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Currently grappling with the complicated task of state and nation building, Papua New Guinea represents what, at times, seems like an insurmountable obstacle to development theory. Despite the vast resource pool at the disposal of the state, one of which is a substantial volume of foreign ODA, with particularly high input from Australia, the nation has failed to prosper. The symptoms of PNG's poor development record are manifest in a profusion of measures. The nation exhibits a number of poor socio-economic indicators, such as insufficient economic growth relative to the pace of population growth, growing law and order problems, endemic corruption, poor service delivery, high poverty rates, low education levels and short life expectancy. The causes are deep-seated, complex and overlapping. They are consequently extremely difficult to penetrate and address. Incompetent governance is widely seen as lying at their core. The intricate torrent of issues underlying ineffectual governance in PNG, however, is embedded in a cycle that infiltrates every level of the society. The extraordinarily linguistically, geographically and culturally diverse population lacks a sense of nationhood. Traditional clan based social obligations precede loyalty to the state. A weak government produces an abysmal level of service delivery, which provides the population with very few of the services on which to base a recognition of the state as a source of welfare and social regulation. The people's commitment to the state is therefore weak; further eroding the government's capacity; resulting in persistently poor service delivery; and consequently, a further reduction of the standing of the Government in the eyes of the population. Finding a link in the chain of this cycle from which to catalyse an improvement of PNG's development trajectory has proven extremely difficult. Enhancing service delivery depends upon improving the capacity of the Government. To make the Government more powerful, the population needs to identify more with the state as a resource provider, which will increase their demand for it to be more effective and accountable. To generate such demand, requires less institutional alteration than a fundamental sea change in the patterns of socio-political behaviour at play in PNG The missing ingredient in achieving such reform has not been a lack of effort. Confronting impediments to development has been an abiding imperative on the part of PNG and various interested stakeholders since PNG attained independence in 1975. Geographic proximity and the corresponding trans-national strategic and security interests it encourages, as well as economic, historical, humanitarian and personal links, have inspired an enduring interest in the well-being of PNG as a high priority Australian foreign policy challenge. Australia is the chief contributor to the base of Official Development Aid (ODA) supporting PNG, and has invested considerable time, capital, and technical support into helping the country develop. To date, Australia has contributed nearly $16 billion dollars to assist PNG's socio-economic progress. This significant commitment, coupled with foreign aid from other sources, indicates that PNG has not suffered from a dearth of financial assistance or expertise. Yet, PNG's development aspirations have lingered out of reach. Aid has not fostered the outcomes it was intended to produce. It has been 'ineffective' in the eyes of many, sparking widespread debate about its potential to influence positive change. On review, ODA can be seen to have contributed to keeping PNG's collapsing systems functional, yet it has not generated substantial improvements in shifting the underlying impediments which keep the cycle of poor development in motion. The root causes of instability and poor progress in PNG persist undeterred. The fundamental point detracting from the capacity of ODA in PNG is that it finds it difficult to permeate the deeper levels of the problems constraining development therein. The lack of incentive for institutional reform within PNG is a primary consideration in addressing this issue. Furthermore, aid has produced some destructive by-products in PNG. The various deductions that have been drawn regarding what this entails about the effectiveness of aid and the future of Australia's commitment to PNG are in stark contrast. On one hand, critics point to the persistently poor and only incrementally, if at all, improving socio-economic indicators PNG exhibits. Based on a strictly economic rationalist perspective, these commentators conclude that 'aid has failed' in PNG. Opponents to this viewpoint acknowledge that the aid program has been imperfect, yet contend that it has produced positive impacts when one assesses poverty alleviation from a more comprehensive matrix. Furthermore, the value of preventing considerable decline in PNG should not be discounted. Supporters of the notion that 'aid has failed', suggest that aid should be withdrawn to enhance PNG's development. Supporters of the second perspective, with whom this report concurs, conclude that aid should be continued, with improvements to enhance its effectiveness.

The Australian government's White Paper on aid provides a blue print for the Australian aid program for the next decade. While it ostensibly has a focus on poverty, it still sees economic growth and effective government as the path to poverty reduction. This article analyses and highlights the issues associated with this approach to poverty. These are: growing inequality and vulnerability, the rural-urban divide in poverty outcomes, and increasing social exclusion leading to increasing social and political insecurity. The article then examines the alternative policies adopted by the British aid agency, DFID, and concludes with some suggestions on how the practice of the Australian aid program can better match the goal of poverty reduction.

The Australian government's White Paper on aid provides a blue print for the Australian aid program for the next decade. While it ostensibly has a focus on poverty, it still sees economic growth and effective government as the path to poverty reduction. This article analyses and highlights the issues associated with this approach to poverty. These are: growing inequality and vulnerability, the rural-urban divide in poverty outcomes, and increasing social exclusion leading to increasing social and political insecurity. The article then examines the alternative policies adopted by the British aid agency, DFID, and concludes with some suggestions on how the practice of the Australian aid program can better match the goal of poverty reduction.

Aid transparency is internationally recognised as an important tool that improves the effectiveness of aid activities in achieving economic or human development outcomes. The Australian government formally acknowledged the importance of aid transparency in 2011 with the launch and implementation of the Transparency Charter. Since then, the Australian aid program has made a number of improvements in transparency including a substantial increase in the quality and availability of aid information on the AusAID website and achieving a ranking of 'moderately' transparent on international transparency indices. The aid program should further improve transparency by releasing annual targets for improving transparency and by publishing translated summaries of aid activities in local media outlets. To analyse transparency in more detail, this paper proposes two national transparency indices: the availability of project documentation index and a preliminary project information index. The indices are based on project level data sourced from the AusAID website and provide a quantitative measure of the culture of transparency within the Australian aid program. The findings demonstrate mixed progress towards Australia's transparency commitments. The Australian aid program is diligent in releasing basic information on aid activities (e.g., project title, project description, dates) and in publishing direction setting documents that detail the strategic focus of aid activities for a particular country. Project evaluation documents were not readily available and the majority of the published evaluations were released in 2011. Overall, countries with larger and more well-resourced aid programs were slightly more transparent than countries with smaller aid programs, however the Solomon Islands present one example of an exception to this trend. Overall, the haphazard release of project documentation across aid recipient countries suggests that transparency practices have not been mainstreamed across country desks; rather a core unit in AusAID is responsible for this agenda. Greater effort should be made to institutionalise the importance of transparency throughout the entire organisation, as both Australian and developing country citizens stand to benefit from a more transparent and effective aid program.

Commenting on the report of the Committee to Review Australia's Overseas Aid Program, (1984), Sir Gordon Jackson, chairman; 4 articles. Partial contents: Australia's foreign aid, by R. Gordan Jackson; The Jackson report: a critical review, by W. R. Stent.