Comments

Terence & Camilla, has anyone tested public attitudes to messages around international cooperation to solve common problems (i.e. global public goods) vs messages about aid? I appreciate this would be hard to test - and coming up with compelling messages for the former might be a challenge(!) - but I think it might provide some useful insights into what new narratives may, or may not resonate.

Thank you for your comment Tess. In fact, your blog post written with Vanuatu’s telecommunication regulator inspired me to commence discussions with NICTA about writing this post. To learn about the Vanuatu context, check out Tess Newton Cain and Dalsie Baniala’s post at: https://devpolicy.org/telecommunications-regulation-in-vanuatu-in-conversation-with-dalsie-baniala-20160809/ Amanda. 

Very interesting take on the current situation and lot of it applies to Indian context as well. With rising Indian middle class the sector seems to growing, however at the same time International NGOs are facing fund crisis and the reason you have rightly communicated is the 'Getting own house in order'. Good read. Sharing it within team.

Inequality is everywhere in the world. Our capitalist system ends up making things even more difficult. Here in Brazil we see much more the difference of classes, and we are even more far from the equality that you there in Australia. I hope we can change our mentality and build a more egalitarian and better world for all.

It is interesting that NICTA's focus according to its Act has always been the interest of service providers or carriers. One of the biggest challenges in Papua New Guinea is the protection of consumers. The Papua New Guinea ICCT Act does not regulate the Telecommunication Sector because that Sector is regulated by NICTA through the NICTA Act. The protection of telecommunication consumers remain a key challenge for NICTA to improve on by bringing in reforms to its Act to ensure consumer rights are protected and consumers are not exploited by telecommunications companies. I would like to see NICTA redefining CONSUMER in the NICTA Act to include users and telecommunications companies. NICTA also need to review the long held belief that telephone and Internet penetration in PNG is still below world standards, I disagree, an independent research will find that Internet penetration in PNG has gone up and a starking indication is the huge revenue by telecommunications company on data which has exceeded voice.

Thank you Raymond.

Thank you Terence for the analysis and the data base as well. As alluded to by Bal, its definitely a worthwhile tool to have in terms of monitoring and reviewing elections results in PNG.

Thanks all for this piece, it's an important contribution to our understanding of the relevant issues in this area. It also provides some interesting points of comparison with the work of the OGCIO and TRR in Vanuatu, also captured in the Pacific Conversations series.

Thanks Chris. I suspect its not the lack of awareness of the need for change that is holding the sector back nor the form the change needs to take (although we might disagree on some of the detail), but the ability to lead impactful change agendas within INGOs. Many INGOs have diffuse global governance structures and a plethora of stakeholders that make negotiating change difficult. Freeing up resources to invest in new approaches is fiendishly difficult when there are so many competing demands. And there is an overwhelming lack of capacity to manage these complex change processes inside INGOs.

Thanks Bal!

Reading the article, I do agree with all that has been said. However the support or lack of support facing women is not necessarily the central issue of very few women (esp in PNG) being elected to Parliament. The fundamental issue is the 'concept of power and the ownership of the voice'. This is a culturally embedded concept and would need greater participatory approach that is inclusive of members of communities to look into themselves. Both men and women need to unpack this concept in order to create a greater opening for women's participation in governance and politics.

NGOs in poor countries serve the prorities of the donor countries and often they benefit the host country but not always. A case in point is energy poverty pitted against the climate change agenda of the SDG. So in cases where a poor country desperately needs to increase fossil fuel emissions, foreign funded NGOs are preaching climate change and renewable energy and so in. These NGOs are serving their own financial needs and not the needs of the people. There is a gross disconnect here between the values and priorities of donors and those of the host country. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2812034