Comments

Hi Stephen. I guess it depends on your perspective. If the Australian government (i.e. the Australian taxpayer) is funding this plan and the plan is involving our relationship with PNG then why is this not anything to do with 'Australian Aid'? Aren’t we actually guilty ‘splitting hairs’? Exactly who is benefiting here? If we are paying Australian students to gain experience in PNG, then maybe PNG should be asking the Australian government to pay them for providing 'the PNG experience'? The essential issue here is not whether this expenditure is either labelled 'overseas aid' or merely just part of our Foreign Affairs budget involving another nation. The issue is whether this is a waste of scarce resources and could and should the money be better spent actually helping our next door neighbour, who has been kind enough to offer this opportunity to Australian students when overseas aid has actually been reduced except for PNG. Secondly, and most importantly, exactly how will 2 or 4 weeks experience with 'PNG operational or line positions' actually help Australian students without any substantial preparation for such a large cultural gap to cope with or any real language and appropriate cross cultural training to help them understand what they are in effect experiencing. Then there is apparently no stated and pre set benchmarks or transparent assessment methodology of the program by either Australia or PNG. It will however undoubtedly help justify the legion of consultants and officials who will be tasked with managing the process but only have obfuscated responsibility should any 'difficulties' be experienced. So if this isn’t ‘overseas aid money’ or apparently benefiting our Foreign Affairs, then why isn’t this part of the program funded through the Education budget? Isn’t the money merely just another ‘boomerang aid’ project that is intended to slip under the Australian public’s radar?

Paul, accuracy is important. The $100 million is for the entire reverse Colombo plan, over 5 years (and not just to PNG). It is not aid-funded.

Given the thunderous silence to my last observations on this subject I am persuaded by a recent article that has just appeared in the PNG media to add a few more suggestions. It has just been <a href="http://png.embassy.gov.au/pmsb/542.html" rel="nofollow">announced</a> by the Oz High Commission in PNG that 100 million Australian 'aid' dollars has been allocated to send Australian university students to spend short periods of time in PNG to 'deepen their academic and life experiences through study and work placements in Papua New Guinea.' These placements will be for periods of up to 4 weeks and apparently the students are to work alongside operational positions in PNG. Who ever dreamed this idea up has surely got to be an under experienced denizen of an ivory tower in Canberra and no doubt in close contact with those who lurk behind the razor wire in the Oz HC. What on earth can some young student gain by working for a short time (2 to 4 weeks) in PNG when they need to know and be well prepared to understand the customs, language and social conditions of the work area they are going to supposedly obtain some experience in. Apart from the distinct possibility that there may well be some very negative, short term culture clashes, exactly what will this 'experience' give Australia in terms of value for money or to PNG for that matter? 2 weeks to study 'Leadership' by walking the Kokoda track can no doubt give a great experience to whoever has been lucky enough to be given this opportunity and good luck to whoever it is. But on a broader scale, exactly what is Australia and PNG getting out of the $Aus100 million of taxpayer's dollars that could not be better obtained by using these scarce funds to create a comprehensive training facility for both those who might be sent to PNG and those from PNG who are sent to Australia for training and experience? If Australian taxpayers were actually told about the reality of how their taxes are being spent and these programs effectively audited on pre set and transparent benchmarks on long term, clearly definable benefits for both our nations, there might be some real value achieved. Failing that obvious and non reported deficiency, I would be very interested to hear some concrete views on whether this exercise in spending 100 million dollars is of any long term benefit to either nation apart from perhaps creating some short term, personal e mail or facebook contacts that can't possibly convey more than a brief impression of the disparate working conditions and a subsequent lack of any comprehension as to why this is so.

Yes, the general message of the post above is very much, 'it depends on what you measure'. However, the more specific messages are that (a) 'refugees resettled per head of population' is a practically irrelevant measure, and (b) it is highly misleading to claim, as various members of the government are now claiming on a daily basis, that Australia 'takes in' more refugees per head of population than any other country, without specifying that this statement relates to a particular way of taking in a very small proportion of the world's refugees. If your country is swamped with asylum seekers, you take some of them in via recognition, and you probably don't bother running a resettlement program. I would think that the Refugee Council of Australia does see itself as doing the things set out in your penultimate sentence but I don't speak for them. More importantly, one might as well say, 'To achieve popular support, the Australian government will need to clarify its objectives, calculate achievable outcomes, and advocate a plan of action in a positive way that most Australians can embrace. A lot of Australians are waiting for just that.' I think there might be some distance between increasing Australia's humanitarian intake and building tent cities.

It's really revealing that Aus private sector is legging behind rest of the developed countries in international development partership, Priyanka. In fact, public sector, private sector, 'third sector' (NGO's) and local people together are architects of not only sustainable development but global peace and stability. It is in them interest of private sector to get engaged in the shared values which in turn will facilitate operational activities of the private sector. Mutual learning and thereby generating synergy would make the better development outcomes. Neither private sector itself can flourish in isolation, nor mere corporate social responsibility is sufficient condition of sustainable development. Private sector must contribute a significant portion of its profit to the wellbeing of the people around the world. I am confident your ideas will convince and persuade Australian private sector for parterning with other sectors for promoting the global shared values of international development outcomes with greater zeal and vigour. I think private sector is not that much stubborn to ignore its role in development partnership but one must engage it through convincing and persuasive methods. We must innovate better framework for engagement by learning from the past and continuous mutual learning. Most of private sector players are highly enlightened and having vision of the better world and therefore, I believe that SDG's will be realised by 2030 with appropriate engagement of all the stake holders.

It depends on what you measure. Other countries allow refugees to enter, but they don't give them citizenship or anything more than subsistence. They let them stay in a tent with hundreds of thousands of other refugees, but don't allow them to leave the camp. On that measure, Australia ranks last because it doesn't have any tent city refugee camps (unless you count Nauru and Manus, which perhaps you should). Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iran have vastly more refugees in camps, in areas that can be reached by foot from war zones. On the measure of resettling, which means granting full citizenship, Australia consistently ranks first or second with Canada. Saudi Arabia ranks last on formal recognition of refugees, but it provides hundreds of thousands of jobs to Syrians in Saudi Arabia. Australia could do more, and reaching #1 for refugee tent city refugee camps may even be achievable if desert acreage is the only requirement, but is that the best we could do? What is the best Australia could do? I'd like to see RCA advocate that, in a way that brings a significant majority of Australians along with it. Australians don't like to be told they are not compassionate or that they are mean or that they are not pulling their weight. To achieve popular support, RCA will need to clarify its objectives, calculate achievable outcomes, and advocate a plan of action in a positive way that most Australians can embrace. A lot of Australians are waiting for just that.

Conspicuously absent from so much discussion on climate change and the upcoming UN conference in Paris is the effect of free trade agreements such as the TPP. But <a href="http://theleap.thischangeseverything.org/the-tpp-is-a-direct-threat-to-climate-action/" rel="nofollow">to quote</a> Naomi Klein: ’ TPP has been called “NAFTA on steroids.” It’s the latest and largest in a series of international agreements that have … fueled mindless and carbon-intensive consumption, and prevented governments from enforcing their own laws to cut greenhouse gas emissions. ‘In short, this corporate free trade model that the TPP represents isn’t only destabilizing our economies—it’s also a key reason why our governments have failed to come to grips with the climate crisis.’ The NZ government just announced that it would be conducting a review of the effect of climate action on the economy. Where is the climatic cost benefit analysis of the converse effects of FTAs? Pacific Island leaders should be calling on the prospective Pacific partnership members and on the UN Climate Conference for a moratorium on the signing of all free trade agreements until such an exercise has been conducted.

Thanks for this post and for pointing me to the ministerial statement on this which I've now read. It highlights a couple of things I have been thinking about for a while. One is that a lot of the work that has been done in this space has been focused on opportunities that arise in large countries/markets such as exist in Africa and Asia (see the case studies at the end of the statement). There is insufficient attention given as to how these approaches may or may not translate into the smaller countries/markets of the Pacific. Bizarrely, the lessons learned from the Enterprise Challenge Fund pilot are not referenced here (disclaimer: I was the Vanuatu country manager for the ECF 2008-2010). A second concern I have (which is reflected more in the ACFID post rather than the ministerial statement) is that there is a lot of attention paid to how NGOs and businesses can collaborate and partner (hopefully to minimise the risk of them bickering over the same pot of money) but absolutely nowhere near enough attention about how relationships with national and sub-national state agencies can be developed, strengthened and maintained. Here in Vanuatu Cyclone Pam threw into sharp relief the gulf between NGOs and government ministries pretty much across the board. Even to the extent of one country manager responding to a comment on a report from a government official with 'oh we just assumed that people in the government don't read things'. And I have <a href="http://tncpacificconsulting.com/2015/04/14/building-back-better-state-business-relations-in-vanuatu-after-cyclone-pam/" rel="nofollow">commented elsewhere</a> on the need for more and better state-business relationships here in Vanuatu and elsewhere in the region. And then I have a very simple and possibly mundane question - why can't businesses apply for grants under the Direct Aid Program?

Yes the chicken and the egg are both involved! I just wanted to emphasise that political leaders are in a powerful position to influence public perceptions about complex issues such as international development and what our nation can and cannot afford to do - these are not things that most people are very knowledgable about. If the public is told almost every day that we have a budget crisis and that we are living beyond our means it is not surprising that many people will think that we need to cut back on our "generous" levels of aid.

To anyone who has watched 'Yes Minister' and Yes, Prime Minister' the subject of public surveys is very clearly explained when Sir Humphrey Appleby takes staffer Bernard aside and explains the process to him. The results of any survey depend on what questions are asked and in what sequence. Let's go back to over half a century to the origins of the 'Colombo Plan' that began as a concept in 1949. What was the aim of the Colombo Plan? What obvious and lasting effects Australia's continuous overseas aid program has really achieved? Was that due to the phenomenon of what’s known as ‘boomerang aid’ or was it due to the ephemeral effects of something similar to a short term ‘sugar high’? Was our aid to promote ourselves with our neighbours or to influence them politically? Was it to get a warm and fuzzy feeling that we as a so called lucky country could willingly share our good fortune? If the answer is all these objectives and more then perhaps the real problem is that any process with a multitude of spoken or unspoken objectives often ends up being the proverbial ‘dog’s breakfast’ or a multi cobbled together animal built like ‘topsy’. If the huge amount of aid monies have achieved no long term advantage for Australia but in some cases only caused resentment then maybe we need to revise the concept completely? If our tax money goes to governments who then are able to use their own money to salt away funds in tax havens or even shall we guess, Australian banks, what practical benefits for the people at the grass roots are we really achieving? There’s no way we could or should get into a ‘bidding war’ with other and far larger economies. New Zealand seems to achieve far more with far less than Australia? Why is it someone at the decision making level isn't logically starting to wonder? The Australian economy is currently not the most robust with an exponentially growing deficit. Successive governments together with union pressure have allowed our manufacturing capacity to become unviable and shipped overseas due to unsustainable wage rises that keep trying to keep pace with inflation caused by previous wage rises. Can we therefore still keep funding overseas aid at the current level when ‘charity begins at home’? Younger generations referred to as 'X' and 'Y' are reputedly now blaming us Baby Boomers for all the problems of the world and for impossibly expensive housing when they have enjoyed all the benefits we achieved with hard work and very little wealth and now seem unable to pass these onto the younger generation. Of course that is after the X's and Y's have demanded political change and more of everything without worrying about what that resulted in achieving. Responsibility? What's that in political terms? 'A week's a long time in politics' is a quotation attributed to Britain’s former PM Harold Wilson. If there is someone who might possibly answer to the title of ‘the average Australian’ they aught surely to start questioning what we are actually doing in reality by allocating scare resources and funding to a ‘pie in the sky’ at a time we can least afford it. However the old obfuscation of ‘bread and circuses’ or today’s ‘football and welfare’ equivalent will surely be able to assuage any concerns within a few nanoseconds even if they appear at all in a proverbial and momentary ‘thought bubble’. The real issue that is constantly obfuscated in the aid debate is hidden in the word ‘percentage’. Many claim Australia should give more when told what percentage of our budget is devoted to overseas aid. Yet how many actually take the time and effort to find out how much of our national cake is already spoken for with Health, Education, Social Security (pensions, etc.), taking up the vast majority of what is or might become available. Our Defence spending has woefully been allowed to subside in a time of increased world tension and where successive PM’s want to strut their stuff on the world stage with the US (here we are bro’) and try to get some glimmer of kudos to turn attention away from their dismal inability to manage our economy and provide true leadership. The last factor that must be recognised is the inevitable legion of consultants, academics and so called ‘experts’ who glean a rich living from pontificating over whether we (i.e. ‘us’ others) should increase our foreign aid and by how much? How much of their salaries are the highly paid prepared to contribute to a non-focussed objective in a foreign and virtually ungoverned country where the money ends up be corruptly syphoned off into tax havens and personal bank accounts without ever achieving any real progress for those it was intended to help? Have those that seek to influence our collective national aid program taken a constructive look and detailed investigation of what long term benefits of our long term aid programs have actually achieved? An example of what I’m referring to are the projects that purchase machines without any ongoing maintenance program. These are just like giving a useless plastic toy that gives a brief illusion of benefit but in fact only further increases the feeling of despondency of those who really are looking for help when it breaks and falls apart. So what’s the answer? Start educating those who are giving the aid to understand what works and what doesn’t. Mere graphs and manipulated surveys that convey a false impression are only helping to perpetuate the problem. Start educating both those who contribute and those who are supposed to provide effective leadership about the realities of overseas aid. What’s that I hear you say? No votes or stipends in that….. Thank heavens I haven’t become cynical in my senior years……..

I agree with Matt that what happens next week in Port Moresby is shaping up to be very significant and I think it is worth bearing in mind that this will be the first time in 3 years that the Australian PM has attended the Forum Island leaders' meeting which just goes to underline the significance of this summit in terms of Australia 'walking the talk' on more and better regional engagement. I spoke yesterday with Radio Australia and noted that there will be a number of potentially challenging conversations in PNG next week, with this as one of them.

Greg Excellent analysis and description of the way of adoption of diplomatic route by small island states. Small States are less responsible for creating global problems but they are the first victims of the great power diplomacy. Pacific Island States Fourm is a community of shsred interest. It will stand united at forthcoming UN Climate Change Summit in Paris. I am confident the global community will get sensitised towards their climate problems because the liability of the damage due to climate change must be owned by the great powers and developed nations. These small states should rally behind the Australian proposal of South Pacific Nuclear FreebZone and Aus-Nld must understand the sensitivities of the Pacific Island States. The three diplomatic options suggested by you are very important points on which these states must have consultation before the Paris Summit. The Port Moresby Conference will turn out as a meaningful dialogue and the thareshold limit of 1.5 degree celcius will be put forth with renewed zeal and vigour. Any way, felicitations for very precise presentation of the dynamics of collective diplomacy of the small states at the multilateral forums. Plz keep it up.