Comments

I'm wildly unenthusiastic about your sweeping definition of aid practitioners. For many of us, it is EXACTLY our job to worry about economic growth, inequality, and the impact of both on the lives of the poor. Perhaps you really mean community workers (although I'd question this too), or humanitarian workers? But "aid practitioners" is a broad church, and I for one take economic inequality very seriously on a daily basis.

Hi. An excellent article that highlights a very important broader issue, i.e. the disconnect between global and national, macro-development issues, policy and other debates (institutional realities) that often appear irrelevant to development practitioners, partners and counterparts grounded in the realities of the everyday world (the 'actualities'). 'Development' looks very different 'from the bottom looking up', as opposed to 'from the top looking down'.

Dear Marcus Thank you so very much for the information. As a Solomon Islander, I strongly agree with you. The corruption is the key point in these situations, I myself had an experience about the land situation. I once applied for a piece of land in Honiara and what I saw was unbelievable, the workers are just after money. If you have money you will have as many lands as you need, but if you need a land and your budget is just for your land, sorry we can't get any. We have to pay a extra payment all the time, someone is going for consultation for the land, it's very corrupt. I ended up losing the land and some payment, because I am a person who just wanted to get a land! We need overseas lawmakers to help our government or our country to understand that they need to look after their people and of course the overseas partners as well. I am still hoping one day I will get a land and I will build a dream home. Thank you very much. Hilda ichioka

I am very grateful to hear of your bold decision to teach economics at UPNG. Students deserve the best but unfortunately have been deprived of the best for a while. Thank you, Michael.

Excellent job Sam, we are in dire need of such a strong and people oriented leader like you. May the good Lord continue to increase such a leader like you. God will guide you.

As the authors of the report referred to in the blog, we (Joyce Wu and Patrick Kilby) found another form of violence in the follow up study in 2014, and that is a high level of domestic violence against children. Half of respondents knew of violence against children in the community in the last month, a similar number reported high levels of violence against children in the home, and over 10 per cent of respondents reported children being violent against parents. There is a real issue in challenging the high level of violence in the broader community and attitudes to it.

I think this is an important discussion, with more insight in the responses than the blog itself. The word 'innovation' has been used so loosely and flippantly that it has lost much of its meaning and utility. It seems that donors and other organisations are more keen to demand innovation than to understand what it might look like, and what the best way to nurture it might be. Taking away all the marketing hype and attempts at 'productising' and hawking the concept of innovation, like so many things it comes down to leadership, strategy, and culture. This can be within a project team, an organisational section, branch, or division, or across an organisation as a whole. Innovation will occur naturally when people are and feel engaged in their roles and pursuits, the culture or environment encourages and embraces the free exchange of ideas, and teams are multi-disciplinary and collaborative in nature. A more detailed discussion is on the Sustineo blog page <a href="http://sustineo.com.au/news/ideas-in-brief-6-innovate-for-me-now" rel="nofollow">here</a>. Unfortunately the private sector participation in the aid program is characterised by limited and unequal access, closed markets, and unhelpful procurement processes. Forget about borrowing myths from other global corporations and concentrate on building better leadership, culture, and teams. Then the innovative ideas will emerge naturally.

...."Shop owners have been told not to engage youths to sell products on the streets..." -- John, this recent <a href="http://www.thenational.com.pg/?q=node/90588" rel="nofollow">news article</a> supports some of the things we've discussed here.

I agree Grant and in a similar vein we would like to hear Australia speaking out about the flagrant abuses of democratic rights and undermining of the Rule of Law by the current government of Nauru.

Thank you Michael for your contribution to UPNG. A solemn reminder that there is hope at the end of what appears to be a dark tunnel. Regards Bal

Hi Robin, Thank you for an important piece of analysis. I think, on an initial assessment, that the government did the right thing. They got the balance about right. Maintaining our proportion with Korea will be seen as appropriate around the region. I note that the government is in discussions about a Board seat. This share will ensure we are at the Board table when important decisions for the future of the region are decided.

Robin, thanks for this, really interesting. Do you think that Australia thinks this seemingly grandiose gesture is going to buy it some kind of special sway or leverage over the AIIB's decisionmaking? It seems somewhat pointless, given that the AIIB will surely be quite happy to lend to Indo-Pacific countries given China's already strong engagement in the region, and that the same concerns/priorities that Australia has expressed about the institutional set-up have also been expressed by other member countries? It's not like Australia is the only country out there wanting transparency. Also, if this comes out of aid, we should remember that Joe Hockey made a strong point that the AIIB was not about poverty reduction nor development <a href="https://devpolicy.org/in-brief/australia-gets-on-board-the-aiib-but-with-caveats-20150331/" rel="nofollow">earlier this year</a>. At the time he said: “And of course it is important to note that this is not another new development bank,” he said. “It is not about poverty alleviation, it is an infrastructure bank.’’ So we're going to fund this not-another-new-development-bank out of our official development assistance? Hmm.