In this episode of Devpolicy Talks, Gordon Peake speaks with the pseudonymous author Matt Francis about the Murder in the Pacific series, four crime novels set across the provinces of Vanuatu and featuring Sergeant George Long, a Ni-Vanuatu police officer of mixed Chinese and Ni-Vanuatu heritage, and his partner Constable Jaylene Olly. Francis describes the books as love letters to a country he adores, conceived during a rainstorm outside the Australian High Commission in Port Vila, with one volume planned for each of the country's six provinces. He and Peake discuss the gentle lampooning of donor programming that runs through the series — the banners, certificates of participation and endless training courses — alongside the politics of per diems, the geopolitics of Australia–China donor competition, and the sophisticated agency of Ni-Vanuatu and Papua New Guinean interlocutors. Francis also explains why he adopted a pen name, fearing consequences for his research access and grant applications.
In this episode, Gordon Peake speaks with the pseudonymous crime writer Matt Francis about the Murder in the Pacific series, four novels set across the provinces of Vanuatu and featuring Sergeant George Long, a Ni-Vanuatu police officer of mixed Chinese and Ni-Vanuatu heritage, and his partner Constable Jaylene Olly. Francis explains that the idea took shape during a rainstorm outside the Australian High Commission in Port Vila, when a description he jotted down grew into a plan to write one book for each of Vanuatu's six provinces. Four have been published, a fifth set on Ambrym against the backdrop of a Mount Benbow eruption is drafted, and a sixth is planned for Torba and the Torres Islands.
Francis describes the books as love letters to a country he adores, but ones that do not shy away from its absurdities or from the frictions of the aid industry. He and Peake discuss the gentle lampooning of donor programming that runs through the series: the banners, the certificates of participation, the photo opportunities, and the constant cycle of training courses that pull police officers away from their duties. Francis draws on three decades of experience, beginning with an international NGO in the mid-1990s using AusAID funds on HIV and AIDS care and prevention in Thailand and Myanmar, and reflects on why training remains such a favoured deliverable for donors.
The conversation turns to the geopolitics of Australia–China donor competition, drawing on Francis's fieldwork in Papua New Guinea in 2018 and 2019 and later community-level research with taxi drivers and market mamas in Vanuatu. He argues that Ni-Vanuatu and Papua New Guinean interlocutors have a sophisticated understanding of donor rivalry and exercise real agency in playing one partner against another, an agency he found Australian officials often failed to recognise. Peake and Francis also examine the politics of per diems as a rational salary top-up, and the highly political environment in which senior police and public servants operate in a small country where the pool of candidates for top positions is narrow and the stakes are correspondingly high.
Francis also explains the pen name. Writing the first book in 2018 and 2019, he feared being blacklisted from Vanuatu or having grant applications penalised after taking potshots at High Commission staff and Ni-Vanuatu political figures. He has kept the Francis byline for later projects, including film scripts and a musical. Peake, who reviewed the series for Devpolicy, commends the books as humbling, absorbing reads that convey how much backstory is needed to understand anything in Vanuatu, and how small does not mean simple.
Devpolicy Talks is produced by Robin Davies, Amita Monterola and Finn Clarke.
Matt Francis:
And they were actively trading Australia versus China and moving between the two, and were fully aware of the fact that Australia and China were competing for influence, and fully aware that for a period of time they were in the driver's seat. Having spoken to a lot of Australian aid officials and diplomats, I feel there was a sense that there was no agency within these countries, that they weren't that sophisticated. That probably drove a lot of my frustrations in the first book.
Amita Monterola:
We wish to acknowledge the Indigenous people of Australia, the wider Asia Pacific region, and other parts of the world, and express our respect for their traditional knowledge and practices, which stem from a deep connection to the lands and waters they have inhabited for millennia.
Robin Davies:
Welcome to Devpolicy Talks, the podcast of the Development Policy Centre. We're part of the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country in Canberra. I'm Robin Davies.
We're bringing you a mix of interviews, event recordings and in-depth features on topics central to our research: Australia's overseas aid, development in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific, and other regional and global development issues.
Matt Francis is the pen name of the crime writer behind the Murder in the Pacific series. He's written four novels to date — Ifira Point, Mount Yasur, Champagne Beach and Waterfall Village — each set in a different province of Vanuatu, and following Sergeant George Long, a Ni-Vanuatu police officer of mixed Chinese and Ni-Vanuatu heritage, and his partner, Constable Jaylene Ollie.
A fifth novel, drafted and set on the island of Ambrym in Malampa province during a Mount Benbow eruption, is to be followed by a sixth in Torba province, taking in the Torres Islands to complete the sweep of the country's six provinces.
Behind the pen name is an author with three decades of experience in the sector, beginning with NGO work on HIV and AIDS care and prevention in Thailand and Myanmar in the mid-1990s, and moving into a university career that has included fieldwork in Papua New Guinea and community-level research in Vanuatu with taxi drivers and market mamas.
Interviewing Matt is Gordon Peake, a Canberra-based writer, podcaster and consultant, and a campus visitor at the Development Policy Centre. Gordon is the author of the award-winning Timor-Leste memoir Beloved Land, and a subsequent book on Bougainville, Unsung Land, Aspiring Nation. He recently reviewed the Murder in the Pacific series for the Devpolicy blog.
In this conversation, Matt describes the books as love letters to a country he adores, but ones that don't shy away from its absurdities or from the frictions of the aid industry. Gordon and Matt discuss the gentle lampooning of donor programming that runs through the series — the banners, the certificates of participation, and the endless training courses that pull police officers away from their duties. They examine the politics of per diems as a rational salary top-up, the highly political environment in which senior police and public servants operate in a small country, and the sophisticated agency of Ni-Vanuatu and Papua New Guinean decision makers in navigating Australia–China aid competition. Matt also explains why he writes under a pen name and reflects on what fiction allows him to say about the aid industry that other forms of writing don't.
Gordon Peake:
Well, it's the mysterious Matt Francis, author of four wonderful murder mystery novels set in the world of Melanesia. It's great to meet you, Matt. We're having a voice recording, so I can't see what your face looks like — or maybe that's a mask you have on — but we can be assured that your anonymity will be preserved for our listeners. Great to meet you.
Matt Francis:
Thanks, Gordon, very much. Yes, you can see my face. This is my real face, but it'll only be the voice that others will have to try and find the clues from. Matt Francis is the name I write by, but it's not my actual name.
Gordon Peake:
Which adds to the intrigue of these mysteries. There's a mystery to be solved in the novel and then a mystery to be solved in who the author is. Before we get into why you're writing under a pen name or a nom de plume, I wonder if you can introduce listeners to the Murder in the Pacific series and what you're trying to achieve with them.
Matt Francis:
Thank you. The first book was written around 2019, and I wrote it simply because I do read a lot of trashy crime novels, and I'm very quick to put a novel down if it doesn't grab me within the first chapter or two. I'd read many and not finished all of them, and I felt maybe I could write one myself.
At the time I probably had that thought, I was in Port Vila. I remember standing just near the Australian High Commission — for those who have been to Port Vila, it's in a very prominent position above the town, looking out over the harbour. There was a big rainstorm, and a huge amount of rain came down in a very short period of time. I could see the stormwater pipes flushing into the harbour, and the beautiful blues and greens of the water immediately turned brown. I started to describe it to myself and thought, actually, that was quite a nice description; I should write that down. Then I thought I could turn that into something bigger than just a short description to send home to my family in an email. From there, the idea came about of writing the books.
In my mind, I wanted to write one book for each of the six provinces of Vanuatu. Four have been published. I've got the manuscript of the fifth book, set on Ambrym, and the Torba and Torres Islands are the final book, hitting every other province.
The idea was to highlight what a wonderful country Vanuatu is, but also some of the absurdities that exist. I get a lot of inspiration by reading the local national newspaper, the Daily Post, and reading some of the odd things that occur — politically, within the crime reporting, and socially and economically as well. So it really was, initially, just to test myself: could I do it? And then, I do want to write these books about this country that I simply adore. Each of them is, in its own way, a love letter to the country.
Gordon Peake:
"Love letter" was on the tip of my tongue before you took it off me. They are clear love letters to this country that you obviously have such a degree of affection for. I'm reminded of something my father used to say about his children: I love you all the time, but I don't necessarily like you all the time. That comes across as well — you've got such a love for Vanuatu, but you're also not blind to some of the difficulties and challenges in the country.
You decided to show your love through these murder mysteries, and in each mystery — I've read all four of them, and I think they get better with each novel, and the first one, dear listener, is pretty damn good to begin with — they're told through the vantage points of two characters: George Long, a Ni-Vanuatu of Chinese heritage, and Jaylene Ollie, a female police officer in the Vanuatu Police Force.
Can you introduce readers to these characters and why they're such useful vantage points for looking at Vanuatu? There's a choice every author has about who they want their main characters to be. Why did you want a man and woman double act who are having a perfectly happy platonic relationship all the way through?
Matt Francis:
They are. There will be no romantic getting-together of George and Jaylene — I can spoil any hopes people might have that that might occur. They're both married, quite happy to be with other people.
For authenticity, I wanted it to be a police procedural. There are always lots of amateur detectives who find themselves solving crimes, but I didn't think in Vanuatu that would work — although it potentially could. You might have a religious leader, a public servant who moves around the country, or a bank manager. But for authenticity I felt it really ought to be a police officer solving the murders. That's their role in normal society. So that was the starting point: who could be the police officer?
George became part of the book because I also felt that having mixed heritage — his father is from a Chinese family that had been in Vanuatu for many generations, which is quite common across the country. These multi-generational Chinese families are often involved in mercantile trade stores or other occupations, or ownership of businesses. His father was of Chinese heritage but had been born and raised in Vanuatu, as his parents had, and his mother was a Ni-Vanuatu woman. By having mixed heritage, that would allow me over time to draw out a lot of the existing tensions within Vanuatu.
Vanuatu is Melanesian, as you say, but it has a small portion of its population of Chinese heritage who have been there for a number of generations. There are also tensions with more recently arrived people from mainland China — political tensions and economic tensions. That's part of what Vanuatu is. But there are also Australians who have been there for some time or who are there to own businesses; the French; or those fleeing the long arm of the Australian Taxation Office.
Gordon Peake:
It's one of those countries on financial watch lists. There's zero income tax and things like that.
Matt Francis:
Absolutely. And then there's a French part of the population as well, who have often been there for some generations from the colonial period. There are different ethnicities that have all come together in this country. Melanesians are obviously the largest proportion. I felt that if George was from one of those other groups, it would allow me to talk about some of the tensions. When I started writing, the focus on China in the Pacific was, for me as an academic, really important, and so that was probably why I chose that.
As his partner, Jaylene Ollie — as readers will realise — is, in George's own estimation, the better police officer. She's well attuned to people's truths and lies, and she's the one who actually can do the questioning. Again, I felt she would be a very good foil to George's own way of observing life, which is a little bit from a distance. When you read the books, you'll see that George isn't really present much of the time. He's there, he's seeing things, but he doesn't really want to get into relationships. He doesn't really want to involve himself in people's lives. Being a police officer is probably a very bad choice, because he's forced to do that, but his preference would be to sit back and observe.
Jaylene allowed the police procedural aspects to push through, because she was the one who took the notes, saw the clues and decided who they should speak to. As a double act, they served each other well.
With the changes in society in Vanuatu, there are a small number of female police officers in the Vanuatu Police Force — still a relatively small number, but growing and celebrated. There will often be news articles about how many female cadets there are and how many have graduated. I felt that was a genuine reflection of how the country was moving forward, by bringing her into a prominent role.
Gordon Peake:
It's obviously a relationship of equals. What I really like about the books is that, as sometimes happens in all relationships, they squabble and fight, but they often reunite in order to solve the case. And what I really like — I love trashy detective novels as well — is that I couldn't really figure out who did it a lot of the time, up to the end. So they work as mysteries, but also as this very light-touch but clearly deep, knowledgeable anthropology of Vanuatu and how it works.
We'll talk a little bit about your observations of Vanuatu and its bureaucratic cultures later. But I'm conscious this is the Devpolicy Talks podcast. One of the things that really struck me is there's a gentle lampooning of the aid industry in Vanuatu throughout the books. In one, George and Jaylene arrive on an island and find there are very few other police officers there because they've all gone to an Australian Federal Police training in Port Vila. In another, one of the murders takes place in the course of a donor-funded disaster preparedness exercise. My favourite is in the fourth book, where there's a subtheme about a banner that needs to be got throughout the book, and the importance of getting pictures on social media.
That's clearly something that's been exercising you — you can see it working through your subconscious in how it's conceptualised and managed in Vanuatu. Talk a little bit about why, and what was eating away at you that made you want to throw a few pot shots at aid bureaucrats and people organising training courses.
Someone said to me once about police in the Pacific: they must be the best-trained police in the world, because they're constantly going on trainings. Port Vila is going to be the home of one of the new centres of excellence in the Australian-funded Pacific Policing Initiative. Clearly there's something niggling away at you that you wanted to throw a few haymakers about. Tell us.
Matt Francis:
If you read the local newspaper, the Daily Post, quite regularly there'll be stories about training programs that this person or that person has been on. It's an absolutely regular occurrence that people from all sectors are being put through training.
My own career began with an international NGO. This was a long time ago, in the mid-1990s. Part of the work we were doing — using what was then AusAID funds — was mostly HIV and AIDS care and prevention in Thailand and Myanmar. That was what I was responsible for. We were constantly running training programs for nurses, doctors, community members, community leaders, religious leaders — whatever it was. Even in those early days, there was always competition for time and space to bring people into training. Quite often, the same person would go to three or four similar trainings. We would be trying to arrange a care-and-prevention seminar, but we couldn't do it on that day because the doctors were doing something with New Zealand, or the nurses were somewhere else. All the space was booked by others.
For the three decades at least that I've been involved, training programs have been at the core of aid programs — because they're easy to plan, easy to deliver, and, most importantly, easy to assess and say we've done it. As a metric of aid delivery, you can tick how many people turned up and how many participated. If you're really sophisticated, you might do a pre- and post-survey to demonstrate transfer of knowledge. It's a very common practice.
But across those three decades — I moved from working for an NGO to working in the university — I've been a little suspicious that actually there wasn't much knowledge transfer necessarily occurring in those training programs. They were taking up a lot of time and effort, but what were they actually delivering?
As I started to do research in Vanuatu, looking at a range of issues, it was obvious this was still occurring right through to now. And it did become comical quite often. You mentioned the banner — that did seem to be the most important part of any training: the photo at the end in front of the big banner. No one could leave a training program until a photo had been taken. It's never just one photo. It's one photo, and then someone else will give them their camera to take a photo, and then a third. You can stand there for quite some minutes while everyone jumps in and out with their cameras. That's fine, that's not a problem. But it did feel at times that anybody would come. They want to have their photo taken; if there's catering, they'll stay for that. But the content isn't always necessarily fantastic or helpful, because they've heard it before any number of times. When you have the opportunity to lampoon those sorts of things, you absolutely take it.
Gordon Peake:
Absolutely. There's the banner, of course, but don't forget the certificates that need to be given out. The certificates seem to have no regulating authority — there's normally no educational authority issuing them. It's a certificate of participation, the equivalent of an attendance certificate I used to get in primary school. There's something so lampoonable about it. I'm really glad you did.
There's a serious question behind this, which you touch on as the books evolve: the shadow of China, which ramps up the competition that often manifests itself in these training programs. I was in Vanuatu in June last year and I met a senior government official, who said very bluntly, "Look, if Australia doesn't fund something, we'll just ask China. And if China doesn't do it, we'll ask Australia." There's very much a sense of that emerging as the books go on — Ni-Vanuatu public servants realising they are in a bidding war with countries seeking their influence.
A number of times, George, Jaylene and other police officers in the book say, "the printer's busted, I'll just ask the Australians for it." I think the books show, better than anything else I've read, the calculations that go on within public servants in Vanuatu, certainly when it comes to how they approach donor aid. It goes beyond the cant you hear about "donor partners" — "we'd like to thank our donor partners". It's actually people thinking in terms of WIIFM: what's in it for me? What's in it for my element?
Can you talk about how you're ventriloquising your own views on this through George and Jaylene? They're often thinking, what am I going to get out of this? — which is an entirely rational thing to be thinking.
Matt Francis:
The views I have are based in research I've been involved in. There were two particular studies. The first was in Papua New Guinea, so a similar part of the Pacific. We surveyed mid-level decision makers — we weren't seeking to interview senior politicians or the very senior public servants, but the next level down: members of parliament, but not cabinet ministers; people below first secretary of significant public service; and other senior community leaders. We asked them exactly those questions about how aid was occurring in Papua New Guinea, and about what we think is that competition between China and Australia for political influence.
It was really clear that they were extraordinarily calculating, as you say, about what they could get out of it for Papua New Guinea. They were actively trading Australia against China and moving between the two, fully aware that Australia and China were competing for influence, and fully aware that for a period of time they were in the driver's seat, to a degree, and they could make demands or play each against the other.
At that point — 2018, 2019 — having spoken to a lot of Australian aid officials and diplomats in Papua New Guinea but across the Pacific, I feel there was a sense that there was no agency within these countries, that they weren't that sophisticated. That probably drove a lot of my frustrations in the first book. I won't share how it finishes, but you get a sense I was fairly grumpy at that time with certain people within the Australian High Commission.
I had conversations where Australian diplomats in the Australian High Commission would speak in a derogatory manner about their Ni-Vanuatu counterparts — and about Ni-Vanuatu — whilst Ni-Vanuatu staff were in the room next to them. It was just horrifying. I was absolutely horrified. There was not an arrogance so much as a lack of awareness or curiosity as to what Ni-Vanuatu people or Papua New Guinean people thought about these issues. They have agency.
We did a similar study in Vanuatu a couple of years later, going down to community level. We spoke to taxi drivers, representing men, and mamas in the local food markets, representing women's voices, and again talked about programs — Australia versus China — and what they thought of them and who had the most influence. I won't go into the grubby details of the research, but it was quite clear they understood the differences between the two countries. They understood that China largely delivered large infrastructure projects, and Australia was much more focused on awareness raising — gender awareness, environmental awareness — much softer projects. They thought the Australian aid programs were really good, but they felt that because of the way the society was structured politically, the Chinese aid programs, which were much more muscular and based on big infrastructure, gave China greater political influence in the country, because they served the needs of big-man politicians.
Again, when we tried to share this information with Australian aid officials, there really wasn't much interest. It was really sad that there wasn't a sense of, "We need to be listening and understanding that Ni-Vanuatu, in this instance, actually have agency." They understand what's going on. They know geopolitical circumstances and how they can take advantage of them. That really led to the abandonment of a strong relationship with the Pacific over a period, up until perhaps the present government, when Penny Wong as Minister for Foreign Affairs, I think, did an incredible job in the first three or four months of her tenure repairing that relationship, which was largely broken because of the previous government's inaction or lack of understanding.
George's frustrations were a reflection of my frustrations. When he references the huge conference centre that sits on the hill above the Australian High Commission in the first book — the fact that it was built without anyone actually wanting it to be built, built with Chinese labourers and Chinese materials — once it was opened, there was no toilet paper in the toilets. It was too big to actually be useful to anyone, and it became almost literally a white elephant: a big white building sitting up there on the hill. There was also a thumb to the nose to the Australian High Commission, which sits in effectively its backyard, with all the debris from the building pushed up against the fence of the Australian High Commission.
George was able to see the absurdity of these two powers, or donors, competing with each other. In his instance, the police force was gladly taking new cars, gladly taking new training, gladly being sent overseas for training, because their own government wasn't able to support it — wasn't able to provide the cars or the infrastructure or the buildings or the computers or the printers. Why would they not take advantage of two donors desperately floundering around to try to get some influence in the country by handing out all these goods, even if they didn't actually have direct benefit to the local community members, who do live pretty vulnerable lives at times?
Gordon Peake:
It's almost like a schoolyard competition. You get the sense that the donors — the West and China — are engaged in wanting to be the most popular kid on the block.
What I really like about the books is — what's that line? — fiction is the lie that allows us to tell the truth. In whatever persona you have in real life beyond Matt Francis, you would not be able to write these bold truths about high-handed officials, mixed motivations, sneering views of the local. But through the books, by ventriloquising it through your characters, you're able to give voice to a lot of frustrations that I've felt over the years and lots of other people have felt as well.
I won't give away what happens in the first book, but there's a tremendous portrait of an Australian diplomat — a first secretary, the person who runs a program in the Pacific. You can almost see his pencilled beard, on his first posting; his trousers probably too tight, his RM Williams probably too polished. He's like a colonial official in some ways, who's gone over to the New Hebrides to put things together.
You're equal opportunity in terms of pillorying people, because in the fourth book you have a New Zealand official who's wanting to get pictures of a gender training, wandering around with a banner. On a scale of one to 10 — one being not at all infuriated, and 10 being red with anger — how infuriated do you get about foreign officials in Vanuatu and their knowledge of the country?
Matt Francis:
When I'm there, the number increases. I do get quite cross. When I've been away for a little while, I'm perhaps a little more sympathetic. In my experience — and I think, Gordon, you probably have more experience of working with diplomats than I do — I would go to a post to report what I'd done for the research they might have funded, or working for the NGO, but they're not normally part of the day-to-day activity, so I'll see them in a limited way.
My experience is that there are largely two groups of Australian diplomats in the Pacific. The first is, as you described: on their first post, young, inexperienced, really keen to do well. Others are just watching the clock, waiting before they can get into Asia or Europe or the Middle East, and so do it almost out of necessity rather than wanting to be there. They don't want to be there, but they know they have to be, and they're the ones I'm perhaps most frustrated with.
At the other end, and these are the ones I probably feel more sorry for, are those who are near the end of their career and haven't got out of the Pacific — although some of them have, over time. Whilst they may have started off disappointed, they do have a much deeper appreciation of the culture and ways of working, and are more attuned to relationships than the younger ones. But it doesn't feel like the Pacific is a place that Australia sends its best and brightest and most experienced diplomats. There'll be exceptions, but that's quite a true statement.
Gordon Peake:
Let's talk about that, because diplomats, aid officials and aid contractors are in many ways the foot soldiers of foreign policy. On one hand, you have Australia — I'm speaking to you here in Canberra — Australia being fully invested in the Pacific: partner of choice, partnerships with countries A, B and C, ministerial visits. You referenced Foreign Minister Wong's listening tour and how taken you were by that. But there seems to be a disjuncture, as you reveal in the books. The foot soldiers of foreign policy: some of them are excellent and some of them are not.
That's why the books are so valuable, Matt, because you actually talk about the complicated realities that people face, and they can't be stage-managed, no matter how much aid officials might want them to be.
Matt Francis:
That's right. They're also hamstrung by budget decisions around the aid program. Whilst the Pacific has received greater amounts of aid over a period, it has been repurposed from other parts of the world that are in need. Our total aid budget isn't anywhere near as much as it ought to be, or as it has been in the past. That sends a very clear message to partner countries in the region. We have great rhetoric about being a partner of choice, but we don't always have the funds to support the programs that are actually needed in those countries. We're making choices between programs, and perhaps sometimes making the wrong choices by not listening to those local needs, because we're in competition with others and feel there might be a better outcome if we do one thing rather than another.
Then our own policies around climate change and emissions controls are also really well understood in the Pacific. I don't think, again, we give credit to the agency and sophistication of leaders in these countries, or community members in these countries, who look to Australia, hear us say how important the Pacific is, and then see us seem to act in a completely different way, against the interests of low-lying Pacific island states.
All those things are understood within the Pacific, but I don't think Australians necessarily always understand them. If we do, our decision makers seem sometimes unable to make decisions that would play better in that part of the world. You see examples of that across the Pacific, and the frustrations felt by local people are regularly raised in the newspaper. Letters to the editor are very scathing in the Daily Post in Vanuatu, of the Australian government, the Chinese government, any government that seems to say one thing but do another. There's no lack of understanding or sense of outrage among the local population about these poor decisions.
Gordon Peake:
There's a theme that runs through the books — you've set them in different parts of Vanuatu, and I hadn't made the connection that there are six provinces in Vanuatu and you were setting them in each one, so that was a reveal for me. Each time George and Jaylene head off to province A, B, C or D, they have to go and collect per diems in order to travel.
I love these reflections they make on per diems. The reflections are: wow, this is a huge amount of money I'm getting. Isn't it great that I'm getting this money, because it helps top up my pretty meagre salary?
That observation connected with me on a couple of levels. First, I used to think that way — my hair is grey now, but back when it was black and I was working in New York, I would really enjoy going on trips. One, because I got to see places I didn't see, but also because it defrayed my costs of living in an expensive city. It allowed me to top up funds I could use to pay the rent, my cell phone bill and utilities at the end of each month.
I see this throughout the Pacific. I see people availing of going on trips because the per diem is often higher than their average monthly salary. You can make more per diem in three or four days than you would in the average monthly salary. I remember meeting a police officer in Buin, in southern Bougainville. He said, "I need training." I said, "Oh yeah, what do you need training on?" He said, "I need it in Port Moresby." I said, "How long do you need this training for?" He said, "A week would be good. Two weeks would be better, because the per diem is better that way."
It's an incredibly rational way for bureaucrats and police officers in the Pacific to think: here's a ready-made way of topping up my meagre salary. I've never read anything about the politics of per diems in aid. I'm sure that literature is there — I'm sure you're going to tell me it is — but you deal with it so amusingly, but insightfully, in the books. It's a beat throughout the books. If I remember correctly, people say at various points, "Oh, I don't really want to go to the training, but the per diem's great, so I'm going to go."
It has a distorting effect on everything. Can you talk about your experience of per diems in aid, which has clearly been bubbling under with you? It erupts in the books with these reflections. Anyone who reads the book will be nodding their head and saying, so much of my time is about dealing with per diems — whether it's, "Is breakfast included? Oh well, if you leave at 11 o'clock, does that include lunch?" These questions take up an awful lot of time and are the driving impetus of a lot of personal and bureaucratic decisions, I've often thought. I've put the coin in the beaker for you. Over to you.
Matt Francis:
Thank you. We spoke earlier about training and all the people attending. The decision as to who should attend training is often determined by the amount of per diems, and so senior people are more likely to accept training that might not be particularly for them if the per diem is good and attractive. There's a perversion of who actually attends training, and quite often it's those who don't need it but want to take advantage of receiving that additional pay. That can be frustrating for those who are actually seeking to undertake training.
Over my career, where I've been involved in having to make those decisions about per diems, early on I probably wasn't as tuned in to the need or the value of a per diem to someone working in the police force or whatever sector it might be. I probably felt it wasn't as necessary as it absolutely is — because it is absolutely necessary. The reason a lot of the police force, nurses and others with good training are leaving the Pacific to come to Australia and New Zealand to undertake fruit picking or whatever seasonal work is available is because you can get much better salaries in Australia doing work you're not trained for than you actually can in your home country, where you are a trained professional. That's just an extension of the fact that people in these sectors are underpaid and find it difficult to meet the costs of living, and so all these extra opportunities are so important.
Over time, I've come to understand that. Now, when I do training — and I still run training programs for the research I do — there'll always be an honorarium included, and it's quite a generous honorarium. I know that people do come back to training. We had one recently in Tonga where we were looking at gender-based violence. We wanted to make sure we were getting a fairly wide representation of service providers, so we had a really good invitation list. One of the groups we really wanted to hear from was disabled people's organisations. We ran the same training twice over two days, so people could come at more convenient times.
We noted that quite a large number of people, particularly from disabled people's organisations, attended both days — same training, but they attended both days. I was really comfortable with that, because this was an important source of income for them. For a lot of community-based organisations, attending training and being able to receive per diems is really their sole source of income. They don't have many other opportunities, particularly if they're disabled or from another vulnerable group. It's almost a normal source of income that we need to take into account.
But the frustration is when the wrong people attend and take advantage because of their seniority or their ability to make decisions in organisations as to who should attend.
In the books, when George has to be sent away, the first thing he thinks of — and certainly Jaylene thinks of — is the per diem, as you say. I've set it up so that they have to go to the assistant to the police chief or police commissioner to receive their per diem. There's always a struggle between George and Elena, who holds the purse in that instance, as to how much he can extract from her. He's always calculating who may have paid the per diem, what the task was, whether the police commissioner would even know a per diem was provided, and how much Elena might be keeping.
That's a bit of fun, to say: well, it is a rational choice. When you're in a position of power, you should leverage that to extract as much value as you possibly can for yourself. Increasingly across the books, George is getting better attuned to how much power he has and how much he can extract from the little cash tin Elena keeps locked away in her top drawer, because it's important as a police officer for him to have that extra income. But it's also, for George, part of holding a bit of self-respect against the decisions he's being forced to participate in.
Gordon Peake:
It's wonderfully well done. I say that for two reasons: I've been in the room where those types of micro-decisions are being made, but also I've tried to write fiction myself and I've really struggled with conveying that sort of ingrained reality. So it's really well done.
I love that you've got all these various police officers as side characters who pop in and pop by. They're craggy in their own respective ways, and they're all political in their own respective ways. They're all thinking about what the minister is thinking about, what the prime minister is thinking.
I've thought about that in the books, because often we think of policing as a technical skill — that oh, you just need more training, you need to know how to investigate things, and then you will investigate better. But what I think the books do a really good job of — and I'd invite you to speak a little bit about it — is portray the political milieu in which they work. Police officers have tremendous discretion, but they are also instruments of power and creatures of a political system. For readers reading about the Vanuatu Police Force, you get the sense that we need to understand that better, and not just say this is a police force deficient in forensics or dog training or explosives management — pick your deficiency — but actually understand that they are operating within a very complicated and quite ruthless political system.
Matt Francis:
Again, if you look at the newspaper in Vanuatu, regularly there will be articles about court cases: the police minister trying to sack the police commissioner, who refuses to be sacked; the prime minister sacking the police minister; people being moved in and out of positions. It's the same for the education ministry — people being sacked or attempts made to sack them, and ministers being taken out of portfolios.
At that level, it's extremely political, because it's quite a small population, and it's an even smaller population of people who have the background to be in those positions. It's not that there's a lack of people with skills and capability, but there's a lack of people who have had the opportunity to take their natural skills and intelligence forward, because of the limited opportunities for education both locally and internationally. It's a very small pool of people who can have those senior roles, and those senior roles are extraordinarily important — not just for the professional career of a particular person, but across their entire social life as well, because of the way the society is structured, with a "big man" type approach.
Having those senior roles gives people enormous authority, not just in the role they have directly, but across all of society. So they're something people aspire to. Because it's a small pool, the competition is extraordinarily intense — because you're so close. In another country where the pool is quite big, there might be lots of people aspiring to those single positions, but the reality is there's probably another 100 people who have exactly the same skill set as you do, so you have to be realistic about what you might be able to achieve. When you're only competing against two or three or four other people, it becomes actually much more real that you might be successful — and much more competitive. And once you lose that position, there's not much to go to. So you really want to hold on tight to it. It is very political at that senior level.
Letters to the editor will demonstrate that people are attuned to that, and watching what's going on in the courts, and have very strong views about the constitution and whether things are legal or not. George observes these things with a level of bemusement, but also frustration that it's interfering with his work — because all of those political machinations ultimately do impact on the ability for police officers to go about their technical work of solving crimes. Either the budgets have been spent in ways that don't provide the tools they need, or people are being moved out of positions where they actually have skills, or particular programs aren't being funded.
George sees these things, and because he actually wants to help his population, his community, he gets frustrated by things getting in the way. There's a character, George's boss, Peter Kelly, who plays that buffer between George and the senior hierarchy. He's the intermediary between the senior officers and George and Jaylene trying to do their work. He's the one who protects George from local racism and things like that, and who ensures George is given the opportunity to do the work. But he's also the one who tells George, "We're not going to solve that crime," or "Actually, it would be much better suited to the government if there was a particular outcome." George is frustrated because sometimes he's getting very clear directions as to what will be acceptable to the senior hierarchy — both government and within the police force — and what won't. Sometimes the right people won't be arrested, or the right outcomes won't be achieved, because there's a political dimension to all of those things.
Gordon Peake:
I have spent a little bit of time in Vanuatu. I wouldn't claim to have spent a lot of time there, but any time I've worked with the police there, I've been struck by the amount of backstory needed to understand anything. I remember being involved in one of these designs of a police program. In the course of it, the person from the — it was then the police commissioner — was clearly having issues with the prime minister at the time. I couldn't work out for the life of me why there was an issue. Eventually, after a few drinks, the police commissioner said, "Well, actually, I arrested the prime minister about thirty years ago."
To me, that was a great example — and the books do this in a gentle but pretty profound way — of saying to the reader: small does not mean simple. Just because everyone's smiling does not mean there aren't complications behind the surface.
I recommend them to everyone who goes to Vanuatu, and I really hope they read them. They're humbling books. What comes across from them is that you, the ventriloquist, don't really understand entirely everything that's going on either. I think that's the mark of intelligence — to be able to say you don't know.
I want to ask you about the fact that you're writing under a pen name. I'll give you my own thinking, as someone who's written a lot about being in and around the aid industry. My writing has made me a bunch of friends and a bunch of enemies. People think I'm a smart-arse who thinks he knows too much, doesn't understand how serious the work is, and there's a wariness among people. That's not entirely my experience, but I can certainly detect it among a certain bureaucratic set — "he might not write the monitoring and evaluation framework as well as we do." So many of the people who work in aid are effectively day-rate contractors; they get paid by shovelling words into the furnace, and they get paid by being quiet and not talking back to the structures of power.
Like most people who come from Ireland, I'm not very good at being quiet whenever I see something going on in front of me. But you've written them under a pen name. Can I put to you — like George in an interrogation — no, but can I put to you that one of the reasons you've done that is that you feared people wouldn't like it so much if you actually wrote under your real name? There are consequences in all industries, including this one, for actually calling it out, calling a spade a spade, saying there are inconsistencies and hypocrisies and picaresques that go on within all our institutions — which often complicates the narrative that organisations are trying to present.
Matt Francis:
That is absolutely correct. When I wrote the first one — I probably started in 2018, but it was finished in 2019 — I naively thought at the time it would be really widely read. They've been read, and thank you for passing them on to other people, but they've perhaps not been as widely read in Vanuatu as I once thought. They're simply not available there, for a whole range of reasons around distribution.
At the time, I thought: I desperately don't want to be caught going into Vanuatu through immigration at the airport, having written a novel that criticises the police commissioner or the police minister or whatever it might be, and have the immigration officer recognise my name on my passport from the book he or she has just read, and say, "No, declined. You're going back."
At that time, in 2018 and 2019, I was still a very active researcher. I was still heavily involved in fieldwork and publishing under my normal name — my academic publications. I was really nervous that I could offend people, probably more so in Vanuatu, and that it would stop my access to the country.
I've worked with colleagues at the university where I've been for some time who were blacklisted from going into Indonesia, and it pretty much stopped their ability to write on those areas. They had to pivot and do something else. I just didn't want to get on a list. There's probably no list in Vanuatu, and there was probably never any chance an immigration officer would read the book, or be offended sufficiently to stop me going through — but that was my naive fear of consequence at the time.
Particularly in that first book, I did have a fairly good go at criticising diplomats within the Australian High Commission as well. There was probably a sense that if people read it and saw my name on it, and then they saw a grant application with my name on it, I wouldn't be successful with the grant application, because people were going to hold it against me — because I've taken these pot shots at them or their colleagues.
Absolutely, that was the primary reason for using the different name. Now, I'm still doing research, but not as much. I'm doing much more university administration. It's probably less of an issue, and probably not an issue at all. But I've chosen to keep it as my writing name. I've written some film scripts and a musical and things like that that hopefully one day will be produced. I've thought it's better to keep that name, and that person can receive all the praise and all the criticism — but it's actually not going to be me under my own name. So it's probably a protective thing as well. Certainly, I was worried I'd be banned from Vanuatu. At that time in my career, that would have been pretty catastrophic.
Gordon Peake:
Yeah, and no more aid research contracts.
Matt Francis:
That's right.
Gordon Peake:
Has anyone ever talked about the books to you, not knowing they're yours? I was on a flight to Dili, and I saw somebody reading my book. I thought, oh, I wonder what you thought of it. He didn't think very much of it, and I felt like saying, "Why don't you write your own book?" — but I managed to stop myself. Has anyone ever said to you, "You know these Matt Francis books? He either (a) knows what he's talking about, (b) is full of it, or (c) I couldn't get to the end of them"?
Matt Francis:
Thankfully not — because the risk would be that they didn't like it, and to have that feedback about your own work would be terrible. I think that's extraordinarily unfair. The fear of being told it was no good overwhelms the hope that someone might like it. Thankfully, I haven't had that opportunity, and I probably would want to avoid it, because I'd be too nervous they'd say something negative that would break my heart.
Within the university where I work, I have shared them with my vice-chancellor. Both he and his wife are, I think, genuinely quite fond of the books. Each year, when a new one comes out, I give them a copy, and they always say positive things. Others on the vice-chancellor's executive are aware I've written the books, and some of them have read them and say lovely things — but not everybody says lovely things. Sometimes their silence is sufficient to make me think, well, maybe it didn't hit the spot for them.
We're all very sensitive — all of us who, as you say, have taken the leap of faith to put their own words to paper. You have to be courageous to show other people, so you don't want to open yourself up too often to criticism.
I did an exercise a couple of years ago, just as I was nearing the end of being a really active researcher, when I added up all my academic publications — book chapters, journal articles and books — and worked out how many there were. I realised each one had probably been rejected two or three times before it was accepted for publication, either complete rejection or resubmit with changes. I did the calculations and realised that over that 20- or 25-year period, my peers had told me, on average every three and a half weeks, that I was no good and that my research was rubbish. It never got any easier. But when I realised it was that common, I thought, oh, okay, that's not too bad. You do get rejected constantly as an academic. I never had the experience of having papers accepted on first blush with no changes. Every three and a half weeks over a two-decade period, I was told I wasn't good enough to be published. It doesn't get much easier.
Gordon Peake:
It doesn't get easier. Writing is one long existential crisis, because you're constantly trying to find the newest word, and constantly trying to find the way that keeps the reader engaged, in this world where it's ever easier to get someone's attention and ever harder to keep it.
Probably the truest thing I can say about your books is that I never wanted to check my phone when I was reading them. I was constantly absorbed by them. Like most forms of learning for adults, I was enjoying it so much I didn't realise how much I was learning — about Vanuatu, and also geopolitics, the aid industry, and most profoundly the way people within the Ni-Vanuatu government think. I would commend them to all our listeners. They're wonderful reads. They're not improving; they're not dull in any way. They're terrific. I really appreciate the time you've given us on this podcast, mysterious Matt Francis.
Matt Francis:
That means an enormous amount, Gordon. Most people I've had interactions with who've read the books know nothing about the country. They've never been there. They don't know anything about the aid program. They're reading it just for the joy of a crime fiction book, and they'll say nice things, and that gives me great joy.
But when I did come across the review you did in the Devpolicy blog, to have someone who actually knows the context, who knows the sector, who's been there themselves, say such lovely things — it was the only review I've actually shown my wife. I read the other ones and could take great joy from them. That one, I did show my wife and say, "This guy knows these things, and he said it's very good." And then to receive an email from you just about the last book saying it's even better — that was —
Gordon Peake:
Oh, it is. The fourth book, listeners, is a cracker.
Matt Francis:
It meant so much, because there are a very small number of people who would be able to read the bits I've written, probably for myself, about the politics and the research embedded in it. Most of that doesn't get picked up by most readers, which is fine. But to have someone who's knowledgeable and experienced in the region recognise them — that was an extraordinarily wonderful moment. I really appreciate your review.
Gordon Peake:
I'm really glad I made your day, and it was made entirely sincerely. Either my great superpower or my great weakness as a writer is that I can't not name what is in front of me. I can't pussyfoot around. If I didn't like the books, I would have said it. And they were — I can't remember who got me onto them — I read them all. I read the first three all in one go, and then I read the last one in January when you sent it to me. What's the next one? Can you give us a sneak preview?
Matt Francis:
The next one is based on the island of Ambrym. That was one of those islands, a number of years ago, that was completely evacuated because of a volcano. That's happened again. Unfortunately, there's been a young Ni-Vanuatu in Australia on a Pacific work visa who's been killed in a car accident. George and Jaylene have to go over to that island to break the news to the young man's family.
The Australian Federal Police back in Port Vila didn't want to do it because it was unsafe. Their insurance policies wouldn't allow them to travel to an island where there was a volcano about to explode, but it was quite okay for the Vanuatu police to do it. George was sent over because the local police are busy evacuating people, so they almost have the entire island to themselves. Once they break the news to this poor young woman, they also find a murder victim who is an international academic doing research with a handful of other international academics.
That's where we find George, trying — on an island empty of everyone apart from the six or so people who might have murdered this particular Dutchman, who might be the murderer — whilst a volcano is ready to erupt and take out the entire island.
Gordon Peake:
There's a lot ticking in the background very clearly. And obviously Mount Benbow. It's like another locked-room mystery, but all that.
Matt Francis:
Absolutely. Mount Benbow is about to explode, and George and Jaylene literally have a couple of days to sift through a bunch of academics who may or may not have murdered this Dutchman.
Gordon Peake:
This would give you a chance to reveal all the foibles of every academic you've ever known.
Matt Francis:
Yes. There are a few snide comments about first authorship and grantees and things like that. So I let loose on them as well. I'm happy to abuse all of my friends and colleagues — there's no question about that.
Gordon Peake:
There's nothing about footnoting? Have you read that book The Shark God by Charles Montgomery? It's set in Ambrym and the Banks.
Matt Francis:
Okay.
Gordon Peake:
It's probably one of my favourite travel books — travel is my favourite genre. He goes to Vanuatu in about 2000 and writes of his great-great-grandfather, who was one of the South Seas missionaries. He goes there and then goes all the way up through the Banks in an effort to get to Solomon Islands, and he ends up in Santa Cruz. It's an amazing book, and very few people have ever heard of it. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Matt Francis:
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. It's been great.
Robin Davies:
Matt Francis is published by Big Sky Publishing, and his books are easy to find. Look for the titles Ifira Point, Mount Yasur, Champagne Beach and Waterfall Village, and look out for the next in the series, set on Ambrym during a Mount Benbow eruption.
Amita Monterola:
Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre. Show notes are posted to Simplecast. Our producers are Robin Davies, Amita Monterola and Finn Clark. You can read and subscribe to our daily blogs on aid, international development and the Pacific at devpolicy.org, and you can follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. You can send us feedback and ideas for episodes at devpolicy@anu.edu.au. Join us again in another fortnight for the next episode of Devpolicy Talks.