By Martyn Namorong*

When Keith Jackson asked PNG Attitude readers to put forward suggestions to Julie Bishop’s foreign affairs and trade adviser, Sam Riordan, I sent the following response:

Can someone tell what the purpose of AusAID is? (1) Neo-colonisation.  (2) Just filling gaps.  (3) Developing PNG.  The fact that AusAID has existed for decades in PNG does indicate to me that it is about the first two.

Yesterday, Daniel Doyle, a former implementer of AusAID’s projects, posted this response on PNG Attitude:

Response to Martyn's question. During my period of interaction with AusAID (1990 - 2003 as both an official of the recipient government and, subsequently, as an implementer of AusAID projects), the organisation's first two objectives were: 1) Australian national security; 2) Australian commercial interests.

It was only at number 3 that there was any reference to the beneficiaries. The objectives may be expressed more diplomatically now but 1 and 2 would still be the underlying intent.

My plea to Ausaid and other donors would be:

1. LISTEN and respond to the expressed needs of the targeted beneficiaries;

2. Do not impose your solutions based on your understanding of the problems;

3. Having agreed to support a course of action based on the expressed needs of the people, don't make the project design so overloaded with your ideology/political correctness that it becomes the primary focus of the project rather than what was requested by the people/government; harness all available local expertise to implement the project providing all necessary training/mentoring as required; and bear in mind that no aspect of national development can be accomplished through a 2/3 year project and that AusAID required changes create dysfunction events.

There are many other dos and don'ts that I could add but that will do for now.

The design and attempted implementation of the OBE curriculum is an example of catastrophic results that can result from ignoring the above.

(Before the advent of the Curriculum Reform Implementation Project no one in the Department of Education had his hand up for OBE. I know, I was there.)

Why did I put 'listen' in capital letters? Because an AusAID First Secretary said to me once, "Canberra gets an idea and dispatches me to float it with the relevant department Secretary. If I report back that the Secretary is not keen on the idea, I am told that I am not consulting properly and that I must go and consult with him again." In other words, talk him into it!

On another matter, why is the Australian government continuing to increase aid to PNG?

Surely with the huge increase in PNG's internal revenue in recent years there should be a commensurate decrease in aid.

Or do we want to continue to reinforce the awful dependency syndrome which may well be the aid donors' greatest achievement so far?

*You can follow Martyn on his blog the Namorong Report