Natasha’s PNG aid idea comes up a winner
10 December 2024
MICHAEL KABUNI
| Academia Nomad
CANBERRA – Papua New Guinean PhD student, Natasha Turia Moka, attending an Australasian aid conference in Canberra, has won a contest that challenged speakers to come up with a good idea to improve Australia’s aid program.
They were then given three minutes to present their ideas to the conference, the winner being decided by an online poll of the 500 people at the conference.
Natasha is at the Australian National University’s Department of Pacific Affairs researching labour mobility in PNG.
In her presentation she argued that aid succeeds at that point when the recipient country no longer requires support for its development.
She said that should be the goal of Australia’s aid to PNG and one way to achieve it would be to give PNG its own resident visa.
The current Pacific Engagement Visa allocates about 1,000 places for PNG out of the 3,000 people who apply.
Natasha argued that PNG’s for Papua New Guineans, despite PNG having 11 million people, easily the biggest population in the Pacific Islands region.
The annual conference attracts huge numbers of participants ranging from aid researchers to practitioners across the Pacific, Asia and beyond.
We PhD students at the Department of Pacific Affairs call Natasha “Pawa Meri” – as she juggles life with three of her four children as she studies for a doctorate.
And now she has won a competition against people of amazing calibre.
Congratulations Pawa Meri!
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