Comments

Thanks Robin. Interesting scenarios. Do you think that Indonesia might just stamp its sovereign foot sometime very soon and say 'you know what, keep your aid'? And perhaps in light of the 'koinuntukAustralia' push it might not be that far away.

Margaret's thesis that there are already enough players in the eye health field and we don't need the Commonwealth to duplicate has some validity. The difference between us arises because I did not explain the role of QEDJT adequately in my initial contribution. They have been very aware of the need not to duplicate. They have in fact been a much appreciated source of new funding for existing players such as Sightsavers and Fred Hollows Foundation and very powerful advocates for eye health actions by the member governments of the Commonwealth. I appreciate their efforts both as a citizen of the Commonwealth and as President of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, through whom QEDJT has coordinated with existing providers. The Trust is proving an asset without duplicating efforts and have acted in accordance with the spirit of the aid effectiveness principles.

Thank you Prof. Negin for your article. For your information, the WHO updated the DALYs estimates on June 2014. http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/estimates/en/index2.html

Hi Carmen, thank your for positive message about our country. Although there is no much negativity about its law and order problems, there is so much this country has to offer. I guess you will have to live in it to experience the truth about PNG, we are not that bad. I hope your enjoy your stay here and look forward to hearing more of your adventure in PNG. God bless!

Thanks for this post, which provides some useful insight into one part of this issue. I think there is an ongoing concern that the challenges of 'Whole of Government' approaches can lead to important things falling between the cracks and the issue of pastoral care is one such item (maybe it's just me that has that ongoing concern although I doubt it). Attention to pastoral care (which I think can be extended to include pre-deployment training and post-deployment mentoring on investment) is important and needs to be mandated and monitored. There are significant reputational risks in not addressing pastoral care issues as demonstrated recently in relation to a (generally flaky) news item relating to alleged mistreatment of SWP workers from Vanuatu which made it from Yumi Toktok Stret to the Prime Minister's Office in a matter of hours if that.

I hate to disagree with my former good-guy MP Bob but I do feel quite strongly that, as important as the subject of Trachona is, that it is not the role of the Commonwealth to buy into such activities. I am speaking from the point of view of someone who worked in a number of Commonwealth countries and who did gain an appreciation of that colonial heritage, much to my surprise. But I think its role ought to be restricted to what it does best, and where no other organization operates ie stick to the heritage of British governance systems, including those related to parliament and law. Joel Negin's terrific chart in his article in the same volume clearly illustrates the plethora of agencies which exist - and remind of the need to be focused, and stick to what one has the mandate for and the related expertise/skills/resources. There is already much overlap between agencies and some are spread very thin, providing quantity not quality. I would suggest that the Comm. should stick to what it does best, and if there is no need for those types of interventions, it should be dissolved.

Thank you Carman... appreciate your excellent piece of writing which demonstrates your worldly experience.

Totally agreed Paul. So much work has been done to upgrade the Company Haus website, which has become a beacon of hope for private sector development in Solomon Islands.

I agree with you Robin that poor quality programs are likely to make up much, much less than 20% of the current program, however in a constrained funding environment I think it makes it even more important to systematically identify and prioritise those activities which have the biggest poverty reduction impact per dollar invested. Of course, in reality, other criteria such as Australian political and strategic interests and contractual obligations will also apply, but I would hope that DFAT will be working to ensure that this 20% cut to aid program funding will result in a much smaller reduction in the aid program's poverty reduction impact. This will require more than just giving the program a hair cut, but assessing each of the individual strands of hair.

I dont know why but I come to love this country so much I hope one day I wll be there either for employment or vacation. I am from Tanzania and thru information from internet and youtube PNG is having a very bad reputation by Western media - its like South Africa, Brazil and America just to mention a few are better places than POM, but this is how western media does when it come to third world countries especially Africa or any other place.

Joel, Ryan, Sam and Garth, Thanks all for your comments. Forgive this blanket reply, but it's easier to do it this way: 1. I’m not a proponent of eliminating aid to Indonesia or reducing it to a rump. $230 million per annum, or something like it, is a lot of money. 2. If Australia’s aid allocation policy were to make country allocations broadly proportional to absolute-poverty headcounts or total population levels, a lot of country allocations would have to change dramatically. 3. I'm not a proponent of basing aid allocation on per capita GNI alone. The piece above does not base its recommendation, a step-down in aid to Indonesia, on improvements in Indonesia’s per capita GNI (which currently stands at US$3,580, in the same ball park as the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Vanuatu and Mongolia). 4. The recommendation is, rather, based on the observation that aid to Indonesia was ramped up to an extreme degree for purely political reasons post-tsunami, that it remains at an artificially elevated level ten years later, and that Indonesia has meanwhile moved on in several ways. I don't recall anybody arguing that Indonesia was receiving too small a share of the Australian aid budget prior to 2005. 5. It’s possible in principle that Australia is getting such good development returns on this massive investment in Indonesia that we should forget about the origins of its huge aid-share increase and be happy that the money turned out to be so well spent. But it's extremely unlikely that a dollar spent in Indonesia is so superior in impact to a dollar spent somewhere else. 6. It is also extremely unlikely that DFAT could identify a 'bottom billion' dollars' worth of genuinely poor-quality aid projects to axe across the whole aid program. It might find some tens of millions by taking this approach but any further cutting would have to be justified on non-quality grounds. 7. Given the government’s decision to take the aid program down by $1 billion in 2015-16, there are actual, large trade-offs to be made here. If the suggestion is that Indonesia should suffer no greater proportional cut than other countries, it should be acknowledged that many other countries will feel their cuts much more keenly, as they are more reliant on our assistance than is Indonesia.

While I understand, and sympathise with, your argument for larger cuts to the Indonesia program Robin I think that average income per capita is an inadequate criterion by itself to determine aid levels. This is especially so when there is still a very large number of very poor people in the country and the average per capita income at around US$3600 is still less than one third that of the upper bound for ODA eligibility. In addition there are provinces in Indonesia that are poorer and have larger populations than some of countries to which Australia gives aid. In 2011 the Independent Review of Aid Effectiveness concluded that significant increases in aid to Indonesia could be effectively used and that Australian aid had a high capacity to make a difference in the country. Instead I would hope that DFAT would take a more results-oriented approach and determine, in co-operation with partner governments, and across multilateral programs, which activities are failing to meet a benchmark for cost effectiveness in reducing poverty.