Papua New Guinea consultants paid A$360,000 tax-free

AusAID consultants ‘paid more than Rudd’

AAP

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AUSTRALIAN taxpayers are shelling out millions of dollars for top level consultants in Papua New Guinea who earn up to $360,000 a year tax-free.

 

The figure is more than Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's base salary of almost $335,000.

Documents obtained by AAP show a single consultant hired in PNG through Coffey International Development receives $10,517 a month in tax-free allowances under AusAID's Advisory Support Facility.

And if the consultant brings their partner along they get $14,239 a month for accommodation, hardship, medical or utility fees.

That alone costs Australian taxpayers about $170,000 a year.

If the couple have children the allowance goes up approximately another $1000 a month for each child.

Consultants on short stays under 180 days receive $469 per day for the first 28 days then $400 a day for the rest.

If they work 180 days that earns them up to $74,000 in allowances.

An agreement between the Australian and PNG governments gives aid advisers tax-free salaries, putting a married senior consultant in PNG on approximately $30,000 a month, netting them $360,000 a year.

Junior single consultants gross approximately $20,000 a month, adding up to $240,000 a year in salary and allowances.

An AusAID spokesperson said there were around 250 long-term advisers and around 50 short-term advisers working under the PNG-Australia development program.

"The allowance rates for people contracted are reviewed regularly against actual costs in PNG and allowances can change,'' the spokesperson said.

"The allowances paid to advisers in PNG are comparable with rates for this kind of work around the world."

According to an AusAID website, ASF assists the PNG government to improve public sector management and administration.

It is estimated $200 million of AusAID's almost $400 million a year goes to agents, consultants and staff who provide 'technical assistance' to PNG.

Prime Minister Rudd flagged his concern at AusAID's reliance on consultants when speaking last month at a press conference with PNG counterpart Michael Somare.

''Too much money has been consumed by consultants and not enough money was actually delivered to essential assistance in teaching, in infrastructure, in health services on the ground, in the villages,'' Mr Rudd said.

 

 

AusAID's engaging private sector is not the way to go

By PAUL OATES

 

On another matter, what do you think of the following comment about Keith Jackson's blog article?

_____________________________________________

Meanwhile, the head of AusAID in PNG, Bill Costello, has said his organisation does not have all the answers to PNG's development challenges and that it is now seeking engagement with the private sector to canvass ways to move forward.

 

"AusAID will sit down with business leaders and development stakeholders to look at where we are and how we can improve our engagement. Achieving development outcomes through innovative partnerships with the private sector is perhaps an area in which we have only scratched the surface so far," Mr Costello said.

________________________________________________________

 

With due respect to Mr Costello and his team, who I'm sure are very well meaning, the answers to PNG's challenges do not lie in the Private Sector.

The private sector can only move development forward when a favourable climate and environment exits for it to do so. Until that favourable climate is re-established, AusAID may as well turn their collective funding hose either back into the wind or into the nearest 'consultant's' bank account.

PNG's framework of government has clearly ruptured and haemorrhaged. It is in real danger of falling apart altogether. In order to understand the essence of the problem one must first ask, "Why is this so?"

When the decision was made to move PNG as a single entity, towards Self Government and Independence, there was no detailed plan of how to do this and an agreed timeline to achieve this objective. Why? Well at the time, the major players in this decision were never really involved at the 'kunai roots' level and therefore had no idea of what was involved. I can say that because as a kiap in the field at the time, I was caught betwixt and between. On one hand, as government representatives in the field, kiaps were instructed to commence the so called Political Education process in the villages we visited and prepare the local people for this momentous event. Pressure from the United Nations on Australia to grant Independence as quickly as possible and from Canberra, in the early 1970's to make it happen, impacted directly on our rural operations. On the other hand, many of us knew that the local people in the villages did not want us to

disappear overnight and leave them to their own devices.

As public servants, no one ever asked us what we thought about the fast tracking of Independence or whether the people we spoke to at the village level thought it was a good idea. I seriously doubt if anyone above District level ever read the Patrol or Situation Reports we submitted or if they did, understood what was being reported. We were just expected to do what the government directed. Most people in the villages that I spoke to at the time thought the idea was crazy. They didn't want Australia to throw them out of

the peaceful development phase they had only just entered. Training local officers to takeover responsibility at all levels was only just starting to take effect when Independence was thrust upon PNG. A newly created PNG that had really not yet developed a true, national identity and a BROADLY based ability to say about what it wanted.

So what happened? Old and traditional practices were revived and lauded as the way to go. Traditional practice was clearly the only available alternative to those who the power of government had been thrust into their hands. What this precipitate change in direction did in practice was to bring to a halt, the process of peaceful development through government control. In reality, the change created a power vacuum that could only be

filled by the traditional custom of the 'village Bigman' and not by effective government systems on a national level.

This reversal of PNG government direction in the mid to late 1970's has now robbed the younger, educated generation of Papua New Guineans from being able to aspire to manage their own country effectively. How can an educated PNGian start to improve their own country when the framework of government responsibility and accountability is clearly flawed. They have been effectively disenfranchised by the elite of the PNG 1960's and 1970's, many of whom still hold onto power.

The only way to manage a country is to start at the top of a country's system of government and to then have that system improve in a 'trickle down' methodology. The trouble is, who can start this process? At the moment it seems, only those who are part of the problem.

Katim bol bilong ol (cut off their balls!)

By PAUL OATES

 

Ref the PIM article on your blog.

How well I remember a photo at the time of a sign held aloft at a public march to protest against the increasing crime rate and sexual crimes.

 It read "Katim bol bilong ol”.

 

A sense of deja vu

FROM Pacific Islands Monthly  of JULY 1985-   PIM OPINION was the monthly editorial/op-ed piece featured in this once-popular periodical.

 

PIM OPINION…………………………JULY 1985

 

GRIM MEASURES IN PNG

 

    Assailed on all sides by cries of rage and fear, Mr Michael Somare has acted firmly against Port Moresby's horrendous law and order problem by declaring a state of emergency and slapping a war-time-style curfew on the city, enforced by troops. His action followed yet another vicious pack rape in which a gang of "rascals" as PNG calls its murderous villains, cut through a security fence and attacked a woman and her daughter in their own home. More or less concurrently several other girls were pack-raped at knife-point in suburbs of the sprawling capital of 160,000 people.

    In addition to the 10 pm to 5 pm curfew the Government has given the police much wider powers of search and arrest and has put the national capital district under a special controller with almost the powers of a military governor.

 

    Violent crime " presents a real threat to the survival of our young country," Mr Somare said in parliament as he announced his measures. " Public order has deteriorated to the point where the lives and safety of all law-abiding citizens is at risk."

 

    "The threat these criminals represent has spread rapidly," he said. "The police can no longer control it using their normal powers. Robbery, murder and rape have become almost commonplace events. The crime wave.....attacks the security of all."

 

    Earlier Mr. Somare startled the world by saying he would seek to introduce castration and public floggings and hangings for violent rapists and murderers. Even as he spoke, nobody believed he was likely to push such measures through, although in various demonstrations large numbers of people of all races have demanded such punishments. The last hanging in PNG occurred in 1958, and it was not public. Capital punishment was struck off the books in 1971.

Wolfram Alpha, Google and the future of Internet search engines

Wolfram Alpha founder Stephen Wolfram

Wolfram Alpha page

A brand-new “search engine” called Wolfram Alpha, although it doesn’t call itself a “search engine”, is taking the world – Papua New Guinea included - by storm since its launch last Friday. Just a few days into its launch and Wolfram Alpha, http://www59.wolframalpha.com/, has already been compared to Google and Wikepedia, or some hybrid of the two.
I first heard of the launch of Wolfram Alpha on Channel Nine’s Today Show on EMTV a couple of days ago, while downing a cup of coffee before catching a PMV (bus) to work in Port Moresby, and was immediately hooked
I checked it out on the Internet and found out that, in short, the engine takes a term, like our capital city of "Port Moresby" or my birth date of “August 9, 1967", and instantly produces a scientific report with details (like up-to-date city population, map, current local time, temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and approximate elevation culled from its extensive internal knowledge base.
I also found out that August 9, 1967, was a Wednesday; that I am now 41 years, nine months and 13 days old; that my birth day was the 221st day of 1967; I share the same birth day as American footballer Deion Sanders; and that I was born at the phase of a waxing crescent moon.
In other words, Wolfram Alpha’s not a search engine, which produces articles as results.
It's a knowledge engine that produces answers with explicit information.
It's still a work in progress, but the unveiling is enough to make some question whether it will change the way we search the Internet.But Wolfram Alpha really does provide answers.
No URLs come back in the results, only a page of often dizzyingly detailed and up-to-date information, like a research report culled by mad scientists with complete access to a universal library.
“Wolfram Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone,” the engine says on its home page.
“We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything.
“Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematisations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.
“Wolfram Alpha aims to bring expert-level knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people—spanning all professions and education levels.
“Our goal is to accept completely free-form input, and to serve as a knowledge engine that generates powerful results and presents them with maximum clarity.
“Wolfram Alpha is an ambitious, long-term intellectual endeavor that we intend will deliver increasing capabilities over the years and decades to come.
“With a world-class team and participation from top outside experts in countless fields, our goal is to create something that will stand as a major milestone of 21st century intellectual achievement.”
What has now made Wolfram Alpha possible today is a somewhat unique set of circumstances—and the singular vision of Stephen Wolfram.
Stephen Wolfram is a distinguished scientist, inventor, author, and business leader.
Born August 29, 1959 in London, Wolfram is a British physicist, mathematician, author and businessman, known for his work in theoretical particle physics, cosmology, cellular automata, complexity theory, and computer algebra
He is the creator of Mathematica, the author of A New Kind of Science (NKS), the creator of Wolfram Alpha, and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research.
His career has been characterised by a sequence of original and significant achievements.
“For the first time in history, we have computers that are powerful enough to support the capabilities of Wolfram Alpha, and we have the web as a broad-based means of delivery,” the home page continues.
“But this technology alone was not enough to make Wolfram Alpha possible.
“What was needed were also two developments that have been driven by Stephen Wolfram over the course of nearly 30 years.
“The first was Mathematica—the system in which all of Wolfram Alpha is implemented.
“Mathematica has three crucial roles in Wolfram Alpha.
“First, its very general symbolic language provides the framework in which all the diverse knowledge of Wolfram Alpha is represented, and all its capabilities are implemented.
“Second, Mathematica's vast web of built-in algorithms provides the computational foundation that makes it even conceivably practical to implement the methods and models of so many fields. “And finally, the strength of Mathematica as a software engineering and deployment platform makes it possible to take the technical achievements of Wolfram Alpha and deliver them broadly and robustly.
“Beyond Mathematica, another key to Wolfram Alpha was NKS.
“Many specific ideas from NKS—particularly related to algorithms discovered by exploring the computational universe—are used in the implementation of Wolfram Alpha.
“But still more important is that the very paradigm of NKS was crucial in imagining that Wolfram Alpha might be possible.
“Wolfram Alpha represents a substantial technical and intellectual achievement.
“But to build it required not just unique technology and ideas, but also the experience of 20 years of long-term R&D and ongoing development of robust technology at Wolfram Research.
“Wolfram Alpha’s world-class team draws from many fields and disciplines, and has unique access to experts across the globe.
“But what ultimately made Wolfram Alpha possible was a singular commitment to the goal of making all the world's systematic knowledge computable.”

Signs

'Tis little things that can hurt a lot

A true story.

I’m just a simple, working-class Papua New Guinean, struggling to make ends meet as well as get over the death of my wife last year.

I live with my four young children in a one-bedroom unit at Gerehu, a suburb of Port Moresby.

We have this tiny little backyard stretch which we use to grow vegetables.

Some weeks ago, I bought cucumber and tomato seeds, which I sowed.

It became a daily ritual for my four young children to get up early in the morning and water and weed their vegetable patch.

The cucumbers grew up and started flowering, and every day, the little ones would tell me of how much they were looking forward to eating their cucumbers.

Last Friday, after work, I went home and wondered why they were looking so sad and sullen.

“Dad,” they chorused, “those big boys next door have pulled out our cucumbers.”

It broke my heart!

‘Tis little things like this that can hurt a lot.