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Recent Posts
- Annual General Meeting of The Australian Association for the Advancement of Pacific Studies (AAAPS), 10 May 2013
- Dr. Hsiao-chun Hung returns to the Mariana Islands
- Vote buying prevalent in Indonesia and the Pacific
- The end of the Pacific? Sea-level change and Pacific Island livelihoods
- Politics, development and security in Oceania
- Kago, Kastom and Kalja: The Study of Indigenous Movements in Melanesia Today (Cahiers du Credo) (Volume 2)
- In conversation with Sir Mekere Morauta
- Engendering objects: Dynamics of Barkcloth and Gender among the Maisin of Papua New Guinea by
- Another Port Moresby community bulldozed
- Reflections on the PNG Budget Forum: Can devolved funding be effectively utilised
- European Investment Bank backs remote aviation investment in the South Pacific
- Lifting skills in the Pacific: using infrastructure procurement for skills transfer
- Fiji constitutional referendum? Unlikely
- CDI Policy Paper: Comparing Across Regions: Parties and Political Systems in Indonesia and the Pacific Islands
- SSGM’s ‘State of the Pacific’ Conference (25-26 June 2013)
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Pacific news
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The news items listed below are from websites that have RSS feeds dedicated to Pacific issues.
ABC Pacific Beat Podcasts
Category Archives: (aggregator)
In conversation with Sir Mekere Morauta
Tess Newton Cain meet up with Sir Mekere Morauta whilst he was in Port Vila recently. You can listen to the podcast of their conversation here and read the full transcript here.
"The main topic of conversation was the ongoing review of the Pacific Plan – Sir Mekere is the eminent person leading the review team. The team was in Vanuatu to undertake consultations with government, civil society and academics as to how the Pacific Plan should be reformed..." [read more].
Posted in (aggregator), ANU PI only, Devpolicy, News
Tagged Pacific, Pacific Islands Forum, PNG
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Another Port Moresby community bulldozed
"On Tuesday March 12, 2013 a Papua New Guinea (PNG) daily newspaper, The National, carried an article titled ‘NCD settlement bulldozed’. According to the article, over 4000 people’s homes were affected. On that same day, I made one of my regular visits to the Oro/ATS (Air Transport Squadron) settlement in Port Moresby where I have been undertaking field work for the past three months...."
Reflections on the PNG Budget Forum: Can devolved funding be effectively utilised
"One of the major talking points of the recent PNG Budget Forum was the huge increase in devolved funding to provinces, districts and local level governments. Both Finance and Treasury Ministers speaking at the forum seemed cautiously optimistic and nervous in justifying these funding allocations. On paper, it seems like a large increase to subnational levels of government, up from 5% of the budget in 2012 to 15% in 2013. However, ... They are effectively allocating much more funding to their own committees in a large expansion of the District Services Improvement Program (DSIP)..." [read more].
European Investment Bank backs remote aviation investment in the South Pacific
"The European Investment Bank has agreed to help examine safety improvements, upgrading of terminal facilities and more efficient power use at airports in the Cook Islands and Samoa. The USD 1.1m technical assistance programme (EUR 850,000) will be used to improve preparation of key investment expected to improve tourism, regional integration and economic development..." [read more].
Lifting skills in the Pacific: using infrastructure procurement for skills transfer
"If it was good enough for the London Olympics in 2012, why not use large infrastructure projects in the Pacific region to do more than merely build a new facility? Why not also aim, as the UK’s Olympic Delivery Authority did, to get people into jobs, develop their skills and help them gain top-rate qualifications?" [read more].
PNG slowdown pushing regional growth lower in the Pacific
"In the latest issue of the Pacific Economic Monitor, released yesterday (March 26), the ADB forecasts that the average rate of growth in its 14 developing member countries in the Pacific region will fall to 5.2%, as earlier gains from major foreign investments and public infrastructure projects fade. The performance of the region’s larger natural resource exporting economies (Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Timor-Leste) continues to drive the economic outlook, with these two economies comprising about two-thirds of the weight in the regional growth average..." [read more].
Posted in (aggregator), ANU PI only, Devpolicy, News
Tagged Fiji, Kiribati, Melanesia, Micronesia, Nauru, Pacific, Palau, PNG, Polynesia, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Vanuatu
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Pacific Buzz (March 27): MSG’s growing strength | Polynesian pain | PNG moves on Ok Tedi | Fiji army consolidates power
A fortnightly roundup of policy news in the Pacific by the Pacific Institute of Public Policy and the Development Policy Centre.
Posted in (aggregator), ANU PI only, Devpolicy, News
Tagged Fiji, Pacific, PNG, Vanuatu
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What do big miners contribute to Papua New Guinea’s development?
"...To answer the question, “how would developing countries know what the private sector is contributing to their development?”, I identified those indicators already used in international corporate sustainability and responsibility frameworks that are most relevant to development and proposed using them for a case study of Papua New Guinea. I expected to source most data from company reports, direct contact with businesses, membership surveys by business organisations ... and company websites. In the event, this proved unrealistic – most PNG businesses are not registered public companies so they have no obligation to publish details of their development contributions ..." [read more]
Sexual violence in Lae: impunity and resistance
"Lae, on PNG’s northern coast, is the country’s second city and industrial hub. It is also the capital of PNG’s largest province, Morobe. Its main government hospital, the Angau Hospital, is home to PNG’s most successful Family Support Centre (FSC), which provides medical support and psychosocial care to survivors of family and sexual violence. Supported by Medecins san Frontieres (MSF) since 2008, in the last five years the FSC has provided care to over 11,500 patients..." [read more]
Urban primary schools in Papua New Guinea: A decade of (rusty) swings and roundabouts
"In past Development Policy Centre blog posts about the Promoting Effective Public Expenditure (PEPE) survey, Colin Wiltshire (here) and Andrew Anton Mako (here) have described the enormous challenges facing rural, particularly remote, schools in Papua New Guinea. This post focuses on the metropolis: it explores positive and negative changes that have occurred in three urban schools in PNG over the past decade..." [read more].
Pacific Buzz (March 13): PNG elections criticised | Fiji Wrap | Border dispute | Mining veto | More
A fortnightly roundup of policy news in the Pacific by the Pacific Institute of Public Policy and the Development Policy Centre.
Posted in (aggregator), ANU PI only, Devpolicy, News
Tagged Fiji, Pacific, PNG, Solomon Islands
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Fiji police brutality: World is watching
"Graphic video footage of police brutality in Fiji which emerged last week is attracting international condemnation. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has condemned the incident and the New Zealand parliament is due to vote this week on a motion to condemn the brutality." Read more in this latest post to Lowy's Interpreter.
Challenges and opportunities at the frontline of service delivery in PNG: Enga province
In his latest post, Andrew Anton Mako reports on his experiences of conducting a major survey into public service delivery in PNG's Enga province as part of the Promoting Effective Public Expenditure (PEPE) project between the National Research Institute (NRI) of PNG and the ANU’s Development Policy Centre [read more].
Key observations on the state of New Zealand’s aid strategy
The New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has released their 'International Development Group [IDG] Strategic Plan 2012-2015 – Development that Delivers', which complements and expands on the government’s ‘International Development Policy Statement [pdf]‘. The strategy sets out the vision, mission, areas of focus and results for the government aid program, which IDG administers. There’s a lot to unpack..." [read more].
Posted in (aggregator), ANU PI only, Devpolicy, News
Tagged New Zealand, Pacific Islands
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Pacific Buzz (Feb. 27): ‘Dili consensus’ | PNG sorcery and violence | Pacific Plan attacked | More
A fortnightly roundup of policy news in the Pacific by the Pacific Institute of Public Policy and the Development Policy Centre.
Posted in (aggregator), ANU PI only, Devpolicy, News
Tagged Fiji, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Vanuatu
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A fair indictment of Australia’s Pacific policy?
In his latest post to Lowy's Interpreter, Professor Wadan Narsey offers his thoughts on Jonathan Schultz's recently completed PhD thesis, Overseeing and Overlooking: Australian Engagement with the Pacific Islands 1988-2007 (a full-text version is now available online through the University of Melbourne's Digital Repository).
Fostering skilled migration and the APTC
Stephen Howes (Director, Development Policy Centre) recently interviewed Michael Clemens, who leads the Migration and Development Initiative at the Center for Global Development (CGD). You may review a podcast or video of this presentation (with accompanying slides), or read an edited transcript of this interview in two parts, the first on the US Seasonal Worker Program, the second on Skilled Migration and the Australian Pacific Technical College (APTC).
Posted in (aggregator), ANU PI only, Devpolicy, News
Tagged Australia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, PNG, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu
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PNG plans military build-up, but why?
"Papua New Guinea's Defence Minister Dr Fabian Pok has announced that PNG plans to build up its military capacity from around 2000 personnel to 10,000." Read more in this short post by Donald Gumbis, Lecturer in political science at the University of Goroka and intern at the Lowy Institute.
Pacific Buzz (Feb. 13): Solomon Is recover | PNG seeks stability | Funding cuts | More
A fortnightly roundup of policy news in the Pacific by the Pacific Institute of Public Policy and the Development Policy Centre.
Posted in (aggregator), ANU PI only, Devpolicy, News
Tagged Pacific, PNG, Solomon Islands, Tonga
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How Australia’s aid program is helping to pay asylum-seeker bill
"Six weeks after Foreign Minister Bob Carr announced that $375 million would be reallocated within the Australian aid program to finance asylum-seeker costs, AusAID has released (pdf, p. 102 onward) its updated 2012-13 budget estimates... Savings had to be harvested from all global, regional and country programs..." including deep cuts to the aid budget for the Solomon Islands, Timor Leste and Vanuatu [read more].
The economic costs of non-communicable diseases in the Pacific Islands
"There are three main messages contained in the recently released World Bank report ‘The economic costs of Non-Communicable Diseases in the Pacific Islands: a rapid stocktake of the situation in Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu‘ (available here [PDF]) (the report did not include analysis of Papua New Guinea)..." [read more].
Posted in (aggregator), ANU PI only, AusAID, News
Tagged Fiji, Melanesia, Micronesia, Pacific, Polynesia, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu
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Pacific Buzz (Jan. 30): Fiji elections | ‘Mystery yacht’ | Poverty stagnation in PNG | Cost of NCDs | More
A fortnightly roundup of policy news in the Pacific by the Pacific Institute of Public Policy and the Development Policy Centre.
Posted in (aggregator), ANU PI only, Devpolicy, News
Tagged Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu
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Fowl or Fish? A submission to the ACIAR Review
"The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) is a very important organisation. It is the only aid agency in Australia which has legislative backing, something that the much bigger AusAID lacks. More importantly... it is one of the largest funders of agricultural research for development in the world." Read a submission to the ACIAR Review by the Development Policy Centre at the ANU.
Fiji’s 2013 budget: on the road to growth?
"The Bainimarama Government delivered its sixth budget late last year. The budget significantly increases investment in infrastructure, especially roads, with new spending financed through government debt. Other announcements are more modest. This blog post concentrates on the implications of the budget for infrastructure and government debt levels..."
2013 Fiji budget: an analysis
"...There is no doubt that the last seven budgets since 2006, including the revised 2007 budget, have been prepared against an environment dominated by fear, mistrust and uncertainty of the future..." [read more].
Pacific catastrophe risk insurance pilot program (World Bank)
The Pacific Catastrophe Risk Insurance Project pilot is now in the pipeline [read more].
Governance in PNG: what can donors do?
"For what seems like decades, evidence-based policy has been a mantra. Practitioners are aware of this, just as enlightened researchers are aware of the pressures on aid agency staff. But even with the best will in the world, turning evidence into practice can be challenging... In my (new) job with AusAID, I reflected on the implications of these findings for our program in Papua New Guinea (PNG)..." [read more].
Aid Buzz (Jan 23): Aid and asylum seekers | Tick for seasonal worker program, at last | Commonwealth funding, but performance? | Australia’s ADB VP | More
Devpolicy's usual round-up of Australian aid and development news - this issue covering December 2012 and January 2013 [This summary includes important information and analysis of the diversion of $375 million from the Australian aid budget to cover immediate costs associated with the government's asylum seeker policies].
Posted in (aggregator), ANU PI only, Devpolicy, News
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Small isn’t always beautiful: how smallness undermines public financial management in the Pacific and what to do about it
"Much attention is currently being paid to public financial management (PFM) in Pacific Island Countries (PICs).... but PFM reform is an arcane field, in which there is surprisingly little agreement as to appropriate models and the relative priorities of reform efforts. While PICs are often considered to have “weak” PFM systems, there is little analysis of how their systems differ from those in other developing countries. Few explanations for weakness have been presented beyond vague appeals to 'culture' or 'governance'" [read more].
China and India in the Fiji equation
Professor Wadan Narsey, in his latest post to Lowy's Interpreter, states that the Fijian government's "...clear breach of its own decrees and roadmap to democracy, as described in my previous post, has unsettled traditional donors and must also create serious question marks over the continuing support by China and India."