Devpolicy Talks

This year is the first after three years of cuts in which the aid budget is slated to increase – by $84 million. While only enough to keep the aid budget growing with inflation, how will this new money be spent? Health funding has been almost halved in real terms over the last four years. Will the government release information on its long-awaited health security initiative? At this year’s aid bud...

In this talk Professor Fforde will discuss how risk and uncertainty are best coped with in development practice. In doing this, he will examine the theories of change that underpin aid practitioners’ use of tools such as the logical framework approach. He will contend that in many situations we should explore methods of devising policy and organising practice that formally assume context is unpred...

Co-hosted by the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute and the Development Policy Centre. As Governments expanded their activities over the years, pushing spending from around 10 per cent of GDP at the beginning of the last century to the current levels of 30 to 50 per cent of GDP, while increasing intervention through regulations, they tended to lose much of their ability to monitor well what they di...

This talk provides a survey of recent economic developments in Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) since the end of the resource boom in 2014. The specific focus of the discussion will be on the country’s exchange rate policy. Theory suggests that the real exchange rate (RER) should depreciate following the observed fall in commodity prices. In practice, however, the imposition of foreign exchange controls h...

Africa has a rich history; old and diverse cultures; and abundant and varied natural resources. Yet, a large majority of Africans remain poor, disenfranchised and oppressed. For five and half centuries, the trajectory of Africa’s autonomous development was distorted by the intervention of nascent Europe: the slave trade, the colonial venture and the Cold War. A legacy of the colonial system, the p...

In this podcast, you'll hear a discussion forum, jointly organised by the Development Policy Centre and the Office of Development Effectiveness (ODE), which is the latest in a series on the evaluation of Australian aid. The event focuses on the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's (DFAT)new aid evaluation policy and two recent evaluations. Recently, DFAT has overhauled its approach to evaluat...

Robin Davies, Associate Director of the Development Policy Centre, interviews German economist Inge Kaul, a leading thinker on global public goods. This interview forms the basis for a blog post (https://exit.sc/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdevpolicy.org%2Fpublic-enemies-global-public-goods-in-aid-policy-narratives-20170407%2F and Discussion Paper (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2941164)...

Robin Davies, Associate Director of the Development Policy Centre, interviews German economist Inge Kaul, a leading thinker on global public goods. This interview forms the basis for a blog post (http://devpolicy.org/public-enemies-global-public-goods-in-aid-policy-narratives-20170407/) and Discussion Paper (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2941164) on the issue of aid policy an...

Human society is full of would-be ‘change agents’. A restless mix of campaigners, lobbyists, and officials, both individuals and organisations, are set on transforming the world. They want to improve public services, reform laws and regulations, guarantee human rights, get a fairer deal for those on the sharp end, achieve greater recognition for any number of issues, or simply be treated with resp...

Development aid from donor countries amounts to more than US $130 billion annually. More than half of that amount comes from European Union nations. However, sustainable development cannot be achieved through aid alone. The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development have underlined the importance of domestic resource mobilisation and investments – bo...

Speakers: James Brumby, The World Bank; Luis Felipe Lopez Calva, The World Bank; Natasha Smith, DFAT; Dr Helen Szoke, Oxfam Australia; and Professor Veronica Taylor, ANU. The Oceania launch of the World Development Report 2017, including a presentation of the report and a panel discussion, was held on February 14 as a side event to the 2017 Australasian Aid Conference The World Development Report...

Foreign Minister The Hon Julie Bishop MP delivered the opening address at the 2017 Australasian Aid Conference on February 15, held at Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University. In the address, Minister Bishop announced several new initiatives and spoke of the strategic importance of the aid program. Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's...

Plenary session, 2017 Australasian Aid Conference Chair: Stephen Howes, ANU Speakers: Robin Davies, ANU Adam Kamradt-Scott, University of Sydney Phoebe Wynn-Pope, Australian Red Cross Paul McPhun, Medecins Sans Frontieres Australia Jamie Isbister, DFAT The humanitarian aid system is in crisis. It’s a crisis of identity, financing and conduct. Agencies set up to deal with the immediate impacts of t...

Plenary session, 2017 Australasian Aid Conference Chair: Joel Negin What does Australian aid need more of, or less of? What are its ailments and what shape its cures? This panel presents the best, the most original, the most transformational, the most innovative ideas to get more bang from the 4 billion dollar buck that is the Australian aid program. Following the 3-Minute-Thesis format, rival adv...

Plenary session, 2017 Australasian Aid Conference Speakers: Guo Peiyuan, General Manager, SynTao; Jeon Hyunjin, Manager, Corporate Social Responsibility Team, LG Electronics HQ; Simon Cramp, Director of Private Sector Development, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; Prabodh Saxena, Principal Secretary, Government of Himachal Pradesh. Chaired by Anthea Mulakala of The Asia Foundation. Involvin...

Keynote address, 2017 Australasian Aid Conference, ANU Speaker: Michael Woolcock, Lead Social Development Specialist, World Bank and Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard University Despite what today’s headlines might convey, life for most people in most developing countries has never been better. This should be rightly celebrated, but improving basic levels of human welfare from a low base was the...

Robin Davies interviews Publish What You Fund’s London-based CEO, Rupert Simons and Elise Dufief, the organisation’s Research and Monitoring Manager, who is in the process of reviewing the methodology used for the Aid Transparency Index, to discuss the current issues in aid transparency. Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.  Read an...

The independent Tax Review Committee (TRC) established by the Government of PNG recently completed a comprehensive review of the country’s tax system involving extensive and transparent stakeholder consultation over the course of two years. This culminated in two volumes of reports (inclusive of significant economic and tax reform recommendations) which were formally presented to the PNG Governmen...

For generations of young Australians with a passion for social justice, volunteering in developing or indigenous communities has been a rite of passage. Bill Armstrong has been deeply involved in this movement since the 1960s, working with organisations such as the Overseas Service Bureau (now Australian Volunteers International), and Indigenous Community Volunteers. Robin Davies discussed his wor...

It is well known that gender-based and sexual violence are major problems facing Papua New Guinea. What is less widely recognized are the grassroots efforts underway to combat these problems, and the individuals leading those efforts. Everlyne Sap is one of those individuals. She is a gender advocate and chairperson of the Family and Sexual Violence Steering Committee of the Restorative Justice In...

In this podcast, part of a series of talks from the recent PNG Update, you will hear a collection of speeches showcasing the ANU-UPNG Partnership. In the first part, Nelson Nema, Professor Stephen Howes, Rohan Fox and Dr Manoj Pandey provide an update on PNG’s current economic performance. Following this are Peter Kanaparo and Dr Grant Walton, with a discussion on the unintended consequences of th...

In this podcast, part of a series of speeches from the recent PNG Update, you will hear Mr. Bruce Davis, Australian High Commissioner to PNG; reflect on the diversity and strategic importance of the AUS – PNG relationship. Charles Abel, Honorable Minister for National Planning at the PNG Government, also speaks. Abel discusses the importance of PNG’s transition to a sustainable economy, and arguin...

During times of disaster, people naturally want to help. Unfortunately, they sometimes choose to do so in ways that do more harm and create more chaos: like emptying their medicine cabinets of expired goods and shipping them off overseas. Pharmacist Phillip Passmore has helped swamped local health systems deal with dodgy or unneeded drugs in post-tsunami Aceh and much, much more during his fascina...

During times of disaster, people naturally want to help. Unfortunately, they sometimes choose to do so in ways that do more harm and create more chaos: like emptying their medicine cabinets of expired goods and shipping them off overseas. Pharmacist Phillip Passmore has helped swamped local health systems deal with dodgy or unneeded drugs in post-tsunami Aceh and much, much more during his fascina...

Disaster risk reduction, and its interface with climate risk management and adaptation, is a topic of increasing interest in international development, particularly for those working in the Pacific. Robert Glasser is the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction in the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, otherwise known as UNISDR. Camilla Burkot spoke with Robe...