Comments

Ashlee, it is more about staple foods than just rice. People don't like trading regimes when it is about staples or strategic assets (even electricity suppliers c.f China v Australia). Australia has sought to be self reliant in all its staples including the (originally) heavily subsidised and environmentally disastrous rice growing. In many countries bread is price controlled. At the end of the day if one depends on others for food then one is vulnerable. Free trade regimes may be fine but ultimately they are not well trusted c.f Europe and it gas markets. Trade sanctions now are the most common form of economic warfare. One suspects PNG's look westward (rather than south) is no accident; moving from an Australian monopoly to an Indonesian one.

The facts are here right in front of every Papua New Guinean up to the leaders . My question is are the hearts and minds of those in authority AND SMOKERS & BUAI CHEWERS being hardened to a level beyond compression.?? I visit the Angau hospital daily at the moment with my son it's un believable the number of young people who are affected especially with some forms of TB meningitis. HOW SOON BEFORE THE GOVERNMENT ACT TO OUTLAW BUAI CHEWING AND SMOKING IN PLUBLIC PLACES INCLUDING THE PMVS THE CHILDREN TRAVEL IN DAILY TO SCHOOL. PLEASE HELP THE PNG VERSION OF HOLOCAUST.

Terence I actually wrote a book on this and tracked it over time (in particular see ch.8). There are a few factors that come into play. One is scale and that is the larger NGOs can afford to devote resources to awareness raising and they coincedently get a more of the government pie for obvious reasons. A statistical association does not necessarily suggest causation. The use of the term 'dependency' here is loose. Either one is dependent or one is not (like pregnancy). One cannot be a little bit dependent. Given the low level of government funding there are few if any Australian NGOs that would fold if the government funding stopped. Over the last 50 years there is less than a handful, perhaps one or two that have folded allegedly becuse of a stop in government funding but even then government funding was only part of their story. The number of accredited NGOs has dropped quite a bit over the last twenty years but none of those no longer accredited have folded. If there was more agencies dependent then gag clauses would work more. I refer in Ch 8 to when the governemnt suggested gag clauses about 10 years ago and the big agencies simply said in response they would withdraw from the funding scheme, thus ending that discussion. You see dependency cuts both ways. The other issue is the focus on internet campaigns, may not be the full picture. The church agencies in particular use church based campaigns for example, and these can be on quite a big scale.

There is government subsidies and protectionism in all economies of the world. This is an acknowledged fact. The United States Government grants subsidies and tax exemptions to most of their conglomerates in nearly every industry that, there is. This is done deliberately through their federal budgets. Need I name some of these conglomerates? The list is extensive and is in the public domain for researchers of all shades. Australia is no exception, especially in its agri-industry business. They have foreign investment control boards that play the gate-keeping role, filtering what investment to allow and what to decline, operating in lockstep with their meticulous immigration and foreign visa policy. Now, they have may have a different name and tag lines to eschew public perception, but flip the pages and their very DNA is plastered with what protectionism tastes, smells and looks like. Some Papua New Guineans have covered themselves with the dry excuse of us not having the required skill-sets, capital exposure, credit-worthiness, attitude to work and an endless inferiority-infused-others-list. Such fallacious notions lends themselves to the scale of capital flight the country has been awashed in, in our almost 41 years of statehood. Whose lecture notes indicates that a gas-station (fuel depot) is a complex undertaking? How does one cultivate experience and know-how when the citizens are continually tagged as incapable?Are none of our children, sons and daughters yet to sit in the same lecture rooms that some of "so-called foreign direct investor's children" have sat and learned the fundamentals of business? This SME Policy document has had wide consultations across the length of breath of PNG. It is crafted to capture the aspirations and frustrations experienced by many a budding SMEPreneurs in the country. There is diffusion of knowledge,capital and willing investors available everywhere for the right kind of investors but not every so-called foreign direct investment. The fears expressed in this article are not a novelty. They have been the usual discourse for eons against such courageous ambitions as this. I say, you can judge us in ten to fifteen years. For now, the train has already left the station. Thinking and astute observers of world events understand fully that, such scaremongering crowd that; surreptitiously guards over industries and manipulates public media to paint local entrepreneurs as really "not-up-to-their-scale". The labeling of native citizens as poor and needing handouts, whilst fencing off opportunities to their own ilk is a documented reality. That is a global trend. We know it. Let's talk about something else.

This should be an obvious investment given: - the impact of these 3 diseases on people's lives and economies - the increased costs of insufficient investment - the proven track record of the Global Fund in saving lives and building improved health services and greater local funding - the positive influence Australia has on other countries by stepping up and doing our part, and - the relatively small amount involved - less than 3% of Australia's aid budget.

Thanks Garth, Great comment. I don't really disagree with what you say, except that I think that activities under Take Action may be mild (there weren't any "Chain yourselves to gateposts" buttons), nevertheless they--almost by definition--involve some degree of opposition to government policy (aid cuts, asylum seekers, climate change), so I think it fair to argue such activities aren't wholly risk free in theory. All the more so because my guess is that NGOs' orientation (towards activism or donations) is fairly path dependent (doesn't change much over time), which would mean that even if the current government is fine with what they're saying, one would think that from time to time they will pay the price for rankling politicians' or bureaucrats' feathers, and therefore at least be a little more wary of government money. At least, that's one reason why I expected the relationship to be in the other direction. That said, the relationship we observed isn't the expected one, and your explanations might explain why. The point about individual and corporate donors being more easily offended strikes me as very interesting. One area I do disagree, or at least one area where the two sides of the Tasman must differ a lot if you're right, is to do with who NGOs would be afraid of offending (politicians or bureaucrats). In NZ it would definitely be politicians, at least at present. As an aside, in terms of methodology, in an email yesterday an academic made a great point that this sort of quantitative work really needs to be complemented by good qualitative work. If there are any interested aspiring PhD students out there...

There are so many issues here Terence and Sachini. As you say, a measure of quality or degree of action would be interesting, as calling for action (especially in the aid sector) is often pretty mild and unthreatening for government. Unless there are particular threats in the air (as there were at some stages during the Howard government) I don't think NGO managers are too worried about negative reactions from politicians. There may be a bit more concern however about offending DFAT staff who can make specific funding decisions, especially as a number of Australian NGOs appear to be moving into more of a contractor style arrangement with DFAT. My experience is that NGO managers are most likely to be concerned about not offending their individual and corporate donors and the degree and focus of advocacy is often shaped by this.

Public think Australian Aid = 13% when it's under 1% They think a lot of it goes to corrupt governments - it is strictly audited every year and under 1% is found to be fraudulent. Basically Australian Aid is one of the best value for money Govt programs we have and yet it's consistently sold short!

Thanks for the background. Rice policy has been contentious in PNG since the 1940s, and is <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2016/s4529992.htm" rel="nofollow">politically controversial again today</a>. Six decades ago serious production trials were overwhelmed by much cheaper (Australian) imports, along with technical, cultural and land tenure complications. (See Donald Denoon ed. 1981 A Time to Plant and a Time to Uproot Institute of PNG Studies and Scott MacWilliam 2013 Securing Village Life ANU E Press). PNG has not had the ‘rice riots’ found in Asia, but it's worth mentioning that in the 1980s PNG’s three successful votes of no confidence were all at times of inflation and rising prices for rice.

Thanks Ash. Yes, there is something about rice for sure, particularly in Asia, but I think it mainly reflects its large share of food expenditure. That being said, in Thai and other cultures, rice does have special status: e.g. Thai's often say gin khao (lit. "eat rice") when referring to any meal even if no rice is involved! May be on the other side of the world where maize is an integral part of culture and diet, the focus of food security policy isn't much about rice at all. For Indonesia, the goal of self-sufficiency has moved beyond rice and now includes soybeans, corn, sugar and beef. Self sufficiency is not necessarily a bad policy at all, especially when it is achieved through improved productivity and competitiveness, which reduces the costs of living particularly for the poorest of the poor. However, for Indonesia, the approach has been through protectionist measures such as import bans, import licensing, quotas and tariffs. These measures tend raise the cost of basic staples - and it's poor households that suffer the most.

Interesting post Tony, thanks. Can I pose a broader question - I know rice is a staple, there is large demand for it globally, and food security is an issue that will probably only get worse, but why have so many countries been obsessed with rice sovereignty over the years, to the point where it becomes about national pride rather than rational agricultural policy? It has been an obsession in Indonesia for a long period of time, including under current President Jokowi, and some terrible decisions were made to support it in the past (like the Mega Rice Project in Kalimantan, an environmental disaster). What is it about rice?

Excellent analysis Ashlee. As I see it you hit the nail on the head with your argument on transparency - do taxpayers want their aid money spent on aid advocacy or PR (no), or do they want readable and easily accessible information on the rationale for giving aid, what their money funds and whether these programs are actually working (yes). There's a difference between spending money to convince the public that the Australian program is great and spending to increase knowledge about Australia's aid efforts in particular and development co-operation more generally. I'll be interested in whether your forthcoming analysis on the numbers tells us more about this.