Comments

Bal, China has proved that the alternative can work. I concur with Minister Marape and Governor Parkop. Sometimes we need to think outside the box in order to find a way forward. Enough of looking at the world with a Western lens. The "A vibrant Opposition is critical for PNG" statement is Politics 101. China has shown the world that a one-party State can transform a nation. That does not mean that there is no opposition in China. The Communist party has factions namely; the Princelings (decedents of the Revolutionaries), the Tuanpai (members of the Chinese Communist Youth League), the Shanghai gang (followers of Jiang Zemin) and the Tsinghua Clique (Tsunghua graduates). Xi Jingping is from the Princeling faction while Li Keqiang is from the Tuanpai faction. In US foreign policy decision making, you have the Kissinger and Brzezinski factions. Both Harvard scholars have created schools of thought that are followed by their students. The various factions pursue the principles that are fundamental to their view. Thus they do disagree with each other. Likewise, the various parties in the PNG government can form factions within government to influence decision making. My point is factional politics can maintain the balance in the absence of an opposition. So my answer to the question is yes PNG can survive without an opposition but that will require major constitutional amendments and reforms. But then again, are the parliamentarians serious in pursuing this path or is this trend reflective of the forces at play in this particular term of parliament?

Hi Del, Ron Duncan actually raised the same point when I delivered my findings at the 2014 Pacific Update. Unfortunately this can't be captured in census data, but would be an excellent topic for future (possibly survey based) research. Jonathan

What about the cultural factor, for instance the melanesian culture is quite distinct from the polynesian, melanesians have the tendency to return to their country after living abroad for a number of years, this might influence the pattern of migration

Dear Justine, Thank you very much for your comment. On religion, as noted in my comment below, you may well be right on this (in the case of government ODA at least one other study finds frequent service attendees are more supportive, even if the religious as a whole are not.) Unfortunately, the census data we use don't provide us with information on frequency of of attendance. This is a matter we hope to study more in the future. On the education effect. Because we ran regressions controlling for income, we know education's impact is not via income. However the other suggestions you make are very interesting and definitely worthy of further investigation. We will try our best to do this as we take the research forwards. Thank you for your input. Terence

Interesting although not surprising findings – consistent conclusion from all research on who gives and why is that giving is largely emotive, personal and a reflection of ones values. Regarding religion, other research I've encountered cites that the more often someone attends religious services the more likely they are to donate to charity and donate larger amounts, so attendance at services would appear to be more a predictive factor than identification. Potential explanations for the relationship with education includes: association with higher incomes; education draws people into memberships/communities of participation (e.g. professional associations, alumni) that can then bring about higher levels of solicitation; greater comprehension of social issues and needs.

A good read, thank you, about very complex issues. To assist with clear analysis of the issues, I think it is probably best to separate hunger and under-nutrition out from the malnutrition associated with obesity. While essentially about food, and so similar in some areas, overall I think the required responses are mostly different, although I would love to engage in a discussion about this. Ultimately, the policies required need to be multi-sectoral and multi-level, which your recommendations highlight. At least for obesity ( and NCDs in general), the issue is about making the healthy choice the easy choice, which I believe happens through a combination of education and individual/family support, efforts to create or reinforce societal norms that support health-conducive behaviours and establishing structures that incentivise people. Individual-level interventions alone do not work, as we have seen through smoking prevention and cessation efforts, and action to address issues such as drunk-driving and ending violence against women. I agree with you that these issues need much more attention, particularly because they are difficult to sustainably address. At the very least, hunger alone requires no further justification for action and should be of the highest priority for funding. Hunger is a basic biological signal that the body is not getting the nutrition it needs to function and ultimately survive - justification enough for action.

Thanks Ben, in the interests of fairness I should note that Jono wrote most of the summary. You're right the religion finding is slightly puzzling. Note though, that it's not just there for ODA but also for donations to NGOS. (Your explanation of ODA vs private donations on the other hand is, I think, very plausible for why we find a negative Coalition effect on support for ODA but not on NGO donations). Possible explanations for the negative religious finding are: 1. Problems of ecological inference (a technical issue - discussed in the working paper, probably an unlikely explanation). 2. (For NGO donations) religious people giving in other ways (i.e. through tithes) rather than individual donations to ACFID members). 3. (For ODA) a certain type of religious person filling out the vote compas form in much higher numbers (and the difference being one not accounted for by weighting, which is unlikely). 4. The fact that our measure of religiosity is simply proportion of the electorate who told the census enumerator they were religious (all we could do with our data; although, note, we also got the same result when we replaced 'religious' with 'christian'). Other work has found, for example, that frequent attenders of religious worship are more supportive of aid. So perhaps our result is being driven by the only-nominally-religious. 5. Some other data issue I haven't thought of. That said, the result seems pretty robust. So I think it's real (even if I'm not yet certain). Like you I want to see a lot more testing, which is exactly what we hope to do in future work. Thanks for your comment.

Hi Mose, I'm glad my research is of use to you! And I hope it continues to be in the future, along with all of Devpolicy's Pacific focused work. Regards, Jonathan

Hi Anna, It is up to each respondent of the census to identify their own ancestry. 'Australian South Sea Islanders' is not identified as a variable in the census data so they may have identified as either Australian or ni-Vanuatu/Solomon Islander. Unfortunately it's impossible to be more precise. Regards, Jonathan

Very interesting findings and great summary thanks Terence. It seems strange that religiosity has a negative impact on support for ODA. I would have thought the inverse to be true. Could it be that those who most closely align with a religion give more through their own charitable donations but don't share the same positive view of ODA? Look forward to future research that might explain this result.

Very useful to have this statistical analysis of Pacific Islanders in Australia. For the ancestry data, how are ASSI descendants from Vanuatu and Sols counted?

Many thanks for sharing these stats on the status and trend of Pacific Islanders in Australia. This information is very important to people like me providing advices to government in terms of policy options for economic development. Much appreciated Mose CTA, Office of the Prime Minister & Cabinet Honiara