Comments

Hi Bernard, your point is well made and could be summed up as: 'The end justifies the means'. Peter O'Neill has been determined to have a 'government of national unity' ever since as Opposition Leader he was prepared to join Michael Somare in much the same manner as now except with Somare as leader. The essence of difference between a democracy and a dictatorship has become somewhat blurred in many places. The real difference is how any government performs and then can be held accountable for their responsibilities. Has PNG been better off under this form of government? Has there been less corruption or more? Are many of the PNG political leaders now more accountable and do they do what the voters want? Do the voters have real choices and alternatives that are supposed to happen in a modern pluralistic society? If the answer is 'No!' then there's your answer. You only have to look at the traditional PNG village to see where many PNG's political leaders grew up and get their inspiration from. That's where they are comfortable and so want to recreate that harmony of purpose instead of sustained argument and confrontation that the Westminster system promotes. The real issue is one of design. The concept of a village council in PNG has worked well where everyone knows everyone and can see what is happening and can hold their Councillors individually responsible. They live among their own people and can easily accessed and challenged. This village paradigm demonstrably can't work when the people lose contact with their elected leaders and only see them every five years at election times or when they come back to hand out 'government' money or equipment. This form of government does however allow, when the opportunity presents itself, for personal gain at the expense of others. It also allows for the personal distribution of government funds and largesse as per the culture of the 'bikman'. You should judge a person (read political leader, system or government) on what they do, not what they say.

Thanks to Grant and Paul for their thoughts on my comment. Paul the utility of my recommendations because he says (no doubt correctly) that it is highly unlikely that PNG would prosecute its nationals for stealing Australian aid money. He thus suggested other ways Australia could sanction those who corrupt its aid projects. Australia should prosecute PNG nationals in its courts for stealing Australian aid monies. I would be surprised if Australian law does not permit such prosecutions, and if it does not, I would add a fifth recommendation to those in my initial comment: amend the Australian criminal code to allow it. Of the measures Paul suggests instead of prosecution, three should be added to mine -- deny those who corrupt an assistance project from: 1) buying Australian assets with the proceeds of corruption (which may already be the case under Australia’s Proceeds of Crime Act) and 2) visiting Australia (the U.S. has refused to issue visas to corrupt foreign officials since 2004), and 3) publicly humiliate them by widely publicizing their wrongdoing. Grant says that while my recommendations were “important first steps . . . . addressing corruption in an aid program doesn’t root out corruption per se.” It is critical to address the larger issues in PNG, he notes, because thanks to a growing economic boom fueled by the exploitation of its resources. Australian influence over PNG will diminish sharply in the coming years as revenues from resources outstrip aid dollars. Grant fears that the PNG is about to catch a serious case of the resource curse, enriching elites while leaving the rest of PNG’s citizens no better off than they are now. “What role,” he asks, “can Australia play to help ensure that this [resource] largess gets through the government system to benefit the grassroots, rather than being siphoned off by elites?” My response is twofold: One, don’t underestimate the spillover effects from rooting corruption out of aid programs. A vigorous anticorruption program will not only set a salutary example of what can be achieved but will require training and employing hundreds of accountants, auditors, and other corruption prevention and enforcement personnel. Their skills can later be put to use by the Ombudsman, Auditor General, and other PNG agencies to arrest abuses generated by the resource boom. Two, be realistic. The cure for the resource curse lies primarily with PNG citizens and the strength of their governing institutions. But Australia can certainly help. Aid dollars should be targeted on strengthening the critical institutions of governance, and if this money is actually spent for the purposes intended, rather than siphoned off into corrupt officials’ pockets (another reason anticorruption controls on aid dollars is critical), it can make an important contribution to institution building. PNG’s Ombudsman and Auditor General have made enormous strides in recent years thanks in no small part to Australian support and the justice sector SWAP is beginning to pay dividends. This reply to Grant and Paul appears in a longer form that explains the context on GAB: The Global Anticorruption Blog. I hope the cross-fertilization enriches the discussion on both blogs through.

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.