Comments

Congratulations Professor Howes on securing another four years of funding for this valuable initiative. I feel fortunate to have been part of it for a few years. My sincere thanks to all those who are continuing to work on and support this important partnership.

Thank you for your response. PALM is based on a series of bilateral agreements between two sovereign states, each state has a set of obligations to meet as part of that agreement. As I stated, it is not an aid program where the recipient country has few if any obligations. PALM workers are more expensive to employ because they are entitled to the higher casual rate of pay but also have a fixed term work contract with minimum pay guaranteed. So employers are employing them for other reasons such as reliability and not because they are paid less than other workers. The role of CLOs is be a trusted intermediary for their country's workers to provide advice in a way they can understand and act on. This is particularly important for Timorese workers who are likely to have little or no English. Timorese government officials residing in Darwin and expected to be CLOs are not meeting an important part of making a complex system of welfare support work as it should.

Let's put this in perspective: 1) The Australian Government owns the program, as part of their regional foreign relations strategy 2) Australian companies get international workers via the scheme, at a effective lower cost 3) In some cases these, these companies treat their international employees under conditions that can be compared to modern slavery, as reported multiple times in the media 4) There is a clear unbalance of power and foreign workers usually don't complain about these conditions Yet you argue the responsibility to ensure Australian working standards and protections reside on a foreign government auditing work conditions on Australian soil? Neither can't I see a valid argument in your article on how or why Ramos-Horta is using this for "political purposes" (what purpose apparently?), neither that the Timorese see the program as "aid", this is a very paternalistic and westernized view. President Ramos-Horta requested Australia to take ownership on the problem. We created the program. It benefits Australian foreign relationships as well as Australian farmers, it is done on our soil, under our jurisdiction. I failed to see how the blame can be passed to Timor-Leste. This is not an isolated event and it also is worth also noticing that similar issues to what happened to Timorese workers have been reported for other nationalities in the PALM scheme.

Being an integral part of the process of customary landowner consolidation for resource project development forums, I have witnessed that there is intentional suppression of landowner verification (social mapping, validation (IPA) and legitimization (ILG) in what seems like a divide and conquer schema by MRA, DPE and the SNT. I believe the same government approach applies for any customary land ownership scenario, depending on economic potential. Parliament has failed to make further relevant effective legislation or policy to reflect the national Goals and Principles on "Equity, participation, and the PNG Way," and so national government and provincial governments' processes become obstacles rather than systems to empower and facilitate. To compound this chaos for the Customary Land Owners, the National Civil Registry, National Statistics Office, and the Electoral Commission are failing to fulfill their mandated roles and responsibilities to be resourceful institutions for reliable updated data on demographics. The Office of Rural Development has not decentralized its capacity to be visible on the ground in provinces and districts to provide capture of the demographics also, for its critical assessments of DSIP and PSIP aquittals. The relevant systems are in place, and I feel the current ILG process is relevant but requires more stringent social mapping on the ground for determination, especially for resource projects and potential big-scale project discussions. Hela, Porgera, and Wafi Goplu landowner issues are relevant to any customary land ownership agenda but have been suppressed, reflecting Go PNG's similar approach to landowners. One other minor point is that voluntary land registration by customary landowners should not trigger monthly or yearly administration fees/arrears from the state to put landowners in a position of debt. The constitution should be the landowner's "equity" for proactive governance, facilitating and positioning customary landowners to realize their assets/wealth.

Pita, Happy to talk with you about what the two of you are doing in your role as country liaison officers (CLOs) for the PALM program.

Thank you very much for some vital encouragement.

Hi Richard. Keen for you to see what the Vanuatu CLO space is doing.

Many thanks Brett for your comment. It is important to note that the analysis of the comparative economic benefits to Australia vs Timor-Leste you refer to is one made by the President in his Op Ed of 20 May.

Another excellent article from Dr Curtain. The PALM scheme is indeed not an aid program, at least not officially — Australia has AusAID for that purpose, and employers are meant to drive demand. However, from a recruiter’s perspective, the extensive contracting out of operations and the funding of Labour Sending Units (LSUs) across sending countries via the Pacific Labour Mobility Support Program (PLMSP) and its predecessor, the Pacific Labour Facility (PLF), have created a strong de facto aid-like operating climate. This includes heavy centralised systems (PALMIS and In-Country Recruitment Databases (IRD)) and compliance requirements that many participants experience as donor-driven micromanagement. These features may help explain why President Jose Ramos-Horta has made the comments he has. What Australia sees as necessary program integrity and worker protections can be viewed by sovereign sending nations as excessive external influence over their labour mobility systems. We have seen similar sovereignty concerns raised by the Vanuatu Government during recent bilateral talks around the Nakamal Agreement. At the root of these tensions is the persistent myth that the PALM scheme is an aid program. There is no coincidence that many NGO stakeholders have seized upon this myth giving it more traction. This has allowed an aid ethos to linger, shaping how worker welfare is approached and managed. As a result, meaningful control has been removed from both employers and their recruiters, as well as from sending country governments. This power vacuum has likely triggered the current pushback. Employers largely remain silent, as do many LSUs and recruiters, for fear of being disenfranchised or losing access to the scheme. A clear example of this mission creep is the In-Country Recruitment Database (IRD). Originally intended as a recruitment and worker tracking tool, it is increasingly morphing into a much broader citizen information system. In some countries it is now being used as a statistical and census-like resource, with East Timor reportedly uploading electoral card data and a new feature incorporating voting constituency information. (Constituencies are voting 'electorates' used in Vanuatu.) While improved data management has benefits, this expansion raises legitimate questions about national data sovereignty and the appropriate scope of a labour mobility program. Those extra features, to which outside of a particular sending country, is surely out of scope. While the centralised approach has delivered benefits in record-keeping, it risks undermining the very employer-driven model the program was designed to be.

Thanks Richard, a very informative and balanced article. I also have found analysis of the comparative economic benefits to Australia vs Timor-Leste to be pretty unconvincing. Typically, one worker salary in Australia pays the living costs of the one worker, and then 1/4 of that is sent to Timor to support a whole family with a new house, motorbike and even fund a small business in several cases. The amount spent in Australia is more, but that is because Australia is an expensive place to live. The benefit is far greater in Timor-Leste.

In Donigi v The State [1991] PNGLR 376 Peter Donigi sought declaratory relief as to the constitutionality of particular provisions of the Mining Act (Ch No 195) of the Petroleum Act (Ch No 198) which reserve rights of ownership in gold, minerals or petroleum below the surface of land to the State. Peter Donigi appeared for the Pialin clan in The State v Richard James Giddings [[1981] PNGLR 423. These two cases are discussed here: - https://www.academia.edu/167998690/REPORT_ON_THE_HISTORY_AND_APPLICATION_OF_PAPUA_NEW_GUINEA_LAW_TO_THE_ISSUE_OF_CUSTOMARY_LAND_OWNERSHIP I admire the work of the widely dispersed ‘clan’ of Land Court Magistrates, mediators and lay assistants who collectively carry the intellectual burden of deciding land dispute cases throughout PNG. The important and difficult work of this conflict management resource structure has been seriously under-resourced for decades. At the heart of the adjudicative process in these lower courts is the reasoned application of the principles of equity. The important work of the lower courts (including the Village Courts, both urban and rural) needs, as a developmental imperative, to be greatly strengthened. For more jurisprudential background on the arena, or ‘agon’ of operations of the lower courts see: - https://www.academia.edu/166881149/Concordance_Between_the_Indian_Evidence_Act_1872_and_the_Papua_New_Guinea_Land_Disputes_Settlement_Act_1975 and Lloyd Fallers, “Customary Law in the New African States”, Law and Contemporary Problems , pp. 605-616, 1962, Duke University School of Law Note that Fallers was an anthropologist and fails to notice the emergence in the court’s discussions of the equitable doctrine of laches. The court found, on its own motion, that the application of this principle decided the case. Vailala

Analysis and discussion of PNG customary land ownership law can be found here: https://www.academia.edu/167998690/REPORT_ON_THE_HISTORY_AND_APPLICATION_OF_PAPUA_NEW_GUINEA_LAW_TO_THE_ISSUE_OF_CUSTOMARY_LAND_OWNERSHIP Vailala