Stephen Howes

Australia’s Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme: Why Has Take-Up Been So Low?

The Australian Government introduced the Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme (PSWPS) in 2008 to allow Pacific Islanders to fill seasonal labour shortages in the horticulture industry, and announced in December 2011 that the scheme would be made permanent. Take-up of the scheme is increasing but has been very low. As of the end of March 2012, only 1,100 PSWPS workers have arrived since the scheme’s commencement. This study tries to explain why the PSWPS has not employed more Pacific workers. It distinguishes between different hypotheses that could explain the poor outcome, and uses quantitative and qualitative analysis to test each hypothesis, including a survey of growers. The study finds a number of reasons for the low take-up. Growers are largely satisfied with their current labour supply, in terms of both quantity and quality: 93 percent of growers interviewed said they had no trouble finding labour, and 81 percent were satisfied with the quality of their existing labour force. The scheme is not well known: half the growers surveyed had simply not heard of the scheme, and most of those who had lacked information about it. The scheme also suffers from perceptions of high levels of risk and costs, including excessive red tape. Despite its slow start, PSWPS might still succeed on the basis of the productivity gains it has already shown it can deliver. But this is by no means assured: even growers who are unhappy with their current labour supply arrangements are reluctant to try the PSWPS. For the scheme to expand, the Australian Government will need to promote the scheme much more vigorously, and reduce the scheme’s financial and compliance costs. The Government also needs to attend to illegal horticultural labour practices, and tackle the booming working holiday visa category. Most growers now rely mainly on backpackers, and their numbers have increased rapidly in recent years: we estimate the number of backpackers working on farms increased from 13,000 in 2001-02 to 37,000 in 2007-08. In particular, the special preference which horticulture receives under the working holiday visa category should be removed. The policy challenges involved in making the PSWPS work should not be underestimated. Other avenues should also be explored for promoting Pacific migration, including adoption of New Zealand’s quota-based Pacific permanent migration schemes.

An overview of aid effectiveness, determinants and strategies

This paper provides an overview of issues relating to aid effectiveness. It argues that it is impossible to give a definitive answer to the question of whether aid is effective, and that it is more useful to ask what can be done to make aid more effective. The paper then groups the various determinants of aid effectiveness, as well as strategies to improve effectiveness, under three headings: the performance of the recipient (developing) country government; the performance of the aid agency of the donor (developed) country; and the interaction between the two. This provides, it is argued, a useful framework within which to understand different and competing arguments about how to improve aid effectiveness.

Asia’s Wicked Environmental Problems

i»?The developing economies of Asia are confronted by serious environmental problems that threaten to undermine future growth, food security, and regional stability. This study considers four major environmental challenges that policymakers across developing Asia will need to address towards 2030 : water management, air pollution, deforestation and land degradation, and climate change. We argue that these challenges, each unique in their own way, all exhibit the characteristics of “wicked problems†. As developed in the planning literature, and now applied much more broadly, wicked problems are dynamic, complex, encompass many issues and stakeholders, and evade straightforward, lasting solutions. Detailed case studies are presented to illustrate the complexity and significance of Asia’s environmental challenges, and also their nature as wicked problems. The most important implication of this finding is that there will be no easy or universal solutions to environmental problems across Asia. This is a caution against over-optimism and blueprint or formulaic solutions. It is not, however, a counsel for despair. We suggest seven general principles which may be useful across the board. These are : a focus on co-benefits; an emphasis on stakeholder participation; a commitment to scientific research; an emphasis on long-term planning; pricing reform; tackling corruption, in addition to generally bolstering institutional capacity with regard to environmental regulation; and a strengthening of regional approaches and international support.

Skill Development and Regional Mobility: Lessons from the Australia-Pacific Technical College

Abstract Developing countries can lose part of their investment in training skilled workers who later emigrate. One innovative response is for migrants’ destination countries to help finance skilled emigrants’ training ex ante – linking skill creation and skill mobility. We describe one such project, the Australia-Pacific Technical College (APTC), which has financed vocational training in five Pacific island developing countries for employment both at home and abroad – including employment in Australia. The APTC has attained its goal of skill creation, but not its goal of skill mobility. We offer explanations for this result and lessons for future policy innovation.

Gauging Change in Australian Aid: Stakeholder Perceptions of the Government Aid Program

Abstract In this article, we use data from the 2013 and 2015 Australian Aid Stakeholder Surveys to gauge the extent of the changes to the Australian Government Aid Program since the 2013 federal election. The two surveys targeted the same set of stakeholders of the aid program, and both gathered data on a wide range of aspects of its functioning. As we assess the findings that emerged from the surveys, we situate our work amongst recent academic studies that have looked at the post‐2013 aid changes in Australia. Our key findings are that the post‐2013 changes to Australian aid have had wide‐ranging impacts and have led to deteriorating overall aid quality. However, changes have not affected all aspects of the aid program equally, and some changes are starting to be reversed. In discussion, we examine what these developments mean for the future of Australian aid.

Climate Change Mitigation and Green Growth in Developing Asia

Developing Asia is the driver of today’s emissions intensive global economy. As the principle source of future emissions, the region is critical to the task of global climate change mitigation. Reflecting this global reality and a range of related domestic issues, the governments of the People’s Republic of China, India, Indonesia, Thailand, and Viet Nam have embarked upon an ambitious policy agenda. This report reviews the present and future policy settings for climate change mitigation and green growth in Asia’s major emerging economies.

Resources-to-Cash: A Cautionary Tale from Mongolia

Recently, the direct distribution of natural resource wealth through cash transfers (“resources-to-cash”) has been recommended to help avoid the resource curse. Mongolia is perhaps the only developing country that has actually introduced a resources-to-cash scheme. While the scheme has showed mixed results, overall it has been a failure, losing political and public support because of design and implementation flaws. One should not dismiss the potential benefits of resources-to-cash on the basis of one, poorly designed and implemented instance. Rather the lesson of the Mongolia experience is that resources-to-cash needs to take its place alongside, rather than be favoured over, other policy instruments that have been put forward to avoid the resource curse.

Party divides: expertise in and attitude towards climate change among Australian Members of Parliament

This study investigates Australian federal politicians’ expertise in and attitudes towards climate change. Telephone interviews were conducted with a sample of 26 Members of Parliament (MPs). Results of the survey, undertaken in late 2009, suggest that climate change expertise is low to moderate among MPs, and that there is no correlation between expertise in and concern about climate change. The survey reveals important differences in attitudes to climate change by party. About 40 per cent of Coalition (Liberal and National) MPs are climate change ‘deniers’, but no Labor Party (ALP) MPs are. ALP MPs rate climate change as the most important (with water management) out of four long-term challenges, but Coalition MPs rate it as the least important (after not only water, but also aging and defence). All ALP MPs think climate change demands urgent action, and that Australia should play a leadership role globally, but only about one-fifth of Coalition MPs does. Even those Coalition MPs who are climate change ‘believers’ tend to give lower importance to climate change than ALP MPs.

Backpackers v. Seasonal Workers: Learning from the Contrasting Temporary Migration Outcomes in Australian and New Zealand Horticulture

“Crowding out�? is a widely accepted claim in migration analysis, evolving from the literature assessing post-Second World War guest-worker labour which helped fuel the economic boom in Europe and other Western countries. Given the costs of regulation, the preference of profit-maximising employers for irregular and minimally-regulated migrants over regulated alternatives will, it is argued, undermine if not condemn to failure well-regulated temporary migration schemes. To test the crowding-out hypothesis, the horticultural labour markets in Australia and New Zealand are examined. The experience of regulated seasonal migrant programs in Australia and New Zealand has been divergent. Even though the two programs are very similar in design, the New Zealand variant has been much more popular than its Australian counterpart. The evidence suggests that the relative attractiveness of regulated and unregulated migrant labour sources depends on a range of factors, including the export orientation of the sector, the costs of collective action and regulation, differences in policy design and implementation, and external factors. Depending on industry and economy-wide characteristics, quality and reputational benefits for employers can offset the cost of regulation.

Evidence-Based Policy Making in the Tropics: Are Developing Countries Different?

Evidence-based policy making has been advocated as much, if not more, for developing as developed countries. However, very little attention has been given to the conditions or prerequisites for evidence-based policy making, and whether these are in general more or less likely to hold in developing countries. We argue that an environment conducive to evidence-based policy making is one in which there are strong incentives for good policies to be adopted, capable institutions to implement them, a wide range of domains within which good policy can be adopted, and a ready supply of well-developed policy proposals. Based on the development literature, our own experience, and the comparison of two countries, Australia and Papua New Guinea, we conclude that these conditions are all more likely to exist in developed than developing countries. Developing countries on the other hand have the advantage of foreign aid. Much foreign aid is dedicated to the purpose of facilitating evidence-based policy making. But we argue that at best this is a partial compensation for the other problems faced by developing countries in striving to base their policies more firmly on sound evidence. While this paper is not a counsel for despair, it is a call for realism. Strengthening institutions or the structure of the economy are long-term endeavours. But the dearth of funding for research and teaching is a constraint that can more readily be lifted, especially with support from donors.