Comments

I found your article good reading. Information is power, how it is used requires responsible management, many journalists have failed to do this and in the pursuit of a "good story" have failed check, research, investigate leads, information sources and credibility to establish FACTS. No one wants to have to digest lies and rumor and baseless statements. Even those told by those claiming to be experts, academics and supposedly learned persons. Thanks, Gary Juffa

Really useful article Sophie. Thanks for posting. What struck me was the relatively small size of the Red Cross. Less than four percent!

Love the title - if you stretch Kevin's face along the vertical axis he would look a bit like Abbott. From the Pacific perspective the Liberals have been making more assuring noises about re-focussing aid priorities to Australia's nearest region. But then again folk have been promising that and not delivering for some time. To re-engage the endlessly dull PACER Plus debate would be a shame but it seems neither side has the imagination or will to think creatively about trade.

A couple of points. Carnival is basically the only operator in the cruise ship market in the sub-region. There are a couple of big round-the-worlders but if folk want to develop this industry along sensible lines then you have to work with Carnival. This industry in terms of growth and impact dwarfs air passengers. Secondly, there was some fabulous work done by Monash Uni on the positive and negative impacts of tourism - folk should look at that for a balanced view of the tourism industry in the region. By and large the cruise ships tend to be better in a development sense and in a spending sense than the air passengers. But - I think the key point in the article (for me anyway) was not that AusAID may have erred in terms of working with Carnival - but perhaps they erred in not giving the ECF program a chance to prove itself. As a deep sceptic of the ECF program I was surprised by how well the first attempt worked - this is posibly a better model of engaging the private sector. Nevertheless, it might be good to see how this relationship between AusAID and Carnival develops before coming to a firm conclusion.

Interesting observation although I don't see that the issue of aid is 'major' in this election, despite efforts to get it into the discourse by DevPolicy and others. Also, the way the question is phrased implies a presumption that the respondent already knows how much Australia spends on foreign aid and I have seen other items that indicate quite clearly that the general public (a) don't know how much is spent on aid and (b) generally overestimate the spend when asked to guess

Max, Thanks for your comment. These are exactly the sort of questions that the PNG Govt has been grappling with in its design of the IDA. We've outlined our position in the blog, and are proposing a more ambitious role for the IDA than what is likely to eventuate. Neither of us, and I'm speaking for Tony who is currently in PNG, is under the illusion that the IDA will be a panacea for the infrastructure woes of PNG. But we do think substantial reform is needed to avoid a repeat of the past. The original intention of the NRA, to operate outside of the government bureacracy and funding cycle, was sound (and is similar in many respects to the IDA that we envisage). But unfortunately implementation to date has not matched this intention. The NRA is forced to operate much like a government department and has not received the funding that was promised (and, indeed, gazetted). It goes to show that design and legislation is only half the battle - it is in the implementation stage where things so often go wrong.

The following comment is not correct as regards the makeup of the government after the 1999 election: `This is reminiscent of provisions in the 1997 Constitution for cabinet to include members of opposition parties (a provision that was ignored for many years)'. The provision was not ignored in May 1999 and for much of the following year. Prior to the election of that year the then PM and leader of the majority ethnic Fijian party, Sitiveni Rabuka said he and his party would not accept being a member of the governing coalition if his party was in the minority. That is, he would not accept the entitlement under the 1997 Constitutional Provision intended to have all parties represented in the government. When the SVT was decimated at the poll but retained a small number of seats Rabuka stuck to his pre-election statement. This lead to a fiery meeting of the SVT, with MPs led by now Foreign Minister Ratu Inoke Kubuabola arguing against Rabuka's stance. (My source for this account was a student in a class I taught at USP, who was present at the meeting and holds a substantial position in the current regime.) Rabuka was then kicked out of the party to a position in the Great Council of Chiefs. Kubuabola and others spent much of the next year - until early 2000 at least - trying to join the government and obtain key ministerial positions. Why their efforts did not succeed and when this continuing marginalisation became a factor which led to the takeover of parliament in May 2000 remains one of the most intriguing and under-examined matters of Fiji's recent political history. Thus far from the provision being ignored it played a major part in what occurred before and after May 1999, and arguably affected what now exists in Fiji. The moral of the story is that no matter how well drafted what constitutions intend to happen often does not do so. .

What is the objective in establishing the IDA? Is it to circumvent the Central Supply and Tenders Board/State Soliciters Office which remain a major obstacle to timely contract award? Key questions are what functions and type of infrastructure should the IDA cover. Should it include planning as well as implementation? What type of infrastructure should it be involved in? In the transport sector a lot of work has been done to develop institutions to own and operate maritime, aviation and road infrastructure. Who will maintain the asset to be developed? The establishment of the IDA would increase the separation between development and operation and maintenance of the infrastructure. The organisation that is responsible for operation and maintenance should be involved in the design and implementation because they best understand how to build in sustainability. To me the IDA is another simplistic approach to a complex issue. There is no getting away from the fact that developing sector based institutions with responsibility for designing, operating and maintaining infrastructure is the way to go. On the surface the IDA idea seems to be a response to the weak procurement capacity in PNG. The preferred approach is what is happening in the road sector where the NRA is responsible for maintenance. The NRA approach gives all stakeholders, especially users, some input in planning and implementation and provides the start of transparent funding models for infrastructure maintenance.

Thanks Colum, I was wondering, do we know if Queensland is a net recipient of federal transfers? Interesting to see that the results are almost identical when it comes to: 1. opposing asylum seekers 2. doing anything about climate change Queensland is clearly not a particularly internationalist state...

A very reasonable constitution. Lets road test it first during the 2014 Election. Minor adjustments could be made through new government of the day as the country progresses. All the best, love Fiji my beloved country.

The answer to your first question, of course, is "no", tools on their own can't transform democracy, just like a hammer on its own can't build a house. It's people using tools productively that do any of those things. It's not clear what you're suggesting here - are you saying we should in some way try to restrain Myanmar from gaining access to the tools many of the rest of us use to improve our lives? Other countries can handle tech, but not Myanmar? Naturally, some people say nasty things online. Some people also use the tools for good. Since in Myanmar, some people stir up ethnic hatred in online forums, are you arguing that we should make sure the rest of the country doesn't get access to these tools, because they might do the same thing? Maybe I just wasn't getting what your argument was, but what you present seems to be an argument for a more open discussion about the internet and more coordinated efforts to help people learn information literacy. Of course, everyone shares concerns about the internet's role in everything these days. Of course it can be a tool for destructiveness. But the answer to that is fostering positive usage and productive online behavior. There's no putting the genie back in the bottle.

On 'adding balance to the above (below) comments': all my remarks on accountability, evaluation and transparency are sector-neutral and apply equally to all players, particularly to the public sector which we expect to practice what it preaches and lead by example. Same goes for private contractors, both of which have more resource capability for it. On the cash benchmark, I agree with the views in <a href="http://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations/cash-transfers-sorting-through-hype " rel="nofollow">this post</a> (particularly last few paras), so I won't repeat them. On 'we'd be spending more money on RCTs than programmes': this warrants a reply, as I think it is not the right way to frame this important issue: - Firstly, evaluation will only ever be a subset of program funding. Now, it is barely is a subset, but rather absorbed in a lot of cases, when not ex-ante earmarked or paid for after. There is little threat of evaluation becoming a major component of, let alone overtaking, program funding anytime soon. - Secondly, not all sound impact evaluations are RCTs*, nor should they be. RCTs or other quasi and non-randomised evaluations also need not be expensive as those ideologically against them like to make them out to be in their attacks - good, scaled research is often not cheap, true, but there are countless grad students are running innovative experiments and mechanism studies partnering with small scale NGOs, and may of these make it in to top journals without the dollar tag attached, with immensely useful lessons for practitioners and policy makers. A more productive approach is problem solving these costs and feasibility constraints down, rather than repeating the barriers that have already been knocked down in debates. Combining these two points and given the starting point of impact evaluations here in Australia and in our organisations and programs, there is no doubt we can do with more: asking the questions as well as trying to answer them, ideally with some kind of proof rather than rhetoric. On RCTs, I do however welcome <a href="http://www.povertyactionlab.org/southeast-asia" rel="nofollow">AusAIDs funding</a> of J-PAL to open a new office in Indonesia, and hope this catalyses more randomised evaluation in our region, particularly the Pacific.