Comments

Thanks Amanda, Post-Courier owes a public apology to PNG for sensationalizing unsubstantiated materials by Google Trends to brand us 'porn searchers'. The least they could do is run your article (with your/ANU's permission) in the paper. Cheers!

Ian -- I suggest looking at the comments on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-what-are-the-facts-on-australias-foreign-aid-spending-71146" rel="nofollow">related article</a> published on The Conversation, and the responses to some of those from myself and others from the Development Policy Centre. They touch on both the effectiveness-over-time question (challenging, as you say) and your question about what was and is counted as part of Australia's aid effort.

It would be interesting (and challenging) to also reflect on the legitimacy and effectiveness with the spending over time too. Do you have comments on what is/was counted as Aid and how that has changed over time?

Gai -- Yes, the ABS Year Books were based on data from across government. Colombo Plan expenditure was included in the reported aid figures. For example, in 1969-70 the total amount of aid reported was $166 million, which included about $23 million in Colombo Plan expenditure (covering 1,635 people in training, including 949 new awards), $17 million in bilateral aid for countries other than PNG, $11 million in multilateral contributions and $115 million in budget support and other costs associated with PNG. Expenditure on the 'Commonwealth Co-operation in Education' program (only $885,000) was reported as being administered by the Department of Education and Science, budget support for PNG ($96 million) by the Department of External Territories, and contributions to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank ($6.5 million) by the Treasury. The implication is that all other assistance was administered by the Department of Foreign Affairs, though this is not stated.

Thank you Amanda for the nice analysis of the article and the issue discussed. I posted on Facebook branding the publication as media stunt to sell the paper without in-depth consideration to facts and knowledge on the subject by the journalist responsible and the editor. Such reporting continues to trashed the standard of Journalism in Papua New Guinea and the media fraternity and its role in development

Hi Amanda, I totally agree with your article, well researched and presented. Post Courier article was misleading, inaccurate and lacks proper researched skills. Thank you very much for making it clear in your Article.

A question - is the expenditure on the original Colombo Plan, and subsequent iterations of that program over the earlier years of your time-span, included in the calculations of Australian Aid data? Or was it, in the earlier days, part of the Education Department budget on higher education? I don't have access data on it, but my recall from APS in the 70s-80s is that it was the responsibility of the Department of Education, and if so, would not have been in the line budget of the aid program. I am not sure when it was moved into the line budget of AIDAB/AusAID. However my recall may be faulty, so I'm wondering if that detail can be made explicit? I have no idea if the level of expenditure in the earlier years would be sufficient to change the proportion by much - but the proportion of the ADS/Australia Awards programs in the aid budget in recent times is fairly high, and if the expenditure level of earlier, roughly equivalent, programs is not included in these proportional calculations, might that create a distorting effect on the estimation of relative decline?

thank you .you helped me a lot understand this the other way

Thanks Amanda.... It was a clearcut poor journalism! And how it made it past the editor was anyone's guess! Tehy need re-educating or report to general secriterial duties!

Thank you Rohan for this beautiful piece. I too have had many wonderful times in PNG and am sometimes saddened by the stereotypes. Nearly every single time I meet an Australian and they learn that I live in PNG, they ask 'oh, but isn't it dangerous?' or something along those lines. It's a difficult question to answer. Yes, I've had challenges in PNG, but I've also had many joyous, positive experiences. For instance, three of my local friends turned up unexpectedly at my flat recently with fresh tuna, green vegetables and root vegetables and cooked for me! It's moments and memories like these that are so precious. I was involved some years back in research which looked at the Australian broadcast media (TV, radio and online) to assess the media coverage of PNG. In short, we found that the media coverage was minimal. In the time period we surveyed, it wasn't particularly bad, but it was sparse. The paper is available <a href="http://eprints.qut.edu.au/17566/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>. This research was later combined with research done by a talented, young PNG researcher, in which she did a content analysis of Australian newspapers, and published as a book chapter (see <a href="http://eprints.qut.edu.au/49032/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>). A more recent resource that is very useful for looking at the relationship between Australia and PNG is Sean Dorney's book The Embarrassed Colonialist. I found it to be a very enjoyable, interesting read. I believe it's currently available in book stores. Information about the book is <a href="https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/embarrassed-colonialist" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>. Thanks again Rohan, Amanda. 🙂

Thanks Amanda for these insights, although I know forthright that the PC article lacks substantiation, the great majority of pnguinean who don't do extra research panicked too much. We could also say poor journalism skills & lack of investigative skills. The editor could be equally blamed as the primary author.

I totally agree with the findings and the conclusion made saying that post courier is wrong and that is very true. The other fact that needs consideration is, if NICTA is saying that PNG has the lowest internet penetration or access rate in the pacific (even lower than some of the smaller pacific island countries), how comes PNG is rank highly for internet PON searches? As has been rightly alluded to by Amanda, our population is about 7.8 million and 70 - 80 percent of these people live in rural or very isolated arrears meaning that most of them don't have access to internet or if they do have access through mobile phones, many are illiterate on internet. When comparing our population to many nations around the world, our population is nothing and how comes we can be accused of such when all other information available on the internet and points discussed above go against the allegation made? I totally don't agree with the post courier report and it's good that you (Amanda) have raised some valid points as well..