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The idea to have direct political control of the IDA as indicated in the draft IDA Act is not good because politicians and the NEC will manipulate IDA to suit their interest, thus, undermining the effective operation of IDA and efficient allocation of resources to address national infrastructure development needs based on sound engineering and economic judgements or justifications.

P.S.: A far more scandal-prone area may be the opaque US financing of think tanks abroad: http://www.publishwhatyoufund.org/updates/by-topic/ngos/donors-should-reveal-their-funding-think-tanks-abroad/ See also: http://onthinktanks.org/2014/09/10/think-tank-accountability-are-they-really-just-hired-guns/

Interesting and persuasive. Two caveats: 1. CGD's transparency did not facilitate a beat-up. Rather, it was the transparency of Norway that enabled the NYT journos to get hold of what they saw as a smoking gun. CGD's transparency actually worked in its favour, as it enabled CGD in its statement to convincingly argue that it never felt it had anything to hide. If CGD had concealed its funders (as other think tanks do) and then the NYT had dug out the Norwegian documents revealing a "secret link", everything would have looked far more suspicious. Contrast the rather muted criticism of CGD by commentators since the NYT piece was published with what happened to other US think tanks in 2013: http://www.transparify.org/blog/2014/4/29/secret-think-tank-funding-and-reputational-risk 2. The danger of think tanks breaching the Foreign Agent Registration Act has in fact been flagged in the past. See for example the link pasted above, and also the four annotated bibliographies compiled by Transparify (the initiative I work for): http://www.transparify.org/publications-main/ Foreign bodies' funding for US think tanks has cropped in the news regularly over the years, and will doubtlessly continue to do so in the future. Transparency, not opacity, is the best way of managing observers' legitimate concerns: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/till-bruckner/think-tanks-funding_b_5797832.html BTW, a great compilation of all reactions to the NYT piece to date can be found here: http://www.thinktankwatch.com/2014/09/think-tank-funding-transparency.html

It is amazing the amount of resources being pulled out of the budget to start yet another QUANGO to oversee the basic responsibility of our MPs. There will be people getting paid for working for the IDA, but will the roads and bridges etc get fixed? Why do we have to even talk about it Mr PM? Why can't you fix the problem? You and your predecessors have had the mandate to do so over the years, but what have you done except talk about what you are going to do. You wanted to fix the problem that is why you put your hand up for the PM's post. May I suggest you deploy the army to build the country if you are not going to send them to fight terror in the Middle East. As a Southern Highlander, you know about the benefits of having the engineering battalion of the Australian Defence Force stationed in Mendi to build roads and bridges etc in the province. Do that again and this time attach many of our own PNG soldiers to the foreign army to rebuild the infrastructure while learning new skills at the same time. We all know that safer roads and infrastructure are key to rural development, new markets and job opportunities and sustainability. I have travelled by coaches/buses around Asia and Australia as a tourist. I wish I could do the same in my own home country. If the Philippines and Thailand can do it, so can PNG because we have more resources than them. Prove to the people that you are a leader who puts the taxpayers money where it should be - where people need it most so that they can live sustainable lifestyles in the comforts of their own traditional heritage.

I would also just like to acknowledge that this research was undertaken with the support of MFAT, which demonstrates the effort that is already going into building the evidence base called for in the blog.

Appreciate the insights here. Rick, I do like the steps you outlined on <a href="http://globalanticorruptionblog.com/2014/09/03/how-australia-can-help-curb-corrpution-in-papua-new-guinea/" rel="nofollow">your blog</a> and I think it could be the first concrete step forward. Yes corruption is a big issue and as Grant pointed out, a holistic approach is needed from Australia but first, Australia must work on what it can really control/have the upper hand and that is the aid money and how it is used. Investing a good number of years cracking down on its trail and who is responsible for its misuse will, among other things, create expertise and assist in drafting a more elaborate approach. In the wake of the resource boom, corruption is undoubtedly here to stay. Australia need not plan grand strategy or articulate superficial approaches it cannot fully manage. Instead, it must work on small tangible strategies where it can control and effectively enforce if necessary. That said, Grant reminds us that one should be doubtful as to the extent of seriousness on the part of Australia given its current interests in the country. Australia must be prepared to make some sacrifices if the anti-corruption movement in PNG is to progress. But is Australia prepared for that?

Hi Priya Your interesting piece makes reference to the 2013 MDG Tracking Report; readers might also be interested to know that the 2014 MDG Tracking report, with updated statistics and a narrative summary, <a href="http://www.forumsec.org/resources/uploads/attachments/documents/2014_Pacific_Regional_MDGs_Tracking_Report.pdf" rel="nofollow">is now available</a> [pdf]. It provides the following update on the Leaders' Gender Equality Declaration: "Overall, the pace of progress reported on the six areas of the Declaration has been slow, although there were few positive developments over the year, particularly to address violence against women. Kiribati established a new Ministry for women, while Tonga, RMI, Nauru, Niue and Tuvalu completed national gender policies. Key challenges in progressing the Declaration at the national level is absence of accountability measures towards implementation and monitoring of the Declaration by relevant government ministries." (All Forum member countries, except FSM, Niue, PNG and Tuvalu, reported against their progress on the Pacific Leaders Gender Equality Declaration in 2014. Nauru, Palau and Vanuatu provided their recently completed Beijing+20 Reports for this purpose. Australia and New Zealand’s reports are included in Annex 2 of the Report, while the Forum Island Countries’ progress reports are included as part of the Country MDG Profiles in Annex 3). Unfortunately, this information doesn't brighten the picture much, but it does provide some more recent reference points. Cheers Seini

I couldn't agree more with the current mess of the DFAT website. To add to this, I gather that DFAT is trying to stop the aid-funded projects setting up their own websites. Up until now, even though DFAT's own website has been increasingly bad at providing information, there have been some good and informative project sites managed by the managing contractors on which reports and news updates are available. If it is true that these are now being discouraged, it is a serious concern and major step backwards for transparency in the aid program.

Thanks for the insights Rick! For those interested in viewing Rick's blog, which discusses Australia's response to corruption in PNG, go to: http://globalanticorruptionblog.com/2014/09/03/how-australia-can-help-curb-corrpution-in-papua-new-guinea/

Why aren't the people, who were responsible for the AusAid updates, still doing this work? Isn't it the same people who were in AusAid, now DFAT employees, who are responsible for feeding this information in? Is there a restructure going on by DFAT (former DFAT) employees? Why is this happening. This doesn't explain the cause?

Dear Ms Blunck - thank you for this review. I'm sorry that you were not persuaded. If you are still interested and at ANU next year, I invite you to visit my class 'Courts Justice & Development', so we can discuss - or debate - the argument further. It has importance. I'd like to try to persuade you. best, Livingston

One other point which I think is important (and which we do cover in the paper) is that, once we include a control variable for Greens support in the regressions (both for support for ODA and donations), the negative association between religion and these types of support for aid disappears (it doesn't become positive but ceases to be different from zero in a statistical sense). To my mind this suggests that it is perhaps not religiosity per se that is negatively associated with support for ODA but rather a particular conservative type of religious belief, which is also strongly negatively associated with Green party support (quite a strong conservatism it should be noted, strong enough to not be positively associated with Coalition support on first preferences). At least that's my thinking thus far, although I'd like to do some more work in this area.