PNG gets former AusAID head as new Oz high commissioner
04 December 2015
KEITH JACKSON
WHEN Bruce Davis left his post as director-general of AusAID in 2009, I noted in PNG Attitude that it was “a sudden departure” – sudden like Deborah Stokes’ unexpected exit as Australia's PNG High Commissioner back in July this year.
Now, after a five month gap in Waigani, Davis (pictured) is replacing Stokes, leaving his position as vice-president of the Asian Development Bank which, if memory serves me right, is the same job Stokes has just moved into.
Davis was 10 years as head of AusAID, which was abolished not long after he left. He was a career aid bureaucrat, having joined the then Australian Development Assistance Agency (ADAB) in 1975 aged 22.
The Lowy Institute's Graham Dobell had written in May 2009, as rumours of an imminent departure circulated, that "Davis has epitomised the AusAID contradiction: it controls billions but deploys little bureaucratic weight.
“AusAID’s distance from power is expressed by its comfortable headquarters in Civic, on the other side of the lake from Parliament and DFAT."
At the time of Davis’s departure, the criticisms of AusAID included that it serviced Australian commercial interests through its procurement policies and misused aid to support foreign policy initiatives such as the so-called Pacific Solution for processing asylum seekers.
Both those criticisms would be considered to be misguided by the current crop of Australian politicians, aid for commercial interests and the 'Pacific Solution' being all the rage.
After Davis left his post, Dobell wrote: “The Davis era delivered marked and measurable bureaucratic achievements: the budget rose and the number of senior staff increased with the level of the cash.
“But AusAID has been notable for how careful it has become in even thinking about thinking.
“Closing AusAID’s internal library was one manifestation. One insider interpreted this as: ‘We are an operational agency, not a thinking agency.’ Or, if we need to think, we’ll hire a consultant.”
And now Davis has been recalled to action to occupy the key diplomatic post of Australia's High Commissioner in Papua New Guinea.
Whatever the government thought of him in 2009, there’s clearly been a change of view.
In the past, Davis has also served overseas as Ambassador to Ireland and as Deputy Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum.
One of the major issues he’ll be addressing on this watch will be the question of Bougainville’s political future.
Both PNG and Australia don’t favour independence, and Bougainvilleans – where there seems to be a gathering majority favouring the proposition – are due to vote on the matter in the next couple of years.
Stokes was said to have come to grief over Bougainville. The Australian government never explained her precipitate departure.
Thinking as well as operating will be paramount in this gig.
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