet, you raise a very good point about the distribution of benefits arising from the increase in the tax threshold. We didn't consider distribution much in the blog. In retrospect it's something we should have focused on more. It would be interesting to compare the lost revenue resulting from the tax threshold change with the increases in social welfare spending included in the budget. I suspect you're right: that the former would outweigh the latter considerably. Thanks again for your comments, and for raising this important issue. Matt

Educational philosophy, language, and culture will determines the behaviour of citizens. So the linguistic and cultural diversity is our strength and opportunity but unfortunately our .... system is unable to use these strengths to make prosperous country. Inclusive quality education and politics matters for quality development. What do you think? Is there any opportunity to develop partnership with your organisation to work in Nepal?

Hi Matthew, it is people earning more than 30,000.00 dollars who are going to benefit the most. Its like we are taxing poor man's beer to subsidize rich man's wine. What I mean is that we have imposed additional tax on beer to recover part of tax revenue losses resulting from new threshold. Beer is mostly consumed by average or below average consumers. On the other hand we have given enough tax benefit to the rich (those earning more than 30, 000) that they will be able to buy few additional bottle of wine every week despite new tax on wine. I think poor are generally made worse off relative to the rich. With few thousand dollars of additional income (resulting from new threshold) we have given rich people more choices, while, on the other hand we have marginalized the poor more. I think it is fair to claim that all benefits we have provided to the poor through subsidize scheme is far less than few thousand additional dollars that we have given to the rich through a single new threshold. So poor are paying a cost for being poor. Lets not forget the new inflation that is going to kick in due to net salary rise of high income earners and its impact on real income of the poor. I wonder whether this factor was considered before deciding new minimum wage, it is fair to claim that net income gained by high income earners due to new threshold is approximately 50% of total income of minimum wage earners.

Hi Baljeet, Thanks for the comment. The text should have read middle-income earners, as we were indeed referring to those earning between $16,000 and $30,000. Thanks for pointing out the error, which we've now corrected. Matt

I wonder how new tax threshold will benefit low income earners as claimed by two economist. I believe that it will only benefit those earning above $16000 which includes policy makers, politicians and cabinet ministers. I don't think that a person earning 16000 or less will benefit anything from the new threshold. May be the two economist would like to provide more explanation on this.

Bob, I'm with Ash on this one. That Bloomburg Data for Health initiative was one of the Innovation Exchange's first, and was announced more than two years ago. I challenge anyone to find any progress report in relation to it. Even though we've just decided to give them another $4 million! There is nothing on actual progress on the Innovation Exchange website, and the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.org/program/public-health/data-health/" rel="nofollow">Bloomburg website</a> is written entirely in the future tense. What little there is about the project in the public domain certainly sets my alarm bells ringing. $100 million sounds like a lot, but over 4 years and 20 countries, that's about 1 million per year per country. That's enough for a couple of workshops, a few pilots and some study tours, and I fear that there is little more to the Bloomberg initiative than that. I really wonder what sustainable impact this project will have, especially in a country like PNG, one of the 20. One of the problems with the Innovation Exchange is that it seems to be authorized to fund projects but not required to report on their progress. Its website is heavy on photos and light on reports. It's all very well to ask questions, but there comes a point when you have to report the answer you've found.

The idea of New Zealand increasing foreign aid spending under the existing frame work is insane! Throwing away tax payer dollars at a ill-defined goal (economic development) without better measurements of success is not a good idea. Merging aspects of the defence and foreign aid budgets would provide a way forward. Putting the infrastructure in place to put the PPP on a more sustainable/active basis would be a achievable/measurable goal.