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The Indonesian government enacted Act 6 of 2014 to decentralise village governance, aiming to improve service delivery at the local level. Under President Jokowi’s leadership, village governments received support through the Village Fund, benefiting 81,616 villages across 38 provinces. The fund has been crucial in enhancing government administration, developing infrastructure and empowering communities. From 2015 […]
The first blog in this two-part series made two main points: that the total number of Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme workers on farms is falling, and that the number of PALM workers applying for asylum is now in the hundreds per month. The blog argued that these points may be related. It is […]
Data just released from the Australian Department of Employment and Workplace Relations shows a sharp decline in Pacific workers engaged in short-term (seasonal) agricultural work, with the total falling from 18,905 in July 2023 to 14,355 a year later in July 2024, a decline of 24% in a single year. Employers are now able to […]
This blog is an edited version of the author’s Talbot Oration, delivered at the Australian Museum on 5 June 2024. I’m honoured and grateful to be given this invitation to tell my story, our story and our journey towards achieving the future we want for ourselves and for our children. Before I start at the […]
The PNG Independent Consumer and Competition Commission (ICCC) proposed an amendment to the Prices Regulation Act in August that would allow it to “ensure the application of unilateral price controls under special circumstances (based on grounds of social equity)”. While sounding relatively benign, this amendment would in fact allow the ICCC to implement price ceilings […]
Kiribati faces one of the highest child mortality rates in the region, with under-5 mortality rates (U5MR) remaining stubbornly high for more than a decade. According to UNICEF’s 2016 State of the World’s Children report, Kiribati recorded 56 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2015, a figure alarmingly higher than both regional and global averages. […]
Australian aid As conflict in the Middle East widens and the toll on civilians worsens, the Australian Council For International Development’s members have launched a consolidated appeal to help address the humanitarian situation in Lebanon. Australia has allocated $12 million to the humanitarian response in Lebanon since September 2024 and $82.5 million to the Gaza […]
The big-ticket item at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) being held in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November this year will be the development of a new climate finance goal for funding to developing countries — the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG). However, weeks out from COP29, NCQG negotiations are in a […]
The previous blog looked at some studies of the relationship between China’s aid and its influence that posit a mediating role for domestic political institutions. Early empirical research suggests that this kind of analytic lens is relevant to the Pacific. This is a region that comprises countries with largely open — albeit in some cases […]
As part of its tenth anniversary, we collaborated with Femili PNG to produce a report using the client data the organisation has collected since its inception in 2014. Survivors of family and sexual violence who turn to Femili PNG are categorized into four groups based on the abuse they have endured: intimate-partner violence (IPV), non-intimate-partner […]