Comments

Thanks Peter for this post which is thought provoking and also resonates with a number of the issues that were raised during our meeting with the review team yesterday at the USP campus here in Port Vila. I certainly agree that planning can become an end in itself rather than a contribution to achieving the 'core business' of any organisation and this is something to be avoided. And if the Pacific Plan is indeed a 'living document' then it is susceptible to being killed off but that is not an option as far as this review is concerned. I do see a role for planning but won't enter into that debate here. It did occur to me last night that maybe what would be of more benefit would be more of a 'toolkit' approach (resources, including processes to identify the most cost-effective modalities to be drawn down by national governments or groupings thereof to meet particular needs)- and a recognition of the need for collaborative efforts to be demand driven. E.g. PNA is largely successful because it is driven by those that have a vested interest and those that don't can just ignore it and focus on something that is more important to them. (I guess I should copy and paste this comment to the website!)

"I only suggest that by understanding the local culture, people may be able to understand why good governance has been recognizably so hard to achieve." I have made no impression, have I? The reason good governance is hard to achieve is because the political structure makes it impossible. Trying to understand PNG governance through the perspective of culture can only lead to misunderstanding. Even the misunderstanding is hazy. Whereas I have produced instance after instance showing culture to be irrelevant, you can produce no evidence of how culture affects governance. I suspect the reason for this would be that any evidence would be in the form of anecdotes. Such anecdotes are embarrassing to put into print (they look like ridicule) and if some feature of the culture be submitted as explaining, say, corruption, then examples of similar corruption can always be found in our society—which undermines the thesis that it is culture which is causing the corruption. There are many instances where our politicians, also, were on the take. Venal is venal in any culture. The difference is, though, that corruption in our society is not so widespread as in PNG. We have institutional curbs on it. A majoritarian parliament requires a curb. Without it, the incentives are wrong: cronies are rewarded, top civil servants take bribes, ordinary lives are ruined. Though the upper houses of Britain and Canada are grossly undemocratic (as was New Zealand’s) and almost powerless, they suffice to curb the majoritarian lower houses from turning into elected dictatorships. It is quite a clumsy arrangement having a faulty lower house checked by an upper house. Effectiveness varies with place and fluctuates in time. When Howard unexpectedly won control of the Senate in 2004 things started to go awry for his government and a major reason he lost the next election was because he got carried away with his dominance of both houses ("work choices"). In WA the royal commission into "WA Inc" explicitly blamed the debacle on having an ineffectual upper house. It is the job of a political system to cope with the culture and the then WA upper house was not able to cope with the Brian Burke culture. Australia has changed nearly all its upper houses to PR: the Senate 1949, SA 1973, NSW 1978, WA 1987, Vic 2003; unicameral ACT switched to PR in 1988. PNG, meanwhile, has been left to stew. PR better aligns the politicians’ individual interests with the public interest so PR houses tend to be proper debating chambers. Also, the forestry company, instead of bribing the member for an electorate, has to bribe perhaps ten members—ten who belong to several different parties. Corruption becomes a lot harder. If culture has anything to do with it, Australian culture must be very bad indeed to require both kinds of curb: both upper house and PR. When unicameral NZ started having problems no one blamed NZ culture. They fixed their problems not by reinstating the upper house but by switching to PR. They adopted the West German form of it. Does this mean NZ has the same culture as Germany? Culture is—evidently—irrelevant to political structure. Old hands, acquainted with the culture through long hours by the rural campfire may find it hard to accept that wantok violence is caused by electoral design and parliamentary structure. But it is so. The wantok violence in Northern Ireland vanished with the introduction of PR. Just vanished. With the widespread introduction of PR in Africa, it has largely gone quiet. The same may be expected in PNG. And even if PNG has the most ghastly culture on earth, it doesn't help to lumber it with an unbridled majoritarian parliament. The idea that PNG can keep its dysfunctional structure and Australia can run the country is delusional. Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands can be swatted down whenever they get out of hand but the days of mineral-rich PNG kowtowing to Australia are numbered. Moreover the colonial power has too many distractions at home to properly pay attention. It was Australia running the place that caused Bougainville. In that case the result was a society ripped apart and 20,000 people dead. Neither their single majoritarian chamber nor a foreign power can run the country. The structure has to be right. The remedy is simple: PNG must adopt PR or an upper house. In 1975 the Australian government inflicted a curse upon the people of PNG. It took fifty years for Northern Ireland to boil over and now, after 38 years, PNG is simmering. It becomes more volatile as its politics become more shambolic and its resources become more valuable. The crisis will be very difficult to cope with. When Queensland goes bananas we can send Four Corners there to sort it out. When the Northern Territory goes off the rails the Commonwealth parliament can jerk it into line. When Northern Ireland blew up, England sacked the government and sent in an occupation force. These last-ditch curbs are not available for PNG. Electoral reform is a thankless undertaking. It has to overcome the opposition of those who are benefitting from the current system, who find every excuse to prove that now is not the right time, and who submit counter-proposals to obfuscate and stall. Advocating electoral reform does not advance careers and even when the need is accepted, it gets put off to tomorrow because today’s politics must be attended to. Moreover, because day-to-day political squabbling is colourful and dramatic, and election rules are dull and bureaucratic, the media and the public are not interested. Despite these obstacles, all those Australian houses did manage to change. It was a creaking, groaning, whingeing business but they got there. If NZ could do it, why not PNG? But PNG is far past the stage where it can do it alone. It is up to Australia. The leaders of PNG know their land has become a mafia state. But they are patriots: if they were encouraged to adopt an honourable strategy to set their country on a positive path, they might do it. A tragedy might be prevented and with a viable electoral structure, PNG would have a chance to become peaceful and prosperous.

Dear Jonathan and Robin, Thank you for this fantastic analysis. The excel spreadsheet you created and transparently made available to all (if only AusAID was that transparent!) is very useful. Interesting to see that the cuts are across the board and do not really clearly represent a new strategic focus. And, as you note, unclear how exactly the cuts will be made within each program (ie. in terms of say number of scholarships or vaccinations provided or schools rebuilt, etc). The bizarre increase to the Commonwealth (despite its very poor rating in the Multlateral Review) is odd. Something worth doing - and I would be happy to work with you on it - would be to create a figure of score on Multilat Review against funding volume and another against funding % increase. To see if the Review has had any impact on prioritisation of funding by Australian Government or if it was just a nice exercise. Joel

Mike, The central issue first raised was about Governance in PNG. I merely point out that it is my belief that PNG’s traditional culture has a large bearing on how PNG leaders and authorities have viewed the priorities of governance in the past. I suggest that through cultural misunderstandings, a lack of suitable alternatives and a large dose of naivety, Australia bequeathed PNG in 1975 with a system for which it was not yet ready. The fact that a pluralistic society and educated debate over at least a decade had produced the Australian political system didn’t guarantee the same would work in PNG. I didn’t say that PNG culture is ‘THE’ problem. I only suggest that by understanding the local culture, people may be able to understand why good governance has been recognizably so hard to achieve. I have hitherto suggested ways in which PNG could easily introduce an Upper House of Review using the existing Regional Members. Today’s PNG political leaders are far more ‘savvy’ in terms of what will work than their predecessors. I believe this acquired knowledge augers well for the future. The current PM should be congratulated and supported for the initiatives and policies he is starting to bring in. Cheers, Paul

This is another great post, many thanks. Apparently there are several hundred PNG citizens working in the mining industry in Australia but I am not sure how, if at all, APTC has contributed to this migration. You raise a very interesting question as to how the APTC offerings are decided and based on my observations in Vanuatu I would suggest that accessing skilled migration programs (e.g. to Australia) is not necessarily the focus. The Vanuatu campus has hospitality as its focus but seems to be looking at providing skills to the tourism industries within the Pacific region rather than outside. It also offers child services (new this year I believe) but the impression I get is that this is for people who want to work in early education in their own countries rather than be nannies in richer countries. Very much looking forward to hearing more about your work in this area.

Sounds like an interesting trip. I have only started visiting PNG recently but from what I have seen so far this sounds quite familiar. One of the things I noticed about the facilities (that appeared to have been there for some time) I saw in the Islands region was that many of them were quite damaged. Some of this looked like damage caused by some kind of contact with an unrelated object but other damage looked like things that could be avoided (eg rotted out support beams from water entering from roof building) with an adequate maintenance program. Thanks for the post and it would be interesting to find out what all the surveys returned.

"...from my experience, to try and understand PNG one must first try to understand the local culture." Paul, surely you are right. To understand anywhere pretty much means understanding the culture. We are not here trying to understand PNG. We are here trying to understand what you called the lesson of history. "I don’t know what experience you have about rural PNG... ...I have no idea where you were around the early 1970’s but at the time I was living on PNG outstations." Ad hominem does not constitute legitimate argument. Your personal experience in PNG is not germane to the lessons of history. Nor is mine but since you ask, while you were at rural outstations, I was at Ok Tedi, which in those days was really, really rural. "Why would multi person electorates be any different than having the current overlap of Regional and local electorates?" That's well worth asking. This sort of question was pretty thoroughly worked through in the nineteenth century. I could offer theoretical answers but I'm finding it hard enough to get the simple lesson of history across. I recall papers around the time LPV was introduced (saying it was not going to achieve anything) which would cover this ground, so if you're genuinely interested you might seek them out. They'd be from ANU and in the usual journals. Also Lijphart's new edition of "36 democracies" would be informative. "...experiences elsewhere will be an indication of what might work and what may not..." Yes, hold that thought. That's what "lessons of history" means. Here is the lesson. No one has made the PNG structure (majoritarian elections with unicameral legislature) work. No one. Bitter fact. Around the democratic world viable countries have either an upper house or else multi-member proportional representation. Some places have both. Can your campfire-acquired knowledge of the culture tell you PNG will succeed with a political structure that has failed everywhere else? It cannot. Culture is just not relevant to the political design. At the regular re-drawing of electoral boundaries, culture may be taken into account. South Australia actually requires the Electoral Commission to do this. The SA provision is unusual and is discussed sceptically in the literature—which casts doubt on the appropriateness of a role for culture even at that level of detail. Note that the structure itself—having an electoral commission—is culture-free. The bottom line is this: Can you show me anything in the political structure of any of the democracies, that reflects the culture of the country? If you can, it would indicate culture matters. If you can't, culture is irrelevant. You end by saying PNG culture is a "problem." It is not a problem. On the contrary, Melanesian ambitiousness would be an excellent basis for prosperous democracy—if the system gave it a chance. The problem lies with those who insist PNG culture is a problem. Blaming the culture suits Australian bureaucrats and academics. Coups and foreign police occupations are interesting to write reports and papers on, and to pontificate about in the media. There is hobnobbing with high level officials and politicians, there are junkets to Pacific islands, and there are conferences and courses to run in "governance." Since everything continues to get worse it is the perfect gravy train. To advocate radical constitutional change is not a good career move. Yet radical reform is essential. PNG is doomed unless it gets an upper house or switches to proportional representation. The situation is comparable with that in Sir Arthur Lewis's west Africa in 1965. He couldn't convince anyone. Will the outcome in PNG be as horrific?

Mike, you say: ‘… PNG would today be a prosperous country with a sound infrastructure if Australia had taken its administration duties seriously. No one today would be alleging that it had an inferior culture. Culture is irrelevant: nothing in the new Irish PR reflects those two religions and nothing in a putative PNG PR would reflect its alleged cultural features—just as, indeed, there is no reflection of the culture in PNG’s present dysfunctional structure. Culture is immaterial to political structure. It is just a red herring. In the case of PNG the blather about culture is arrogant and self-serving but it wouldn’t matter if it were flattering. Culture is irrelevant.’ __________ I don’t know what experience you have about rural PNG but from my experience, to try and understand PNG one must first try to understand the local culture. While experiences elsewhere will be an indication of what might work and what may not, no two nations, let alone a nation so recently cobbled together, can replicate similar cultural circumstances. To understand traditional PNG, you must put on PNG coloured glasses and sit down around the camp fire and listen. Those people who wear suits and ties and perform at exalted levels would still like to be back in the village if they could only have the material benefits and lurks and perks of their present position. In this they are really no different than almost any other culture. Look at the growing ‘Grey Nomad’ existence and where some with high pressure jobs then opt out and have a ‘tree change’ or a ‘sea change’. I have no idea where you were around the early 1970’s but at the time I was living on PNG outstations. Australia as a nation was certainly not very aware of PNG apart from the exotic and dramatic stories that occasionally surfaced and still do today. The Australian government was caught in a web that was cast by the UN (after Sir Hugh Foot visited and gave his very British pontifications and the remonstrations of recently independent African nations), and wanting to appease the small group of local agitators who wanted power now and not in a structured and progressive way. PM Whitlam just took the easy way out and accelerated what was the accepted UN format for a political system and parliament at the time. To contrast PNG with Northern Ireland is about as useful as comparing apples to oranges. Religion was not a factor unless it was a potentially unifying factor. Sorry mate. Your view about PNG culture being irrelevant is way off the mark. Why would multi person electorates be any different than having the current overlap of Regional and local electorates? It's just duplication of the same problem.

Thanks Ian. I'm totally with you. Just when it comes to the politics of it all, I'm not so sure that dispassionate analysis translates into what might be the best course of action. But that said, it shouldn't undermine the analysis, which is crucial and will hopefully have some impact.

Maybe it’s a platypus. Stephen Howes and Robin Davies argue that ACIAR is neither fish nor fowl, and it should align itself much more with accepted good aid practice. But I wonder if the starting point ought to be whether ACIAR’s assistance is doing any good, seeing which aspects of its operations drive outcomes, and then ask if its approach could lead to improvements. And maybe we would end up concluding it’s a platypus well adapted to the rather unique environment it has to live in. (Of course, we might not, but judge first on outcomes rather than process.) ACIAR has a pretty strong commitment to rigorous quantitative evaluations, with methodologies develop and reviewed by the world’s best authorities.There are issues with these evaluations, of course – while they are done after projects have been completed, they are usually undertaken before all actual outcomes have been realised, - so amongst other things evaluators have to make judgments about adoption – which is the critical variable. And in the past, it wasn’t always clear that evaluations were consistently used to learn lessons: rather more to demonstrate that there were enough high return projects to justify the overall investment in ACIAR. But that is what the evaluations do show: and we don’t have similar numbers for many other parts of the aid program. Howes and Davies are right to target the problem with requiring demonstration of benefits to Australia. But most agricultural research activities are publicly funded, often with contributions from levies on Australian producers and, at least in the past, involving researchers employed in state government agencies. One can imagine that the adoption of the ‘Australian benefit’ doctrine was designed to help navigate the political challenge of using knowledge and skills developed to support Australian agriculture to help potential competitors. The time is probably ripe to jettison this requirement: but it might also be worth asking if it actually made much difference to what ACIAR did and how it did it. The biggest problem facing ACIAR, and Howes and Davies identify it, is that adoption is the critical variable, and ACIAR has been a bit spasmodic in its attempts to understand the contextual drivers of uptake of agricultural technology. It had a go with its Policy Linkages and Impact Assessment Program, but that was not sufficiently embedded in its project development systems. One might have hoped that collaboration with AusAID or other development agencies might have been integrated into projects to help fill this need: but that doesn’t seem to have occurred. To my mind, if ACIAR is to continue to operate, this is the issue it most needs to come to grips with.

Thanks for the reply Paul, but I must say I don't think you understood much of what I said. You ask what the alternative is to having a perfect cop-out. The alternative is to take responsibility for policies. The second sentence of your first para ("You are also right...") appears to have no connection with anything I wrote. I never mentioned donors' "political objectives" or any "fickle or ignorant electorate." "To make generalised observations about such a broad topic as ‘culture’ is always going to offend some who have differing perspectives." Yes, it is offensive to say, as PNG specialists in effect do, "Your culture is inferior to mine" but you miss my point. My point is that culture is irrelevant. Just irrelevant. Culture has nothing to do with PNG's problems. The juicy details of the exotic culture are immaterial to PNG's political difficulties. Your assertion that Australia had no choice in what they set up at independence is incorrect. They had the choice of every political system in the world. But they stood back and allowed the local politicians open slather. The politicians then set it up to ensure they would have permanent open slather. The constitution committee, composed entirely of members of the PNG House of Assembly, set its own rules. Where did they get the idea of having single-member electorates with a single house of parliament? What were their models? The only Australian example was Queensland, the most corrupt state in the country. New Zealand had abolished its upper house in 1950 and was having deep regrets. Geoffrey Palmer, later PM, called NZ an elected dictatorship. The only other democratic country that had this structure was Northern Ireland which was in turmoil. Mauritius had tried it and it had failed and it was catastrophic in Africa. Why did the PNG committee adopt a structure that no country has ever made work? That question is rhetorical: it was a power grab. Australia permitted this and it is a tragedy. This is not wisdom of hindsight. I am describing the situation at the time. There are good technical reasons why single-member electorates along with a single legislature doesn't work. For example, in 1965 the Nobel Prize winning economist, Sir Arthur Lewis, wrote "Politics in West Africa," predicting terrible consequences of this design and he suggested multi-member proportional representation. Prominent political scientist, Stephen Lukes, said at the time that Lewis was right and further predicted that no one would take any notice. Lukes was right, too, and it came to pass that tragedy was visited upon millions. Back in 1921 when the UK government created Northern Ireland, they must have understood it for they installed multi-member PR even though PR was virtually unknown in British politics. Unfortunately, a few years later they buckled to Stormont's—the local MPs'— demands to change it. Thus, like the PNG politicians fifty years later, the incumbents made the rules to suit themselves and so launched NI into two generations of misery. After the "troubles" started about 1970 the UK government realised they had to revert to PR. It took three attempts before they could get it to stick—about ten years ago. "PNG politics is starting to come of age... ...the resilience and fibre of the PNG people" Whatever the source of such pap, you should strike it off your reading list. "objectives must be practical and achievable" Yes, and motherhood is also good. Nothing will be achieved until the political structure is rectified. Neither the locals nor foreigners will succeed. It has gone backwards since 1975 and further decline is a sure bet. It will be compounded by more of the resource curse. Australia can prop up the Solomons and Vanuatu indefinitely but Australia's influence in PNG will wane as mineral money moves in. When the chaos in NI got too bad the UK government sent in the troops. Australia can't do that with PNG. At some point the colonels will take over. "imposed political systems didn’t meet local objectives." The political system is still there and will never meet any country's objectives. It will only meet elected MPs' short-term, personal objectives. "Today’s modern and educated PNGian now has an opportunity to make changes for the future based on the knowledge of what works" As I say, do ditch your source of such fatuity. It is exactly what is not the case. Your m and e PNGian has no chance and never will till the constitution is fixed. Either an upper house or (better) multi-member electorates. "as far as Melanesian culture ‘evaporating’ as a significant factor in PNG politics, I beg to differ." You are not begging to differ with me but with a straw man. I said that if PNG had a viable political structure its culture would evaporate as a conversation topic. And it would. Consider Northern Ireland. NI allegedly had a huge culture problem: Catholics versus Protestants, at each others' throats for centuries. It exploded again around 1970 and for decades we, in Australia, heard about the Catholics and the Protestants of Northern Ireland in nearly every news bulletin. Do we today hear those news bulletins? Vanished. Evaporated. Why? Because they (the UK govt.) introduced multi-member PR. The culture, and 70 years of political outrages and sectarian bitterness, didn't evaporate; the Cs and Ps are still there and they surely didn't suddenly decide to be best friends. How has this sudden peace been achieved? By installing a political structure that has been known to work. Three thousand people died in the Irish "troubles." Did they die because of the religion, because of the culture? No. They died because the electoral system was faulty. Had the electoral system been multi-member PR they'd be alive today and their families and the rest of the world wouldn't know anything about any troubles. So all that talk about Catholics and Protestants was irrelevant. Utterly irrelevant. Similarly, PNG would today be a prosperous country with a sound infrastructure if Australia had taken its administration duties seriously. No one today would be alleging that it had an inferior culture. Culture is irrelevant: nothing in the new Irish PR reflects those two religions and nothing in a putative PNG PR would reflect its alleged cultural features—just as, indeed, there is no reflection of the culture in PNG's present dysfunctional structure. Culture is immaterial to political structure. It is just a red herring. In the case of PNG the blather about culture is arrogant and self-serving but it wouldn't matter if it were flattering. Culture is irrelevant.

Hi Mike, I agree with you about AusAID always having the perfect cop out on why their policies aren’t working yet what are the alternatives? You are also right about other aid ‘givers’ being able to direct their aid in ways that enhance their own political objectives without having to be answerable to a fickle or ignorant electorate. To make generalised observations about such a broad topic as ‘culture’ is always going to offend some who have differing perspectives. The political system bequeathed to PNG at Independence was not in any way tailored to the accepted norms of the day. It was only accepted by the ‘Norms’ of Canberra and the UN. Australia just did not have much choice about what it set up given the accepted methodology of those who dabbled. Those who inherited the system also didn’t have much choice as well. I suggest that PNG politics is starting to come of age. Every nation goes through a political learning curve and PNG started a lot later than some. It is indicative of the resilience and fibre of the PNG people that they are moving forward politically a whole lot faster than other nations who started out a whole lot sooner and have come to grief. I agree with you about the conferences and seminars that only provide a few high priced consultants with self-actualising methodologies and a few locals with a free lunch. The only way around that oxymoronic, ephemeral outlook is to have pre set defined objectives and an effective feedback loop to ensure the objectives are met. Of course the objectives must be practical and achievable otherwise if you set a target predicated on BS you’ll undoubtedly be able to easily achieve your aim. I believe PNG is on the cusp of breaking through the culture clash of the past where imposed political systems didn’t meet local objectives. Today’s modern and educated PNGian now has an opportunity to make changes for the future based on the knowledge of what works and what doesn’t. That opportunity was not previously available in a PNG context. However, as far as Melanesian culture ‘evaporating’ as a significant factor in PNG politics, I beg to differ. While ever 85% of the population is still living in a rural existence without any real recourse to any other way of life and general education opportunities only now starting to be resurrected, the culture of the clan and tribe will be prevail.