 Good afternoon. My name is Stephen Howes. I work at the Development Policy Centre here at the ANU and my guest today is Stephanie Coppers Campbell who is the head of the Oil Search Foundation in Papua New Guinea and has worked on PNG for a long time including as head of the Australian Aid Program there. And we've just been in a session along with our colleague Bal Khama really about the future of PNG and what Australia can do in regards to its close neighbour and important friend PNG. I guess Steph, one of the key messages from that session was that very importance of PNG to Australia for a whole host of reasons. But yet on the other hand the sort of the very little interest that Australia and in fact many Australians take in PNG. So why do you think that is and what can we do about it? Yeah let me just emphasise it's something that for the last 18 years I've been working on Papua New Guinea and I have been trying in every way that I can to raise interest in this country that I have come to absolutely love. It is as you would know Stephen one of the more fascinating places in the entire world to work and a country on our doorstep and a country we have shared history. So why for example is it easier for me to raise money for an orphanage in Africa than it is to raise money in a philanthropic sense for this country and our doorstep when there's so many reasons we should care. And I think part of it is there's this reputation the media likes a story and the media tends to publish the negative and not the positive. So I can tell you a million good stories that they could put in but it's really when there's something that kind of dreadful that happens will go into the paper so people form an impression of Papua New Guinea from the media that is not the impression that I would like them to gain if I was telling the story. So how we can work to just get more awareness of you know of course there's challenges in PNG and of course there's security issues in PNG but at the same time there are many wonderful incredible stories that just need to be shared. I think we need to invest more in schools I think we need to invest more in universities I think we need to invest more in getting Australians to Papua New Guinea I remember well I've worked with a number of doctors for example who were in Papua New Guinea in the 60s and the 70s and had the most incredible time there as young doctors they're just working and so they have these fond memories that have lasted a lifetime and I think you will know if you go to PNG there's this thing they don't warn you about they tell you about mosquitoes and they tell you about rascals and they tell you about potholes they don't tell you about this bug called Papua New Guinea that bites you and you are infected for the rest of your life with this incredible love for the country and these people had it so how do we get more people in to do their internships in Papua New Guinea to go and teach there for a little while to go work in inline positions in government and to really you know get this kind of love and interest of this incredible country on our doorstep so I think there's a lot more around that I think it does need a bit more of a strategy I think it needs some leadership and I think it takes all of us who love PNG just continuing to do what we can to get those messages out. There's no shortage of challenges and problems when it comes to PNG but one of the you know more positive aspects to come out from that session I thought was around the potential of the private sector and around the private sector partnering with the government to achieve social objectives as well as economic ones I know that's something you've been involved in in your work through OSF so perhaps tell us a bit about that and how you think that can work in PNG and let me tell you there's two real takeaway positives for me one civil society so let me just answer that first because I think this is important to understand and you know to some extent maybe the private sector is part of civil society but one is civil society and when I first started working in PNG in the year 2000 we really didn't have a strong and vibrant civil society and that has certainly grown over time to where there are a number of homegrown institutions of PNGs wanting to change things for PNG and for me that's the hope that's that's what gets me out of bed in the morning to work with those amazing PNG leaders who want to see change and I think that's really exciting but with that I think the private sector is also this sleeping giant in terms of how we can engage the private sector to really play a significant role and there's a few ways that that can happen one is money I work for the largest company PNG oil search and they've put 100 million Australian dollars over five years to make things better in a social development sense and that is my task as head of the oil search foundation is to go and achieve real and sustainable results for Papua New Guinea and that's what I have to report against I have to show that that money has achieved results and so we're doing work in a public private setting and we're we're doing work in a very innovative way with a range of partners in health and education and women's empowerment and protection so for example in Hela we've been working with the Hela Provincial Health Authority we are supporting them to take a partnership approach to really shake things up and do things differently through this partnership approach that works with all levels of government at the national level of government we're working to change the way that you can deliver health services to the way in which the money flows and we've already had through working with government a huge success that money is now going directly to the health service and it's bypassing the provincial government where it was getting stuck so that's been already a huge success we're working with them to change the ways that the health authorities can use their money so for example they we want to get to a stage where instead of always having to use government health workers they might be able to outsource some of that to a church or to an NGO who could potentially do it better so we're also working with them to say we're spending our money through the profit sector we're spending government's money we're spending a hundred percent of that money towards where it needs to go through helping to build good governance we're bringing in other private sector partners so through that we've had Exxon come in and wanting to spend money we've had Santos give us a million u.s. dollars to build an accident emergency ward and we're spending the minister's money as well through that so we've had Petrus Thomas give us 200,000 Kena to redevelop the hospital in Korba we've had the governor give us 100 million for the hospital so we're bringing all that money together from all these different resources with new ways of doing business with some private sector kind of innovation and how you kind of get things done and some of the governance aspects of running boards for example and the leadership side of things we're pulling all that together with shared indicators to say how many kids do we immunize how many women will access supervised deliveries how many communities will have clean and safe water supply and therefore see a reduction in diarrhea and there's a force a reduction in children dying from preventable diseases and we are measuring our success as a partnership against that and I think that's something that the private sector has been able to spark just bringing in some of our knowledge and skill sets and then linking that with the number of other players and of course the Australian government as well has now come on board to help to fund some of this as well so it's very exciting. Another issue that came up you know both as negative and a positive was domestic violence and violence against women you know we all know it's a big problem in PNG but it's also one where you mentioned the aid program has had some success and so what do you see there and what do you see as the way forward on that on that issue? I think that goes back first to my point of the aid program having broad its success in helping to stimulate civil society and I do think that our aid program should take a lot of credit for that I think this is something they should really be sharing some lessons on how that was done their investment in churches their investment in local NGOs etc I think that that itself is a real success story and out of that I think it's fallen this conversation around family and sexual violence so when I first started working in PNG in 2000 you couldn't have the conversation it was everywhere though you'd see it on the side of the street you come to work and deal with your staff you know experiencing family and sexual violence it affected kind of everything that that you would try to do and you know whilst sadly that's still the case there's still high levels of violence in 2000 you just could not talk about it I remember going to western province and meeting this incredible woman who had left her husband and had the courage to do that she'd gone to the hospital with her 10 month baby to try to get away from him she wanted to change she didn't want to go back to him she was scared for her child's life she was scared for her life and she said to me can you please please please help me and there was nothing I could do for her at that time absolutely nothing there was no services to send her to the police weren't going to help her I wasn't allowed to you know talk about it but you fast forward now and whilst there still needs to be greater services and we have another um extremely working with you and Stephen um extremely exciting public-private partnership that's going to help to build even better services in Wallsby but now you can talk about it you can get and have these conversations popiniginians do not want the levels of family and sexual violence in their own families in their own communities in their workplaces in their country they want to see this change so it's not now this donor driven initiative from the outside which in 2000 it was it's not donors coming and saying you need to have you know gender equality you need to treat your women better it's popiniginians saying we have a problem and it's Australian saying hey we Australians also have a problem and let's work together I mean I think one of the most powerful things we did was bring Rosie Batty for example to PNG and she was able to um you know kind of say I'm not here to preach to you I'm here because my partner killed my son in Australia I'm here to share a problem with you and it's working together um to share that problem with PNG driving their own agenda in a popiniginian way and um that's pretty exciting we're at a turning point terrific yeah all right thank you Stephen thank you Stephen