Alan B,
I have long & often stated here that foreign aid should be in goods & materials, not money ! Goods & materials produced here would stimulate our own economy to no end !
Australia should build up a supply of portable homes, water makers, generators (small nuclear plants), tools, medical facilities in container form etc etc for immediate dispatch to countries that experience natural disasters.
Giving just money & too much at that has to stop immediately !

Indy. We do agree on some things don't we.
Cheers, Alan B.

We are looking at a pig's breakfast in terms of what we can actually do to support PNG. We have sent billions and billions in aid that has been squandered wasted and to a large extent, I believe, lined the pockets of corrupt officials.

Officials that seem to believe they can play us off against the Chinese to increase our already considerable aid.

As Mr. Wall has indicated, their primary need is energy supply and there seems to be plans to build a massive hydro project. But with someone else's money.

If it's Chinese money, then it'll come with strings and the pillaging of PNG's natural resources and the migration of significant numbers of Chinese nationals. And should occur we should vacate the field and turn off the foreign aid tap indefinitely.

Then use that money to beef up our own defense systems and power supply. Power supply being critical in any viable self-defense paradigm! But in any and all military bases and over the horizon radar etc. And that cannot be based on diesel or gas generators that rely on fully imported fuel.

Or locally sourced fuel that is priced at international prices. Or over reliant on (dog's breakfast) battery backed intermittent renewables and not yet built new transmission lines that must also include (hugely resisted) private property resumption.

As resolute to a fault, tin-eared, pollies refuse to consider reliable 24/7 dispatchable cheap clan, safe, nuclear power! On nothing more than ideological grounds supported by massive misinformation! TBC.
Alan B.

Elbow and co. promised cheaper power prices! How? With as in the past with labor, massive taxpayer funded subsidies? And in the face of quite massive new transmission line builds.

Get set for a massive blame shift campaign that solves nothing nor lowers cost of living increases that has to happen given the energy component in all production/service delivery!

Suggest nuclear and they babble on about how dangerous dirty and unsafe and the outrageous build costs etc., etc. None of which will lower energy cost by so much as single cent! Nor make foreign aid more attractive to those paying the bill!

Oh, for a new Ben Chiefly and a modicum of future vision and ticker. Nuclear energy is not a dirty word and the only real hope of lower energy prices. What will it take some polly waffling pollies grandma dying of heat stroke due the upcoming prohibitive costs of air conditioning!?

Our post war recovery was the result of quite massive energy projects and ultra-reliable dispatchable energy. And undertaken despite the aftereffects of the Great Depression and horrendous war debt!

If it'd been elbow and co., they would have whimped out and blame shifted all over the joint, spent a few pennies on the gullible, if only to bolster reelection prospects and all that matters to this mob of small target pollies!
Alan B.

Nuclear is only dangerous when used in weapons & when in much too big power plants where in case of a mishap it becomes uncontrollable !
As long as stupid & incompetent people are kept away from anything nuclear, societies & the environment will go so well for many generations to come that the chance exist that stupidity may become history !

Indy. Only right if you talk about conventional nuclear and dumbass nincompoops, given charge over something the know SFA about. Which, given your patently ignorant remarks, probably includes you.

If you do not understand that that neither we nor the world have a future based on hydrocarbons, then you are dumber than you look!

And if you don't understand we don't have an economy based on battery/pumped hydro backups then, you are even dumber!

Simply put, there's no other option for either a robust economy and manufacturing sector on anything currently available that also more than addresses climate change and our survival as a species and with tanking the economy, but the very opposite!

MSR thorium delivers everything fusion promised but has never ever delivered and probably never ever will! Moreover, this technology can be re-tasked with burn nuclear waste other folk pay us annual millions to take off their hands.

Where in MSR it is mostly (90%+) unspent fuel! To produce all but free industrial power for centuries and a huge, turbocharged boost to our debt laden economy! And with that make it possible to do foreign aid out of income rather than as now, increased borrowings!

Suggest you stick with foreign aid paradigms, where you do make perfect sense!
Alan B.